My Jerusalem

If i forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. But I haven't forgotten thee. I just haven't gotten around to thee. And that's about to change. (Besides, I'm a lowly screenwriter. How cunning can I be?)

It's my first trip to Israel. For years, I've lived apart from Jews. Now I'll be among millions. How will I do? As the day of my departure approaches, my voice takes on a Talmudic lilt. I become a cross between Yitzhak Shamir and Jackie Mason. All day long, I hum selections from Fiddler on the Roof.

"Getting ready to leave, eh?" says my wife.

She has seen me become rangy and laconic before trips to Fort Worth, turn into Charles Aznavour on my way to Paris.

Suddenly, Hurricane Bob devastates my area and I'm clearing tree trunks off the back roads with Foster, Robbins and McNee. Can I become Jewish again in time for my trip? I leave my house without power, water or light, clearly a Biblical prophecy. (I'll find light in the land of Israel?)

On the El Al flight, I ask the stewardess, Zipporah ("Zippy to you"), if she knows of a pub in Jerusalem for writers and artists.

"That's funny," she says. "Neil Simon asked me the same thing."

The captain, whose vocal coach clearly was Shimon Peres, announces the in-flight film, Misery.

"And for her performance, the actress Kathy Bates received an Academy Award."

I go into a coma (clearing all those tree trunks); when I wake up, we're over the Greek islands. I look out the window, marveling at the terrain, convinced I can make out the Bacchae in a Dionysian frolic.

"So this is Greece."

"No, you're looking at clouds," says Zippy. She points to the other side of the aircraft. "That's Greece over there."

Soon I'm lined up at the exit door, along with Yeshiva students, touring groups of the hearing impaired and bearded rabbis who smell of candy. The doors fly open, the man behind me starts to daven. "Sh'ma, Yisroeyl, Adonoy Eloheynu...."

I join him in prayer and become a Jew again, in the nick of time.

•

The cabdrivers look like Jewish gangsters of the Prohibition period. The car of choice is Mercedes. And here I'd agonized for months over whether to lease one. I'm assigned to Bugsy Siegel. Quickly, on the road to Jerusalem, I see that Israelis can hold their heads up high among the crazy drivers of the world. The terrain is harsh and scruffy. It begins to sink in that this is the Middle East, not Santa Barbara. The desert hasn't been made to bloom so fast. But the air is sweet and spicy and altogether intoxicating (fertilizer? the land of milk and honey?). After 45 minutes, we roll up to the doors of the celebrated King David Hotel. The manager points to Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid at the check-out desk and tells me they had a wonderful stay.

I take my first bath in a week--in the Holy Land.

•

Everyone at the hotel seems to be from New Jersey. A woman complains to her husband that a clerk ignored her ("Should I make a stink?"). My spacious and somber room looks out on the walled Old City of Jerusalem, rebuilt by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th Century, thought by some to be the site of the Garden of Eden. It's felt by Orthodox Jews that here the Messiah will return in three centuries or less. The King David appears to be a jolly Catskills hotel flung back in time to the land of Abraham and Jesus and Mohammed. The room furnishings are faded deco. The peach-colored bathroom tile, the orange bath mat, the Forties shower fixtures--it's as if the Federmann family, owners of the hotel, have produced a replica of my childhood apartment in the Bronx.

•

With questionable timing, I've arrived on the night of the Shabbath. Jerusalem is wrapped up tight as a drum, or a scroll, as it were. I decide to have dinner in the formal dining room of the King David and order--what else?--gefilte fish. If I can't trust it here.... Also chicken stuffed with pine nuts, from a kibbutz in Galilee. The captain asks if I'd mind another single at my table. I tell him, Why not? This is the Holy Land. I'm joined by a dour, middle-aged Frenchman who owns a condo in Tel Aviv. Thanks to Hurricane Bob and a week of eating out of cans, I'm famished and prepare to dig in. Jean-Claude asks if I'd mind if he said a kiddush. Of course I don't mind. How can I mind? He rises, I rise with him, holding a cloth napkin over my head in place of a kippe. His kiddush is a long one--and when he's finished, the hotel presents a cantor with a beautiful voice to do another, more formal kiddush for the entire dining room. Soon, rival kiddushes break out around the room. I'm still on my feet and I haven't eaten. Finally, the ceremonies end and I attack my dinner, which, since it's kosher, is on the bland side but which has the saving grace of being authentic. Jean-Claude says he is from Morocco and that at the age of 12, he saw arm patches being prepared for the Jews as Rommel took Tunisia. "Then the Americans came," he says, smiling, giving me credit for their appearance. I order a bottle of wine, take a sip and pronounce it excellent. The captain says it's from the Golan.

"Really? In that case, you should never, under any circumstances, give up the Golan Heights." There's a silence. I look at the captain's name tag--Mahmoud, an Arab--and see I've made my first blunder in the Holy Land. ("You didn't," my wife will say.)

•

My guide arrives, Ami of Galilee Tours. Fresh from steering 27 Indiana charismatics through the Old City, he appears happy to see me but asks why I've never been to Israel before.

"I'm here now."

"But what took you so long?"

This is a refrain that follows me throughout my stay. It's not enough that I'm here. I didn't get here fast enough.

Tall, confident, a 38-year-old paratrooper and veteran of three wars, Ami carries a backpack and has the long stride of an antelope. I picture him bounding zestfully over archaeological ruins in Masada while I struggle to keep up with him.

"Not to worry," he says, sensing my discomfort. "I'm tired all the time."

We set out for the Old City in 90-degree heat, but dry heat, which is supposed to make a difference. Ami points to an abandoned trunk road beside a two-lane highway.

"This," he says, "is Jerusalem."

The road was supposed to alleviate traffic congestion. But when construction began, the Jews decided the site concealed a Maccabean fortress. The Moslems insisted it lay above an ancient mosque, and the Greek Orthodox Christians were confident it was the site of a 12th Century Byzantine church.

The result? Endless, contentious, Jerusalem-style arbitration--and, as yet, no road.

We approach the Jaffa Gate, most heavily trafficked of the seven open entrances to the city (least used is the Dung Gate in the back). The effect is dizzying, stupendous, a cascade of history pouring down on my head. We enter the Old City itself, and within minutes, I've sidestepped a camel, leaped over a goat, brushed against Bedouin women, collided with a Druse and shaken hands with a former Greek Orthodox monk who has become one of Jerusalem's top archaeologists. One of Ami's charismatics comes by and, assuming I'm a native, congratulates me on my English; I'm high-fived by a black fitness instructor from Harlem who has toured seven countries with a backpack. Ami points out graffiti scribbled on a wall by bored soldiers in Rome's Tenth Legion. I almost fall into a tomb--supposedly used to seal up, and punish, two engineers who helped build the wall and forgot to include David's tomb, which still lies outside. Turks, Armenians, Arabs in black-and-white-checked kaffiyeh, Iraqis, Yemenites, ramrod-straight Ethiopians all parade by--none of them Hollywood extras. I've heard of interesting places, but this is ridiculous. It's a feast and a headache. Why would the Israelis want to administer it?

We approach the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Christ is thought to have been crucified, buried and resurrected. Six religious groups govern the church--Syrians, Catholics, Armenians, Ethiopians, Greek Orthodox, Copts. (The Copts, from Egypt, are allowed to use a small entrance in the back, but there's pressure from the Cairo government to allow them to enter in the front.) The job of controlling access falls to a Moslem--a slight, pleasant-looking man named Mr. Nusseibah whose family has been entrusted with the keys to the church for seven centuries. Mr. Nusseibah introduces himself, lets me hold the keys and confides that he also gets to vouch for Greek Orthodox miracles.

We line up behind several dozen visitors from Athens whose turn it is to visit the tomb. Half a dozen of Ami's charismatics fall in behind us, refusing to relinquish him as a guide. When it's our turn, Ami and I hunch down and wiggle through the entrance of the tomb to a slightly larger cave inside--the enclosure itself. We take perhaps a fraction more time than we should in (continued on page 214) My Jerusalem (continued from page 92) being awe-struck--and the restless charismatics pour into the tiny space behind us, blocking the entrance. I'm convinced I'm going to suffocate. How would that look to my family, if I choked to death in Christ's tomb?

Clearly, this is a passionate place, an emotional place. What happens if someone is overcome, or even, God forbid, has a stroke? Are there special medical teams on hand?

"No," says Ami. But there are designated Arabs who will carry stricken people out on their backs and race off to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus.

We continue our walk above the street, leaping from roof to roof. This entire goulash of a city, all 220 acres of it, divided into Jewish, Moslem, Armenian and Christian quarters--can be crossed in this manner or, as a matter of choice, on stones that are 2000 years old. We stop for a moment on the roof of the Arab market place and look out onto the Mount of Olives, the most exclusive cemetery in the world. It's thought that when the Messiah makes his appearance, he will approach the city through this ancient cemetery. But what good is that to the average man?

"Don't worry," says a rooftop eavesdropper, visiting from Englewood. "I can get you in for fifty thousand."

We fall in with a thick, winding column of Arab shopkeepers who have closed their stores at one P.M., out of either fear or respect for the intifada. Is there any danger? "Possibly of being stabbed," says Ami, who normally carries a weapon but honors me by leaving it at home on this occasion. He says don't worry, he'll walk in front of me. Frankly, I don't see how that will help. Shouldn't he walk in back?

We stop for lunch at the Abu Shukri Restaurant in the Moslem Quarter, where the hummus, ground by a secret process, is thought to be the finest in the Middle East. Once it was a meeting place for Arab and Jewish notables. Since the intifada, the Jews have stayed away. I scoop up the hummus on warm pita bread, dig into the spicy cucumber-and-pepper salad and award the restaurant five stars, easily worth the risk of being gunned down.

Outside, in the souk (market place), an Arab offers me souvenir postcards. Ami waves him off--his price is too high. The Arab comes down a little, but it's still a rip-off. Suddenly, years of rage show up in the man's face. "It's because I'm Arab," he screams. "You'll take him to buy from a Jew." We walk on. Ami says he once served as a guide for Brooke Shields and found her surprisingly nice, not stuckup. But I can hear the man shouting at us: "Don't walk alone, my friend. Don't turn your back." The refrain follows me back to the hotel.

•

At night, in my hotel room, as a muezzin summons the faithful to prayer, the sonic boom of an Israeli Mirage knocks a Maccabee beer out of my hand. The BBC reports that a British cricket team has trounced poor Sri Lanka.

In the lobby of the King David, there's pride in the fact that one of three young Soviets who died flinging himself onto a tank during the recent attempted Putsch was a Jew. And for the first time, the Kaddish will be heard throughout the crumbling Soviet Union. There is also talk of a fight that broke out at the Hotel Jerusalem between Russian and Ethiopian immigrants--the Russians became incensed when the air-lifted Ethiopians strolled out of the dining room with free grapes, while the Russians had to pay for theirs.

I take to the streets. Ami has told me I can go anywhere in safety, but I'm not so sure. There seems to be less light than in most cities. I stroll along Keren Hayesod Street, marveling, as have many before me, at the very fact of the Jewish state. In other cities, I've had the "Jewish Quarter" pointed out to me. Here everywhere is the Jewish Quarter. Jewish supermarkets (Supersol), Jewish gas stations, Jewish cereal. Every ten steps, a pair of Defense Force members walk casually along in a characteristic duck walk, cradling Uzis and longer-range Galils. Some are tall, handsome, battle-hardened sabras, others pimply postadolescents of the kind that show up at American comic-book conventions. They would be lucky to play right field in little league. But here their step is firm and confident. There's a huge burst of post-Shabbath activity on Ben-Yehuda Street, a giant collegiate mall, Santa Monica with semiautomatics. I speculate about Israeli women. The El Al stewardesses are world-class beauties but seem out of bounds, as if they're being specially groomed for executives at Orion Pictures. The I.D.F. women are trim and appealing in olive drab; no doubt the deadly weapons they carry, like parasols, lend them spice.

I stop and chat with a leather worker who made a killing making carrying cases for gas masks and holsters for self-defense weapons during the Gulf war. On the subject of Israeli women, he becomes rhapsodic--they're kind, intelligent, the loveliest, most caring creatures on earth, each one a true friend.

"You're very lucky," I suggest.

"Why? I married a French woman."

At a pub called Gilly's, I chat with a weary-looking British architect who has moved to Jerusalem for "the stone and the clime." (The entire city is built with a distinctive honey-colored stone--the City of Gold.) Clearly, the man has spent a lifetime worrying. His current worry is that the highly educated Russian immigrants can't be absorbed. "What can we do with so many railway engineers? We've only got one railroad."

•

I make a note to stop at Feferberg's on Jaffa Street. The menu in the window says it features pupiks (chicken stomachs), stuffed miltz (spleen), patcha (calve's-feet jelly) and borscht by the glass. Jewish soul food. How bad can it be?

•

The next day, I make a pit stop at Mea Shearim--a 40-acre stone compound, home of the ultraorthodox who refuse to recognize the state of Israel. The feeling is that of eastern European shtetls--or of Vilnius, Kraków, Lublin--the pages of Isaac Bashevis Singer. On almost every wall, a poster warns women to dress and behave modestly--and it cautions men against giving them attention-getting jewelry. A tourist in an orange dress with exposed elbows is dangerously close to the edge. It's disconcerting to see swastikas slashed across the Star of David. Only when the Messiah comes will the people of Mea Shearim recognize a land of Israel. Young Israeli men have to throw over three years to the armed forces; young women, two. These ultraorthodox are exempt, the theory being that their prayers are responsible for Israeli victories on the battlefield. Doesn't that produce resentment on the part of those who serve? I ask.

"No," says Ami. "Hatred."

•

I stand among gentle, newly arrived Ethiopians at the Knesset, seat of government, while an interpreter points out Shamir's seat and explains that Israeli representatives are not chosen by geography but by party. The Ethiopians look on uncomprehendingly. Desert nomads, for the most part, many still don't know how to work a toilet. Suddenly, there's an alarm and we're all led off to a safe area while a bomb squad rolls up to the building and pays out a 150-foot line, so that a suspicious object can be examined at a distance. No one breathes. To break the tension, an Iranian-Jewish woman from Beverly Hills tells the increasingly perplexed Ethiopians she met Mike Tyson in West Hollywood.

It's a false alarm--half a sandwich discarded in a bus shelter.

Ami says Israel is the only place in the world where you can put $1,000,000 in a suitcase and leave it on the street for safekeeping. Everyone will run away from it, assuming it's a bomb.

•

The building opposite the King David Hotel fascinates me. It's a Y.M.C.A. but unlike any other--an architectural miracle, built by Turks during the British Mandate, filled with Byzantine wonders. I put my head in. A movie, American Samurai, is being wrapped in the lobby and I introduce myself to the director. He says the budget is $2,500,000, but with the sale of ancillary rights, the company should do all right. With the Old City visible, there in the shadow of 2000 years of history, Sam Firstenberg and I discuss the merits of Creative Artists Agency.

•

That night, after dinner at a Yemenite restaurant, I confront disaster. Chills, fever, shooting pains, the fires of hell, the whole package arriving at four in the morning. Unquestionably, this is the work of the Almighty, now that He has me cornered in Israel, scolding me for not being Jewish enough, and also, of course, for taking my time about getting there. But there's a silver lining. Secretly, I'm delighted at my good fortune in getting sick in the land of Jewish doctors. I get one out of bed, and within the hour, an Orthodox doctor, formerly of Chicago, is at the door. After a thorough examination, he lays out all the possible things it might be.

"But what is it?"

"Who knows?"

He produces a variety of pills and describes the negative features of each one. My best bet, frankly, is to do nothing.

"Can't you tell me anything specific?"

"Yes. My fee is eighty dollars, preferably in shkolim."

•

I soldier on and make a solitary pilgrimage to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, easily the quietest place I've ever been. The silence is broken by the voice of a girl from Long Island.

"Oh, my God, this is unreal."

The photographs of Jews stacked like cordwood represent a new phenomenon to her, not to me. I'm taken by a series of doomsday woodcuts by Moshe Hoffman (1938-1983) and its ironic title: 6,000,001. And I take note of an SS document consigning 358 persons to heavy prison sentences for having sex with Jews. Oddly, it's a display of books ordered to be burned that unsettles me the most--the works of Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Heinrich Heine--and Heine's words: "Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned, too."

An elderly man holds his grandson by the hand and points out a mistake in a painting that depicts life in the infamous Theresienstadt camp.

"That was a toilet, not a water cistern."

"How do you know, Grandpa?"

"I was there."

I ask the attendant if the Germans visit and, if so, how they react.

"They look."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

•

I'm still in the grip of a mysterious illness. Half the hotel claims to have it, too. Some say it's the fruit--the figs, in particular, which are cheap, but you have to wash them. A man from England tells me I'm a fool to have used ice cubes. "Why do you think Britain was able to become a colonial power?" he asks.

"By not using ice cubes."

"Exactly."

Still, I'm in Jerusalem. How can I not pay a visit to the Western (formerly Wailing) Wall? Ami and I make the pilgrimage. He and I--both secular--have our pictures taken with t'filin (phylacteries), which I haven't worn for decades. Maybe now that I've worn them--with the wall as a witness--I'm not so secular anymore. A man approaches and says that for a fee, he'll pray for me and my loved ones for 40 days and nights. During that period, we will all be protected from evil.

"And after that?"

"You're on your own."

•

In the days that follow, I continue to prowl the city. I sit in one of the four adjoining synagogues of Yochanan Ben-Zakkai, once the center of Sephardic life in old Jerusalem. Exquisite examples of camel-back Moorish architecture, the synagogues were gutted in 1948, used as stables by Jordanians and lovingly repaired in 1967.

I kick off my shoes and pay a balancing visit to the Dome of the Rock, third holiest Moslem site (after Mecca and Medina). From here, it's believed, Mohammed rode his horse, el-Buraq, to heaven. When I come out, my shoes have been moved by a Holy Land wise guy, but I find them in front of another mosque.

At the Israel Museum, I examine, under glass, the eight Dead Sea scrolls of leather, the most important archaeological find of our time--a long, informative love letter from the ancient world--and pay tribute to Professor Elazar L. Sukenik, who stubbornly pursued them, to his son Yigael Yadin of Israeli intelligence, who continued the hunt after the professor's death, and to the poor men and women who risked their eyesight unpeeling the fragile scrolls, making sure not to scatter any precious fragments.

I become friends with David Rakia, owner of David's Art Gallery, a thinchested Viennese and a lover of Kafka who escaped the Nazis in 1938. He points to the site of his first home in Israel, which sits on the old border with Jordan. "It was bombed into rubble by terrorists.

"But I didn't care," he says, drawing himself up tall. "We had ten thousand rifles against seven Arab armies. I lived history. We built a country."

For seven days and seven nights, my mysterious illness continues. Then, just when it's time to leave, with celestial irony, the sun comes out (the metaphorical sun. The real sun has been out all along). Gorgeous Sephardic gift-shop owners, who'd avoided my eyes, suddenly shower me with attention. A Moroccan beauty says I look "fresh." The hotel manager says I can check out at midnight--he won't charge me for an extra day. A Turk in the market place hands me a huge slab of halvah, on the house. But what good is it? I'm on my way.

For my last meal in Jerusalem, I choose Fink's, the oldest restaurant in the city, a 22-seater and a favorite, it's quickly pointed out, of Paul Newman's. It's here that arms deals for rifles and light machine guns were struck by the Haganah during the British Mandate. I discover the combination of chopped liver on honeydew and eat a magical schnitzel made with tender Holy Land veal.

"Will you come back?" asks Muli Yehezkieli, the Israeli maître d', who has given me a table even though I didn't call for a reservation.

"Let me get over this trip first."

So I leave this stubborn, complex, riotously beautiful "city of sieges," where every stone is history and everyone is an expert, scraggly bearded young men with the experience of an unripe turnip lecturing me on life and love. But what am I complaining about? I walk away with memories, dreams, stunning moments, fast friends. I take away much more than I've given. And I wonder if that isn't true of America as well, spoken of with reverence by one and all in Jerusalem as "our one good friend."

"Did you take pictures?" the stewardess asks me on the return flight.

"Only in my head."

And the film on the flight home is, again, Misery.

"I scoop up the hummus and award the restaurant five stars, easily worth the risk of being gunned down."