Hevron, where craziness comes out a few days of the year

So yesterday I went to Hevron. It is one of the holy cities for Judaism, maybe the holiest after Jerusalem, because it is the site of Machpelach, where Abraham bought land and built a kever in which to bury Sara, and in which consequently Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rebeccah, and Leah were all buried. The city of Hevron, however, while being official a Jewish settlement, is a very controversial place, and is located in the West Bank (sorry, Mom), thus making it an extremely controversial place. The cave at Machpelach has been divided, with a Jewish section and a Muslim section, and the two groups are not allowed to visit the other's side. However, because the tombs of Isaac and Rebeccah, as well as the fountain of Gan Eden (said to be the entrance to heaven) are on the Muslim side, on ten specific days of the year, coinciding with different holidays, the Muslim side of the Israeli controlled holy site is closed to Arabs and open to Jews (and Christians, agnostics, etc). So, deciding this was likely a once in a life time experience, I decided to go with two of the girls to Hevron.
The insanity begins.

I had some tasky things I really needed to get done in the morning, and combined with my only waking at around 12, I was not ready to leave with the other girls, so I decided to meet them there. Since the city is located a bit deep in the West Bank, getting there is a bit complex: first there is the local bus to the central station, then bus 160, which takes us halfway to Hevron before we switch to a bulletproof bus to go the rest of the way, and then we are dropped off in Kiryat Arbah, a neighboring city, about 15 minutes walk from Hevron. Believe it or not, getting off of the first bus and onto the bulletproof, bullet dented bus was the calmest part of the entire event.

I have been in some scary situations. I was on the tube when the second london bombing happened in 2005. I was in a car accident in which the car did a 180 degree spin through three lanes of traffic into the woods. However, getting on the bus at the central station in Jerusalem was by far the scariest thing I have ever done.
Because of how special the day was at Hevron, EVERYONE IN ISRAEL TRIED TO GET THERE. Black hatters can be quite scary. People were all pushing and cramming and jamming, trying to get onto the bus, I was sure people would be knocked over and trampled. There was screaming and fighting, one man even knocked the glasses off another, and he retaliated by throwing the man's black hat away. Had I been shorter, I may have suffocated. Police were called to control the intense mob scene, and all in all, it took about two hours to get onto a bus and pull out of the central station to even begin to head toward Hevron. During this ordeal, I made friends with an Ethiopean girl who had made aliyah with her family in 1991-- very interesting, and she helped me with my Hebrew!

Once I arrived, it took quite a bit of effort to find my friends, but eventually we were together and online--meaning in the throng like crowd- to enter into the Kever. here, again, I saw how scary women--especially religious women--are, as everyone pushed and shoved, nearly knocking over the barricades to try to get into the site first.

While the whole experience was very exciting and ought to have been very spiritual and very special, the crowds, and especially the percieved anger emanating from the crowds made it a bit
difficult to appreciate how amazing it was to be at the grave of Avraham Avinu and Sara Emeinu.

the worst of the entire thing: so in this cave there is the well of Gan Eden-- this site, covered by a silver cap, at which a stream of air continually rises and you are supposed to be able to talk directly to heaven, and therefore directly to God. Again, however, this spot is only accessible to Jews about 10 days out of the year, and the women trying to get at the site were very eager to see it, to pray at the site, which can only really be accessed by one person at a time. Try to get one angry Jewish woman to do this at a time and see how successful it goes. So many women were shouting and pushing, yelling in a way that I couldnt understand what was being said but could definitely tell the anger in it all--one woman in particular seemed absolutely livid at everything, she was yelling at everyone and hitting people, me in particular, trying to get to the front of the line. Definitely a change from the line loving individuals in Berlin.
Because I am so much taller than most of the women, they all saw me waiting for a long time, and all assumed that I had already done the well and was standing in the way, taking up space, which of course I couldnt explain was not the case. In the end with all the pushing and yelling, after I finally did manage to get to the well, when i stood back up i smacked the back of my head near my neck very hard on a metal bar, so that i couldnt even speak for a few minutes to tell my friend that I was alright. Very sweetly, the entire night she was checking on me, making sure I was waking up and coherent.

im told that in normal circumstances, visiting Hevron is a very spiritual experience, but on this day, while I am glad I was able to get there at a time when I could access the entire site, the trip was completely mundane.

I say that, on the frightening level, it will probably be hard to top the experience of getting on the bus. And don't worry, Mom, I don't have a concussion, today my head only hurts at the spot where I hit it.