Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [42]
Two hours later, I was back at Avram’s. I ran in. He smiled big.
“It is fixed, my friend.”
“Thanks. You might have saved the world.”
I paid him. He looked at me and said, “My friend, relax. Don’t worry. You’re in Israel.”
I don’t know in what world those three phrases fit together, but I tried to relax. I couldn’t. I was elated that my camcorder was working. My head was tingling.
It was working, but it didn’t have that organic Sony feel to it anymore. It felt as if he may have wedged a toothpick or a piece of gum into some mechanism. It was working, though, and we were in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was where I thought it was going to happen. Whatever I was waiting for would happen there. Jerusalem is the mystical navel of the universe. All of the corporate headquarters of the Western world’s religions are there. If they’re not there, they at least have a franchise there. Obviously the Vatican isn’t located there, but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre serves as an embassy. [That’s where they took Jesus off the cross after he was walked around in that awkward way.] The Wailing Wall is there for the Jews. It’s actually called the “Western Wall” now, because we’re not upset anymore. The reason the Jews pray at the Wall is because it’s as close as they can get to the Temple Mount, the site of Solomon’s Temple and the Second Temple, the holiest place in the Jewish religion. Once the temple is rebuilt, they can pray there once again. There will be no construction in the foreseeable future because the Dome of the Rock, the third-holiest shrine of Islam, sits on the Temple Mount. The Messiahs for the Jews and the Christians can’t come back until that temple is rebuilt, and apparently, the Dome of the Rock is causing landing problems. These are ancient and seemingly unresolvable mystical problems that I have no solution for. I saw Jerusalem as a religious theme park where I wanted to go on all the rides. And I did.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is chaos. When we walked in, there were hundreds of people mobbed around the many religious relics throughout the interior of the church. There were people and dangling Christian symbols everywhere. The last five Stations of the Cross are all within the church: where the Christ was stripped, where they nailed him up, where they lifted the cross, where they took him down, and where they laid him in a tomb. We took the tour and the last stop was the marble slab where Christ’s body was laid and anointed before it was placed in the tomb. People were surrounding the slab, some placing their jewelry and religious trinkets on the marble top and moving those items around. I guess the idea was to charge their stuff up with the power of the dead Christ. I placed my camcorder on the marble and moved it around a bit. I figured it couldn’t hurt.
The Temple Mount is by far the most awesome place I visited in Israel. Time seemed to stand still when we were within the confines of the Temple Mount area. It is an expansive flat space that was clearly designated to accommodate a huge structure. In the center of the space stands the Dome of the Rock mosque. It is a beautiful building covered in mosaic and gold leaf. I walked around the area surrounding the dome. I was taping. I felt the Gray come over me. I was standing on the holiest ground on Earth. God knew I was there. Soon, I will be contacted, I thought. Kim and I asked Jim to take our picture. I put my arm around her, and out of nowhere a Moslem man came over, removed my arm from my wife, and shook his head. No public displays of affection are allowed on the Temple Mount unless they are for Allah.
The last ride I went on was the Western Wall.
I stood at the wall with the davening Hasidim. I felt awkward standing there. I didn’t know what to do. I looked at the Hasidim. I’ve always thought they were arrogant. They think they’re the only real Jews. They do. It trickles down from there. The Orthodox don’t believe that the Conservative