The City of David

Part Five in the Jerusalem Series

Thousands of years ago, while King Hezekiah held the throne over Israel and Jerusalem, the Tanach teaches of his great palace. The towering halls and deep caverns of the keep were his home to pass judgment on the people of Israel. After some time, the Assyrians attacked the city, leaving Hezekiah to save his people. In an effort to save his home and his people, Hezekiah commissioned a long, winding tunnel to be chiseled out of the solid rock beneath his palace well away from its gates. When the Assyrians attacked, The soldiers of Israel used the tunnel to catch them by surprise and to drive them back. Then, for thousands of years, they were lost.
Now the tunnel, as well as the ruins of Hezekiah's palace, first built by king David, have been found.

This was the palace I found myself standing on just yesterday, providing physical proof that Jews inhabited the land of Israel before even the Arabs, stretching back for hundreds of generations over thousands of years. We briefly admired the ruins. We learned the history of the castle. Then we sunk into the rocks for the second time that day.

The tunnel carried on for a short distance in cool dry levels, and then we reached the water.
"right when we get in it will be the deepest and the coldest" Akiva warned us as he rolled up his shorts revealing his thighs past the well defined tan line of life in Israel. "when we get in don't be afraid to yell and don't be afraid to sing!"

I rolled up my own shorts and steeled my legs against the cold I expected in the well practiced way of a resident of the Puget Sound. The girls ahead of me screeched loudly as, one at a time, they plunged into the stream. I prepared for the worst.

My feet touched the surface to a surprisingly pleasant coolness. Well past what any Seattleite would call natural "warm" water. Like ants in a hive, we walked, unable to stand side by side. The walls sloped inwards. The ceiling was often so low I had to crouch and I often scraped the top of my head. We continued on, and on. I had no Idea where we were going and I didn't much care. As Akiva had suggested, dozens of songs had been raised all clashing and morphing into one. I sang opera, Irish folk songs, Jewish Camp songs, anything I could think of. The girls in front of me were belting a tune from the radio indifferent keys. All the words and the energy spiraled up in a resonant cocktail to the sloping ceiling as it raised above our heads. Up, up, up.

We came to a stop. Akiva silenced us. We extinguished our headlamps. The thick blanket of black returned for an encore demonstration of exploring the senses. Akiva hummed a tune and asked us to add to it. Down the line in succession, each of us improvised a harmony or a single note to compliment the growing barrage of sound. The whole length of our party was united in a chant. Akiva began the Shemah. He drew out each syllable to the absolute end of his breath like a Buddhist Mantra. Only four students separated us and yet I could not make out his place. So, I forged my own. each of us found our own rhythm, complimenting the whole. Layers upon layers of harmonious discord were produced, eventually fading forever into irreplaceable nothingness.

Finally, there came a light at the end of the tunnel. We emerged from the opening sopping wet and grinning ear to ear. The darkness was powerful. We half ran, half limped to the top of the palace again, collected our things, and purchased much appreciated refreshments. Then we changed, the men into dress shirts, the women into ground length skirts. Our next stop, the final passage of not in the Jerusalem Series, was to be The Western Wall. We had been born from the channel of the mountain, now we headed to the most precious place in all of Jerusalem, the most core place on earth.