In late November, the rains came to Jerusalem. The clouds built up slowly in the west, coming from the ocean and from the hills south of Jerusalem.
These rolling hills spill out from Jerusalem toward the coastal plain. If you look southwest from the hills of Jerusalem, you can see the valleys that connect the city to the coast. One of the valleys is home to the first railroad line that connected Jerusalem to the coast. This line was completed in 1892 and ended in a pretty stone-built station in Jerusalem. That station is still commemorated in the First Station area, which has now been transformed into a complex of restaurants and shops.
The First Station and the old railway line are part of the slow improvement of Jerusalem that has taken place over the years. In the old days, the train line went from the First Station down Emek Refaim Street, running slowly downhill, following the water that goes down the Jerusalem Hills to Nahal Sorek. Today, the stream beside the old railway flows slightly again because of the rain, but it won’t flow much. Instead, it will dry up like much of the landscape.
In Jerusalem, the modernization that turned the old First Station into a hip place with restaurants and shops is an example of how Jerusalem is changing. The city is holy, but it is also catering to its diverse population.
A third of the city is Arab, mostly residents of east Jerusalem. Large numbers of ultra-Orthodox Jews live in the city, in several neighborhoods near the center that radiate out toward the north and west. Then there are all the other mixed neighborhoods of secular and religious people, Jews with origins from all over the world.
In some ways, Jerusalem is a microcosm of Israel as a whole. It is also a fault line between the largely Arab population of the West Bank and the largely Jewish population of the rest of Israel.
Jerusalem has been unified since 1967, run by Israel and annexed; but for the Palestinian national movement, it is still a city that Arabs and Muslims regard as an Islamic city, and one that should be the capital of Palestine. As such, the city always sits on this divide.
Tracks through time
These days, Jerusalem also feels like a giant construction site. Like in the Ottoman period, when the First Station was built, the municipality is now working to cover the city with train tracks for the new light rail lines.
The rail has been in the works for years. The first light rail began running in 2011, after years of chaos and construction on Jaffa Road. That line took people from Pisgat Ze’ev through Beit Hanina, a middle-class Arab neighborhood. Then the line ran past Ammunition Hill and Damascus Gate to the Central Bus Station and onward through Beit Hakerem to Mount Herzl. As such, the original light rail line actually showcased the city from north to south.
The line connected the neighborhoods built after the 1967 Six Day War, north of Jerusalem, to the old border that ran next to the Old City and up to Ammunition Hill, the site of a major battle in that war.
The last part, running up to Mount Herzl, traversed the picturesque Beit Hakerem neighborhood, one of the model Jewish neighborhoods built by the Zionist movement. It ended at Mount Herzl, overlooking a deep valley that separates Jerusalem from Ein Kerem, the reputed birthplace of John the Baptist, a small, pretty town full of Christian churches.
The valley between Ein Kerem and the rail line is also one that Turkish soldiers once looked down upon when they built trenches near where Yad Vashem is today. The Ottoman Turks surrendered Jerusalem in early December 1917, letting the British take the city just in time for Christmas.
Those events may seem far away, but they still define this city. The British helped turn Jerusalem into a modern city. The Ottomans had begun this process in the mid-19th century. Pilgrims from Europe led churches to invest heavily in the city, building the Russian Compound and also Notre Dame, one of the largest modern buildings in the region at the time.
Notre Dame today is not the center of Catholic pilgrimage it once may have been. Nearby buildings were damaged in the 1948 War of Independence, and it sat overlooking the frontline when the Jordanians seized the Old City in 1948. Today, the attractive building, with its imposing towers and architecture, provides an escape from the busy streets of Jerusalem. Inside is a kind of genteel European feeling, a sense of quiet and politeness that the bustling streets of Jerusalem do not offer.
The restaurant on the top floor serves excellent cuisine. From the roof, one can look out at the Old City and the hills that frame the Old City on its eastern side. These are Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives. Mount Scopus has the buildings of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. To its north is the former Hyatt Regency Hotel, where then-tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi was assassinated in October 2001. His killing was a key moment in the Second Intifada, a reminder that the city was once the site of bus bombings and terrorism.
South of Hebrew University, between it and the Mount of Olives, is the Mormon Center and the powerful Augusta Victoria Compound, with its large tower. It was built between 1907 and 1914. It was a center for the German Protestant community in Ottoman Palestine. Today, it is one of the important buildings that look down on the Old City.
This landscape east of the Old City is full of religious tradition for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In Jewish tradition, it is believed that the Messiah will come from there on Judgment Day and enter through the Golden Gate of the Old City. Christians believe Jesus ascended to heaven in this same area.
While there is a massive Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, owing to its religious importance the Muslims have built a cemetery called Bab al-Rahma after the “Gate of Mercy,” next to the walls of the Old City, which for them is the eastern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is believed this cemetery contains the graves of several key Muslims who were involved in the conquest of Jerusalem. Bab al-Rahma is also the Golden Gate, linking all these religious traditions together.
For those who live in Jerusalem, these areas are all accessible. However, we also take them for granted. When visitors first come to the city, they want to see the Western Wall or the Old City and to visit the sites linked to tradition, from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Via Dolorosa.
But things change the longer one lives in the city. As time goes by, the Old City and the city’s sites sometimes fade from memory. They come back to us every once in a while – a glimpse while driving to the Dead Sea, or suddenly appearing in the window of the light rail.
Old buildings such as the First Station are repurposed for modern use. Around the city, there are some signs telling stories of the old houses and areas of the city. They usually refer to the history of the pre-state era, when Zionist activists built neighborhoods and also resisted British rule.
In other cases, they tell the stories of old schools and historic homes in places like the German Colony.
If you look closely, you can find stories of heroism, battles, and of those who fell to create the Jewish state. All of these lives are linked to this holy city, like the tracks of the rail lines and the valleys that take the rain to the sea.