Generations

At 5:40 this evening we met with Eric and Gloria near the Kotel, at the ticket office for the Chain of Generations tour. None of us had heard much about the experience, but knew that it was new (a rarity in this city) and had received some good reviews. About the content we were in the dark, but gave it a shot anyways.

The museum is a series of rooms filled with glass sculptures, each one completely different from those that preceded it, and commemorating various stages in the history of Judaism, especially as it pertained to Jerusalem. Different textures, lighting, writing, shapes, and orientations helped to convey the emotional state of the artist as he moved through the past 2,000 years of nation building, expansion, corruption, diaspora, and return. The pieces, crafted by Jeremy Langford, were wonderful, and were easily the best part of the museum.

The premise behind the museum, as explained by the guide, is to bring modernity to the Old City, whose other exhibits tend to skew toward historical. To that end, they converted a Crusader passage and several mikvaot discovered nine years ago into the hallways of the exhibit, then filled them with modern art and special effects (like strobe lights and smoke machines, an Israeli necessity). We both found this setup a little jarring, and think that it was probably arranged as such less for the stated artistic reasons and more to offer a kid-friendly alternative to all of the fact-heavy historical edifices for which the city is known.

As we exited the museum we found ourselves in the middle of a giant gathering in the main plaza of the Jewish Quarter, where soldiers and their families had gathered for the swearing-in of a new group of draftees. We stayed and watched for a while and were struck by two things. The first was that we were witnessing the same chain of generations discussed in the museum, with a new breed of Israeli youth at the forefront of the faith's advancement. The second was the stream of Haredi men who walked through the crowds with their eyes screwed tightly shut, probably to avoid the sight of the nationalistic soldiers or the women immodestly clothed in their long-sleeved winter garb. Both those fighting for a contentious future and those hiding in a distant past together in one square. Well, not really together, and that's sorta the point.