I remember the first time I was awed by something that was related to death instead of fearing it. It was in the year 2000. All of us students of our school’s 10th grade went on an “Atonement field trip” in Jerusalem. It was a night field trip. It was the last time this trip was held in Jerusalem, because the 2nd Intifada started later that year, and walking in the old city at night became dangerous. From this year on they took the 10th graders to Tel-Aviv Yafo for that field trip.
I wasn’t feeling well the night of the trip. I got the cold. My head ached, my nose was stuffy, and I’m pretty sure I had a slight fever. I really wanted to go to this trip, so I took some painkillers and some cold medicines to feel better. It made me feel a little ‘high’.
We started the field trip at the Jaffa Gate. We walked through the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter. We got to the Western Wall. From there we went to the Western Wall tunnel. Then we went up to the roofs of the old city walked around there. At one point we were brought to the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery so we could view the eastern wall of Jerusalem and the Golden Gate, and then we descended by foot through the cemetery to the point where the bus waited for us to take us home.
Cold night. The cemetery was barely lit in an orange glow. In front of me the Temple Mount and the golden Gate were lit in yellow light. I walked between the rectangle graves that looked alike in the dark, and felt I was in a different world. I understood why people wanted to be buried facing Jerusalem. I wanted to be buried there. It was quiet and beautiful like no other place I’ve ever been before. The thought that I was walking between dead people, between corpses and skeletons that are buried under the ground, didn’t frighten of stressed me. There was something right about being dead there. Something almost sacred. I felt like the dead were really resting in peace there.