A Lamentation for Jerusalem: Remembering Emek Refaim

I used to love to walk on Emek Refaim. No matter the weather, it was the best part of my day. I could find myself imagining the street from any time in the past, and everyone was there. Maybe some ghosts on their way to Babylonian exile or maybe on their way back, maybe some German Templars or Armenian Christians, maybe some stylish Arabs in their fancy houses. Maybe I’m in the present, and I can hear the English-speakers, French-speakers, and even Hebrew-speakers sitting in cafes solving the world’s problems.

Lately, I can’t face it. Some of the trees are preserved, but too many are gone. There are gaping holes in the street, and the dry exposed dirt creates so much dust they had to install misting sprinklers just so people can breathe. Trying to walk on Emek Refaim now is taking your life into your hands to avoid all the giant rumbling earth-moving equipment. Cars and pedestrians try to navigate confusing detours around obstacles that look like the city’s infrastructure was turned inside out.

Today the only ghostly specters you see are the people walking through this wasteland in horror and dismay, saddened by this destruction calling itself construction.

I forget how the road was
a month ago, but I remember it
from the Crusader era, for example.

(Excuse me, this fell. Is it yours?
This stone? Not this, this fell
nine hundred years ago.)

                Yehuda Amichai, “Damascus Gate in Jerusalem

I’m not naïve. I know all the arguments about improving the city and increasing business, convenience for tourists, and property values, of course. I know change is inevitable. I’ve seen pictures of Jerusalem throughout the years; the urban development never changed the character of the city. Jerusalem did not lose her identity. She was still familiar. She slowly and lovingly evolved into a renewed version of herself.

But what’s happening now is something different.

It’s sad
To be the Mayor of Jerusalem
It is terrible
How can any man be the mayor of a city like that?

What can he do with her?
He will build, and build, and build.

Yehuda Amichai, “Mayor

And so the building plan continues with everything happening everywhere all at once. Emek Refaim is not the only little street inconvenienced by “improvements.” King George Street is unrecognizable. The entrance to the city is now a foreign land.

A friend of mine was born in Jerusalem like his father before him, and he wonders how he will share his memories of a childhood in Jerusalem with his son who will grow up in a completely different and unfamiliar Jerusalem.

His stroll on Emek Refaim might sound like this: “Son, do you see this sliver of preserved architecture? Everything to the left, everything to the right, and everything behind us wasn’t like it is today. If you close one eye, tilt your head to the left, and focus on this building to fall back through time, you might be able to imagine what the Jerusalem of my childhood was like. But I’m sorry to say, you won’t really be able to see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, or experience it in any way. This new, fast, slick, futuristic, and ultimately disposable version of Jerusalem has lost its soul and its history. I’m sorry I couldn’t save the best of Jerusalem for you.”

Jerusalem is short and crouched among its hills
Unlike New York, for example.

Yehuda Amichai, “Jerusalem 1967, 10

Unlike New York. Unlike any anonymous metropolis interchangeable with any other anonymous metropolis anywhere in the world. The view from a sky-high tower doesn’t matter if you don’t even know what you’re looking at or why. What can you even see on the ground if you are so far above it all in the clouds?

Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity.
…
And the commerce and the gates and the golden domes:
Jerusalem is the Venice of God.

Yehuda Amichai, “Jerusalem 1967, 21

Jerusalem is the Eternal City for all time, in all time. On Ketef Hinnom (the Hinnom Ridge) just north of Emek Refaim, archeological evidence was found from the First Temple Period, the Second Temple Period, the Roman siege in 70 CE, the Byzantine era, the Ottoman era, and the British Mandate era. The ridge overlooks the valley and the walls of the Old City. The Sultan’s Pool held water from Roman times until the late Ottoman times, and it still has its old water faucet on Hebron Road. The walls of the Old City were built in the 1500s but are also remembered for the Jordanian snipers patrolling the Green Line. Mt. Zion contains 3,000-year-old legends of King David, 2,000-year-old legends of Mary’s final resting place, and a road built for a pope in 1964. An eye hospital from the 1880s became the launching pad for the cart that sent supplies over the valley to the Old City during the siege of 1948.

The noisy old dowager, all of her,
with her gold and copper and stones,
has come back to a fat legal life.

But I don’t like her.
Sometimes I remember the quiet one.

Yehuda Amichai, “Jerusalem 1967, 24

An underground train with a direct route to the airport, a light rail system connecting all parts of the city, a cable car to the Old City, high-rise hotels, 40,000 new high-rise residential units, and plans for 20–30-story buildings to create a third technology/business park sounds like forcing Jerusalem into the 21st century. In any other city, that would be fine. In any other capital city, that would be required.

To anonymize and standardize Jerusalem erases the quirks that make the city special. Even the magical color and texture of Jerusalem stone will not be able to overcome the ordinariness of choosing one of four floorplans available in the boring and characterless high-rise monstrosities that will overtake Jerusalem. Hand over a suitcase of cash and go into endless debt to fill the pockets of the developers who will make more money the taller the building is.

Israel may wish to be a country like any other, but Jerusalem should never be a city like any other. An Eternal City doesn’t have the luxury of being faceless and bland. All the building, building, building in the end will destroy everything we love about Jerusalem.

And what will our legacy be a hundred or a thousand years from now? Archeologists will look at this layer of stone and see the rubble of towers built in the name of the almighty shekel. This layer will mark the time when the spirit of Jerusalem was crushed by mediocrity and greed and everything we once knew about Jerusalem was erased.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Then let my right be forgotten.
…
I shall remember Jerusalem.

                Yehuda Amichai, “If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

Oh, Jerusalem. May her memory be a blessing.