We were stuck for ideas this morning. We had those old notes from the 1989 Med Cruise on USS Forrestal (CV-59). It was an odd cruise for its times, just as this holday currently sweeping over us has some moments we would just as soon forget outright. We had looked back at the Cruisebook junk that captured the unique sense of what it is like reside on a ship of steel plowing through an enormity of saltwater to arrive in one of Humankind’s most holy places.

There was a problem, of course, and that made the poignancy of the whole thing remarkable. We have dragged you through some of the other places we were told were holy. Those included the Temple Mount, once home to the two Temples and the current Al Aksa Mosque. There struggle goes on, of course.are some stories this morning that the war currently in progress has drastically curtailed tourism or holiday demonstrations at the square where Mary brought forth an infant that was known to many, in time, as the Son of God.

We were not special in our temporary surge of spirituality. Everyone had some of it, regardless of faith or nationality. There were soldiers and sailors locked up in the stories, some of them just like us- “armed tourists” is one we tried, but of course there was peace then, of a sort, and we enjoyed our visit to the near empty square and the chat with the three Palestinian kids with boxes of Manger Square souvenirs to be sold to the tourists who had not come this year. We were in a swirl of other external events. The Soviet Union seemed to be unraveling, and to avoid interference or inadvertent incident, part of our mission was to stay out of the way and not make any internal mistakes.

If you want to know how these things worked, “The Last Cold War Cruise” by Author Vic Socotra is available at Amazon, and provides a sort of overview of the events all jammed together. Here is what it was like on a single day of the new year of 1990.

12 December 1990

We arise early and start to clear the cobwebs. I treat Doc Feeks to a prophylactic dose Alka-Seltzer and read the Jerusalem Post. The leadership crisis in Israel is percolating nicely;. There may there may be a government later in the day and there may not. The issue is negotiations with the PLO over the fate of the West Bank. This is of some interest, as we are bound for the Capital- The Knesset in Jerusalem that morning.

Our guide is Svi Ginzberg, a Polish-German-Sabra of some 67 seasons.

He is a veteran of the anti-British Jewish underground during WWII; a commissioned officer in the fighting in Jerusalem during the ‘47-48 fighting. He wears a 9MM semi-auto pistol unobtrusively in his belt and drives a Mercedes Cab. He whisks us out of the Hilton parking lot at precisely 1030. We hit the four-lane Route One to Jerusalem and speed along as he regales us of tales of the country to which he came in 1934. Every tree was planted, he says, and the Jews have remade much of this place in their own blood. We pass scenes of heavy fighting in ’47, and he points them out with the authority that only a veteran can give. We pass one of the British Police Forts which were turned over to the Arab Legion and he describes the action around the place with precision.

As we roll up the hills toward the city, we pass the burned-out hulks of Jewish convoys shelled by the Arab Legion. The twisted metal has been painted with Rustoleum and stones raised to commemorate the dates of the destruction. We cross areas where the old border ran and he speaks of the desperation of ’47 and the triumph of ’67 when they were eliminated.

Fog at the Knesset Building; we can’t see a thing. When we get to the walls of the Old City the fog has lifted. We are dropped at the Jaffa Gate while he parked the car. We wander down through the Arab quarter and the bazaar. Then into the Jewish quarter. The Intifada is on. That is the PLO edict that all shops must close at 1300 to spite the Israelis. They are, of course, cutting their own noses to spite their conquerors. Some shop owners hiss from behind closed doors. Toad and I buy camel whips from a turbaned Arab.

We pass the excavations in the Jewish quarter and on to the West Wall of the Temple Precinct. Into the newly excavated section of the West Wall, where Svi is reprimanded by a young man for explaining while Hasidim are swaying in prayer. As we leave, hands clapped over the cardboard Yarmulkes, he says that normally Jewish prayer is so loud that nobody would notice, except for the particular prayer used by these strangely clad devotees. He discusses the peculiar laws that govern the life of what he calls the religious men. A good Jew, he says, cannot walk into the Temple Grounds on the Mount above us, because they are prohibited from walking on the Holy Soil of the Temple. Since no stone has been left standing on another from the Second Temple, no man may know where the sacred soil begins.

The past here has an immediacy that lives tangible around us. We peer into the Dome of the Rock. Svi ushers us quickly past, although we could have removed our shoes and gone in to see what may be the alter upon which Abraham had laid his son for sacrifice.

I find out later why Svi, so even handed in his treatment of the religions, has little interest in the places of the Moslem faith. I ask him how many children he has, since he has spoken of his granddaughter who is serving in the IDF now for her National Service.

“I have a daughter who is 42” he says. “My son was killed at eight o’clock in the evening of the sixth of June, 1983 in a tank engagement with the Syrians. He lived for ten hours, but never roused from his coma.”

Like I say, everyone here has a story.

We walk down from the Temple Mount and to the Via De la Rosa. We walk the stations of the cross from Station Three, where the ancient Roman paving has been excavated and brought to the surface. I kneel on the large uneven stones where Christ walked.

We follow the path slowly uphill to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This slightly shabby church was damaged in the last of dozens of earthquakes and workmen bustle about with tools. A cassocked priest talks animatedly on the telephone inside the door. A crazy hodgepodge of Constantine and Crusader stones outside. Inside, one of the sites of the True Cross, where I go to my knees to touch the spot. We enter the Sepulcher itself, where the accident of the line has me physically in the tomb of the Living God with four Attack bubbas from VA-176. A greybeard Greek Orthodox priest lights candles for us in exchange for Skipper Rocco Montesano’s five-dollar bill. I try hard for a devout feel but it doesn’t come. It feels like Tijuana. The surreal is increased by the Coptic Priest whose niche abuts the rear of the Sepulcher. He hisses out of the darkness for alms.

Then out of the walled city, Arabs entreating us to visit the shuttered shops. We buy a bagel from a street cart and wait for Svi to pick us up. We are moderately surprised when he rushes up on foot gesturing wildly. “The Intifada has hit me” he says, referring to the militants who have shut down the only business in the square. “I am sorry, but they have broken my window with stones.”

I have the rock in question now, a piece of the old city wall, ominous in its weight, heavy and three cornered. It has exploded the glass all over the front of the car and lies silently next to the gearshift amid the wreckage. Nothing is stolen; this is a political stoning. Some youthful Arabs have targeted the cab, because of its Israeli license plates.

Svi drives off to make a police report and drops us to wait at the King David Hotel. We enjoy a cold Maccabi beer in the elegant lobby just this side of where the building collapsed from the explosion of the bomb planted by young Menachim Begin.

We are just finishing when Svi returns and we pile into the car for the trip to what may be the real Golgotha. This is what the Church of England considers to be the real site of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It is a place of quiet beauty and peace. An Arab cemetery now occupies the summit of Skull Rock, but we gaze from the viewing place over the bus depot. We have our pictures taken in front of the Tomb of the Living God.

Then rapidly through the Arab section outside the wall, real West Bank touring, to the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Lord was denied and sweated Blood on the night the Romans came for him.

The olive trees here are nearly two thousand years old. In context, they may be the same that in their youth bore silent witness to the rejection of Jesus. We enter the Basilica and we fall to our knees at the rail and say some of the prayers that sustained us through other long days.

“Thank You, God. Thy Will be Done.”

The hour was growing late, and with perhaps 45 minutes of daylight left. Although it is illegal and off limits to Americans, Svi offers to drive us quickly to Bethlehem to visit the Church of the Nativity. We think for perhaps a split second before saying “Hell, Yes!”

We are then on our way, crossing quickly through the old border and into the West Bank again. We are the last car in Manger Square and the Arab kids swarm over us as we walk across the Square and into another crazy-quilt of a church. The door is impossibly small, blocks placed within an ancient arch to prevent the over-enthusiastic from riding their horses into the church. Wooden covers in the flagstones are open to reveal the intricate mosaics of the Church built by Constantine.

We are nearly the last pilgrims of the day into the Grotto of the Nativity. We kneel again to the touch the spot where Mary Labored amid the beasts of the field and where the Child was born. We are off limits on the West Bank and we do not linger overlong. We make a speedy exit across the Manger Square to get away from the Arab children who grab at our jackets.

We speed away from the West Bank, back toward the coast and Tel Aviv and the images of this day rolls through my head. I futilely try to reconcile my awe and reverence, distaste and disbelief. I cannot. As the Airwing Commander observed later, “If you ever figure it out, Vic, there are a couple million of us that would be real interested.”

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra

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