Recently I had the chance to visit Ir David, the City of David, which is in fact the original city of Yerushalayim from the times of Tanach. It was incredible to touch stones that are part of the story of the Jewish people going back thousands of years. To see the walls of ancient Yerushalayim from the First Temple period. To walk through the tunnel of Chizkiyahu HaMelech, carved out of solid rock in anticipation of the Assyrian siege. To stand at the Breichas HaShiloach, the Pool of Shiloach, and to ascend the remarkable stepped pathway built during the Second Temple period, stepping on the very stones our ancestors stepped on as they made their way up for aliyah l'regel.
What fascinated me just as much was the crowd. Hundreds of others were visiting Ir David that day, a hot summer's day in the middle of August, and they were a remarkably diverse clientele. There were families and tourists who came to learn, to touch the history, to feel the identity and become part of the story. But most of the visitors did not seem to be from that ilk. Most were large families who arrived from all over Israel with their Crocs and their bathing towels, making their way on a scorching day through the cold waters of Chizkiyahu's tunnel. An underground passage, in the water, in the dark, wonderfully refreshing on a hot day. For them this was a summer activity. A water feature.
At first, I confess, it struck me as somewhat distasteful. Is this what history has become? A place to take your children to cool off on a hot day, a site you do not really know or care to know about?
But then I reconsidered. If this is how the people of this country have fun, if their fun happens in biblical pools, touching stones hewn by kings 2,700 years ago, instead of at a Six Flags theme park, then the land of this country is even more special than I thought. It's entertainment is biblical. Its respite is historic. Contrast that with America and the West, where nearly all entertainment is man made, manufactured for stimulation, designed around the newest experience of the most recent days or minutes. Here, the entertainment itself is history.
And that is when you begin to appreciate the incredible blessing of living in Eretz Yisrael. Every society needs its entertainment. Every society needs places for its children simply to have fun. Take that away and they will find it elsewhere. But what if that fun is itself connected to the history of your people? In Israel, even the lower culture draws on the higher culture. That is a fascinating feature of existence in the land, where the ancient is met by the new at every turn.
Really, it is a metaphor for all of Israel. A country of incredible newness, technology and freshness, built upon and within the ancient and the eternal. That is Eretz Yisrael.
