Day Trip to Hevron

These past few weeks, a group called JAM (Jewish Awareness Movement) came to Israel for a young adult  trip.  Because I know some families who work for JAM (it is run out of Southern California), I had the opportunity to go on some of the JAM day trips. I spent two Shabbosim (plural for Shabbat) with them, one in Ramat Beit Shemesh and one in Rahavia.  Ramat Beit Shemesh is a very American suburb of Jerusalem, and appeared to be mostly comprised of families who had made Aliyah (immigrated to Israel) from America. The next Shabbat, in Rahavia, was very neat because we got to go to the Kotel (Western Wall) on Friday evening right as Shabbat was starting (Rahavia is about a 30 minute walk to the Kotel). It was PACKED, mostly from all of the Birthright groups who were there. Birthright is a free 10 day trip to Israel for Jews ages 18-26.

My favorite day trip I went on with JAM was to Hevron.  This city is in the West Bank and mainly Palestinian families live there though there are 80 Jewish families that live there as well. There is a waiting list for Jewish families who want to live in Hevron.  There is also a Yeshiva (Torah school for men) in Hevron which several hundred men learn in.  The living conditions are extremely basic and Jews who live there on an ideological basis. It is the biblical burial site of 6 biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs:  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their respective wives Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah.  Our tour guide lived in Hevron and I really wished we could have spent more time with her to ask her questions. For over a thousand years the land has been controlled by many different people (not in any particular order): Crusaders, the Ottoman Empire, Arabs, Jews and the British.  Here is a small scale present day map of Hevron which is divided into Palestinian controlled H1 and Israeli controlled H2.

Here is a larger scaled map:

It was unnerving to be in Hevron because the tension is so high. The best representation of the tension was when our tour guide was competing with a Muslim prayer call (played over the loud speakers) in order to speak to our group.  We rode to Hevron in a bulletproof bus and along the way passed land controlled by the Palestinian Authority with signs that warned Israeli's and Jew's to stay away.  In Hevron there are IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) EVERYWHERE, you couldn't walk 100 feet without seeing a solider with a gun strapped to their back.  While we were there, there was an unclaimed bag, so we got briefly stuck in the cave/burial site of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs  The package was unclaimed and was going to be burned for safety reasons because they didn't know what the package contained.  I'm not entirely sure if they ended up burning it, but they kept making announcements over the loud speakers in Hebrew that I couldn't understand. I'm very glad I had the opportunity to go to Hevron with JAM because it would not be safe to go alone.