The Cable Car to the Western Wall

David Cassuto

School of Architecture Ariel University of Israel

The Jewish people are commanded to make a pilgrimage to God’s earthly seat three times a year, marking the festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot (Exod. 23:17–18 and 34:23–24; Deut. 16:16.) When they received this commandment the Temple had not yet been built, so the phrase employed was “in the place He chooses.” (Ibid. and elsewhere in Deuteronomy) The dates of the three pilgrimage festivals coincide with specific markers on the agricultural calendar of the Levant: Passover is also the ‘spring festival’; Shavuot is the ‘festival of the first fruits’; and Sukkot is the ‘harvest festival.’ But the Torah also assigns transcendental meaning to these holidays, thereby distinguishing the Jewish faith from most of other religions. Passover commemorates the transition from slavery to freedom; Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah; and Sukkot honors God’s beneficence in providing shelter to His people wherever they are. Natural events thus become part of the yearly cycle of divine events, carrying both physical significance and abstract religious importance. The calendar is transformed from a sequence of seasons linked to nature into a sequence of festivals that link the creation to the Creator, and nature to the One who empowers nature. (Heschel, 1951) From the moment that God’s presence was focused in a particular place, the Jewish people were obligated to appear there as well. At first He ‘resided’ in the Tabernacle that moved from place to place in the wilderness—a deity always on the move. The abstract god is a revolutionary concept, not only in those bygone days but also in much later periods. But the people, who had been exposed to impressive temples of stone and marble dedicated to other gods, could no longer accept such an abstraction. So in the tenth century BCE King Solomon constructed a permanent sanctuary for God—the Temple erected on Mt. Moriah, which came to be known as the Temple Mount. It is true that in the prayer he offered at its consecration (1 Kings 8:12–61.) Solomon sought to attach an abstract sense to the place from which human prayers would rise to the abstract God; in practice, though, it was a material sanctuary in every respect.

Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE (after King Zedekiah rebelled against him). Some 50 years later work began on the Second Temple, which was finally completed in the fifth century BCE by Ezra the Scribe. The Temple achieved its fullest splendor, in the Greco-Roman style, in the time of Herod the Great (first century BCE), less than one century before the Romans destroyed it in the year 70 CE. For more than 900 years after Solomon, the Temple was the place where the Jews were enjoined to assemble three times a year; all were obligated to appear before the Lord on Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. Originally everyone made the journey to the Temple on these three dates. As the centuries passed, however, this became unfeasible, and representatives of the nation’s three classes came to take the place of the entire people. Selected Priests, Levites, and Israelites (the rank and file) now made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem on festivals and offered sacrifices for those who stayed home. The Hebrew word regel has several senses: it means both ‘occasion’ or ‘time’ (also in the sense of tempo) and ‘foot’. Because of the thrice-yearly journey to the Temple—in Hebrew aliya la-regel, ‘ascent by foot’—the word acquired the sense of ‘festival’ as well. Jews streamed to Jerusalem from every direction, a human river of men and women. Most came from the provinces of the Land of Israel, while some arrived from communities in the Diaspora. The demanding journey and exertion demonstrated the people’s devotion to the holy site. Recently a new project has appeared on the scene: the Jerusalem Municipality decided to bisect the Hinnom Valley National Park outside the walls of the Old City with a cable car line that will transport visitors from a terminus at the old railway station (the “First Station”) straight to the Dung Gate, from where there is direct access to the Western Wall Plaza. Today, to accommodate the many tourists who visit the Western Wall, buses park in an endless line outside the walls of the Old City and discharge their load—up to 3,000 visitors per hour. The Jerusalem Development Authority conceived of an idea that would render most of these tourist buses unnecessary: an extension of the municipal light rail system, now under construction, from the center of town to the Western Wall. However, many years would pass before this plan could be implemented, because of the complex and awkward procedures of the local and district planning authorities, not to mention the archaeological context through which the rails would pass. The Authority then had a brainstorm: transport the flood of tourists via cable car which would serve both the Western Wall and the Kedem Tourist Center planned for the slopes of the City of David. But even if the Authority could overcome all the objections to such an unconventional idea, it would take many years for this plan, too, to navigate all the stages of statutory approval. At which

point the project’s sponsors had the brilliant idea of bypassing the statutory approval process. In recent years the Israeli government has discovered that legally mandated zoning and planning processes impede rapid development. But instead of trying to simplify the process, which slows all forms of urban development, the State decided to create a faster, alternative route, mainly intended to facilitate transportation projects. Accordingly, the Government drafted National Infrastructures Plan 86, which makes it possible to shortcut the planning of infrastructure projects (mainly transportation) defined as ‘national’. The agency behind the cable car project is the Tourism Ministry, not the Transport Ministry. The latter has not asked to expedite the Western Wall cable car project as part of Plan 86. It is the Tourism Ministry that is in a great hurry to get it going, clearly demonstrating the reason for bypassing the normal planning processes provided for by law. Circumventing the statutory procedure means that the public is deprived of the opportunity to file objections. In the case of the Western Wall cable car, this was no accident; the project’s sponsors understood that public opposition could sink the proposal. This evasion of the statutory process is an assault on democracy. In what follows I present a number of serious problems posed by the cable car project.

The National Park:

When Jerusalem was united after the Six-Day War, the Israeli government decided to create a greenbelt around the walls of the Old City. This parkland is relatively wide in the streambeds— the Kidron on the east and the Hinnom Valley on the south. Other sections had been part of the no-man’s land between the Jordanian and Israeli sections of the city prior to 1967 (and consequently remained untouched). Towering conspicuously in the midst of the National Park, the Old City walls, constructed by Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century, encase 870 dunams (220 acres) of built land. Until Jerusalem residents began building homes outside the walls in the nineteenth century, the land surrounding the city was empty (and unsafe), although some of it was farmed by nearby villages. The National Park contains important antiquities and holy places—the Southern Wall excavations, Mt. Zion with its many churches, and Akeldama at the junction of the Kidron and Hinnom valleys. The Hinnom Valley and part of the Kidron Valley are enclosed by cliffs that rise to a height of over ten meters – a conspicuous feature in the landscape – and house countless antiquities and burial caves. Vegetation sprouts from the walls on the west and north sides of the Old City. In the

Kidron Valley there are mainly walls and cliffs; in the Hinnom Valley there are olive groves and the remains of a natural copse, with large and handsome mastic trees and spiny hawthorn. Within the park boundaries there are a number of tourist attractions that charge for admission, run by the Elad organization under contract from the National Parks and Nature Reserves Authority. These include the Siloam Tunnel and the City of David excavations. The National Park was established pursuant to Urban Zoning Plan AM/6, approved in August 1970. The area covered by this plan includes four enclaves between Mt. Zion and the City of David: David’s Tomb, the Siloam Pool, the Karaite cemetery, and other burial places on the eastern slopes of Mt. Zion, as well as another compound northeast of the Siloam Pool. All of these have the status of an approved national park. Two other parcels were excluded—the Karaite cemetery on the outskirts of Abu Tor, and the cemetery that extends from Ophel Road to the Kidron Valley, between Yad Avshalom on the north and the City of David on the south. These cemeteries are sacred ground with religious significance for Rabbanite and Karaite Jews. The church compounds on Mt. Zion and the Muslim cemeteries east of the Old City were officially included in the park. Also included in the National Park are the walls themselves, including those of the Temple Mount, though the park’s territory does not include areas inside the walls of the Old City. Today there are plans to extend the national park, especially around the churches on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Given the great political and religious sensitivity of such a move, it is not clear whether or when this plan will be submitted to the planning authorities. The cable car project would involve 15 pylons, 11 of them erected within the national park, which, as noted, is supposed to be strictly protected against development and construction. The pylons are to rise to a height of five to eight stories (26 meters). Pylon C would stand right next to David’s Tomb and the Coenaculum—a true eyesore. Tradition has it that when the British High Commissioner left the country in 1948, he said, with reference to Jerusalem, “We are entrusting you with an asset that has no parallel in the world. Preserve it!” We do not need to be reminded by the High Commissioner that Jerusalem is, was, and always will be the ultimate treasure of the Jewish people. Who will guard it, if we betray the trust confided to us by history?

The tour-group problem:

Tour guides generally lead groups of 40. Each cable car cabin has a capacity of eight to ten persons. The tour guides cannot split themselves into four or five in order to accompany the group members in each cabin; nor will they be able to control entry to the cable car, so members of a different group could be mixed in with theirs.

Image of the project from the Jerusalem Development

Authority (JDA), the town planning legislation.

The result is that a fair amount of time will be spent until they manage to reassemble their group after they leave the cabins. As a result, the cable car segment of the trip between the bus parking lot at the First Station and the Western Wall, which is the tour’s destination, is liable to produce severe complications. Furthermore, guides will not be able to address their entire group while they are using the cable car.

The Jewish element:

Jerusalem, and especially its holy places, ought to be ‘conquered’ by means of a physical effort that expresses the yearnings for this holy place. To descend as if on ‘angel’s wings’ would contradict the essential Jewish concept of the ‘earthly Jerusalem’ and of pilgrimage as an ‘ascent by foot’—the need to exercise one’s limbs in order to reach the lofty goal. I served as architectural advisor to the Minister of Religions for five years, at a time when the thorny issue of the design of the Western Wall Plaza topped the agenda. Various proposals were advanced, including some that viewed the Wall as a site with social, economic, and touristic

significance. But the Western Wall has a transcendental meaning and must not be turned into a multipurpose meeting place. All the proposals were rejected out of hand, and the Western Wall remained the focus of prayer, meditation, and dreams.

Observance of the Sabbath and festivals:

In light of Jerusalem’s large observant population and the status of the Temple Mount for our people, the cable car is highly unlikely to run on Sabbaths and Jewish festivals. At which point we would wonder :«What was the point of it all?» On the Sabbath and festivals, which are the most important days for visitors, a state-owned transportation system would not operate—and if it did, it would produce no end of additional friction and could even bring down national governments.

Accessibility:

Constructing a transport system that would keep buses away from the Dung Gate is a strange idea. Tourist buses would have to park at the First Station, which would also be the point of departure for everyone who wishes to board the cable car. There simply is no room there for so many vehicles. The result would be a massive bottleneck on a major urban thoroughfare, due to the traffic jam outside the First Station. Yet much better alternatives are being planned, such as a privately operated shuttle system that would pick up visitors to the Western Wall from all over town and would not require long-term parking spaces along the Old City walls; the Golden Line of the light-rail system, which would provide access from various places in the city (but is still far from realization because it has not been approved for shortcutting the statutory planning process); and other ideas that are on the books and will be implemented someday. We can add that the cable car project is not part of the Master Transportation Plan for Jerusalem. If it were, the National Infrastructures Commission would have the right to intervene. But because the request is related to tourism, that commission has no standing in the matter. There is no reason why the project should not undergo the full statutory process, like every other project. If it did, those who have the best interests of Jerusalem at heart would have a forum to which they could appeal. To avoid the legal roadblocks, those behind the cable car project turned to other agencies to approve it—the Public Housing Cabinet, which was overjoyed to give its blessing (though what the cable car has to do with public housing is beyond me; and we can only wonder that they didn’t ask the Youth Movements Council for its approval, too).

Capacity: The Western Wall Plaza has a finite area and a finite capacity: the entire plaza can hold a maximum of 5,600 men and women. The cable car could bring 3,000 persons an hour (according to its sponsors)—in addition to those who reach the Plaza by other means. Such an intensive injection of visitors would double the number of persons who come there now. No thought has been given to the capacity limit. The terrible crush produced would require the addition of police posts, emergency vehicles, and security personnel. At times it might be necessary to shut other access routes to keep the pressure from becoming intolerable. But the entries that would be blocked are precisely those used by religious Jews who come to the Western Wall not as tourists, but to pray. The path taken by the thousands who walk to the Western Wall from the neighborhoods north of the Old City would be blocked.

Harm to residents:

The cable car will pass over vernacular neighborhoods typical of historical Jerusalem. But the residents of these neighborhoods are likely to move away because of the frightening shadow of the cable car that passes over them, close to mosques, churches, and synagogues. The safety of the residents and institutions would be undermined and they would be victimized by physical, acoustic, and visual blight. Many of the city’s Muslim residents already believe that the Jewish state is hostile to them (and call on the international community to come to their aid). The Jewish state (and not foreign actors) must prove that it takes maximum account of their concerns. Furthermore, neither the residents nor the institutions were asked for their consent to the cable car’s invasion of their property (property rights are not restricted to ground level but extend upward with no limit). In a democratic country, the public has the right to appeal to the authorities, and they are required to publish the plans for projects so that the public can examine them and object if it so chooses. The present infringement of the public’s rights in favor of the asserted touristic profit (never conclusively demonstrated) has not been studied or addressed. I wonder if the true aim of the cable car is not to facilitate access to the Western Wall, but rather to bring crowds to Elad’s disproportionate Kedem tourist center. With a total area of 16,000 sq.m. (4 acres), and rising to a height of seven stories (even higher with the cable car), the center will conceal the Old City walls. It is hard to imagine what the sponsors plan to do with all that floor space. I conclude with some of my own musings as I confront a problematic project like this. Every Jewish child was taught about the goal of visiting the site of the Holy Temple, even when living in the Diaspora, and even 70 generations after the Temple was destroyed.

Image of the project from the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA),

the town planning legislation.

I too remember that when I was a boy of six, I used to walk around in Florence with my father (a physician and a rabbi), who devoted every Sunday (in addition to Shabbat of course) to his children, because that was his day off from the hospital. He introduced us to the city’s many artistic treasures, mainly those produced by the great Florentine artists of the Renaissance. He would pause with us in front of the Gates of Paradise, the gilded bronze reliefs created by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the East Door of the Baptistery (outside the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore), which depict scenes from the Bible. Here he would direct my attention to the panel that shows the meeting between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. «Look, David» he would whisper «They are standing outside the Temple in Jerusalem ». Then he’d add: « We’ll go there too, some day ». We would continue on to the Palazzo Vecchio, where he would point to one of the arches that support the ceiling and its portrayal of a walled city «That’s Jerusalem!». And, of course there was the prayer « Next Year in Jerusalem» recited on holidays. Jerusalem was in our hearts every day. When I arrived in this country without my parents (they had been arrested by the Nazis and their Fascist helpers; I was hidden by a compassionate Christian family), I found myself in Jerusalem,

the city of our dreams! I was in the Land of Israel! A sun-swept land, radiating freedom and serenity, the very land we had dreamed of while in exile was now suddenly a living reality. Within three years the state was proclaimed—who could have imagined that five years earlier? Alas, the euphoria was short-lived. War broke out. All the Arab states, with their tens of millions of people, arrayed against scarcely half a million Jews. But our dream of the land and the city inspired us, and we overcame them all. My mother returned from the concentration camp and rejoined us in Jerusalem—but not for long. She was killed during the War of Independence, one of the 77 persons massacred in an Arab attack on a convoy of medical personnel en route to the Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus. The State of Israel was born a month after her death. Less than 20 years later, Jerusalem was reunited. Our dream came true. What jubilation: the Old City, the Temple Mount, the Western Wall… In two short decades history had been reversed. As a professional architect I was cognizant of the responsibility that befell me and my colleagues, to safeguard this marvelous gem that had been returned to us. The euphoria went too far, and Israelis lost their sense of proportion. But now that Jerusalem is ours, why should we turn it into a poor imitation of New York, Las Vegas, or even Paris? We forget that now we are Jerusalem. It is up to our cultural and professional conscience to make sure that it remains the Jerusalem we saw in our dreams. Today, however, massive towers are growing skyward, dwarfing the city’s history, dwarfing the vision. And as if this were not enough, now, as mentioned, we have a plan to build a cable car to carry the pilgrims, not by foot but flying through the air like angels down to the Western Wall Plaza. A hundred years ago, Ronald Storrs, the first governor of Jerusalem under the British Mandate, founded the Pro-Jerusalem Society. He understood that Jerusalem was not like any other city. At the end of the Ottoman Period, Jerusalem was in the midst of pure planning chaos, which threatened to destroy its physical and symbolic image. Town planning was devoid of logic and objective criteria. Before the British arrived, there was no vision behind Jerusalem’s urban planning and no attention was paid to the city’s global significance. There was no comprehensive view and no development policy that could express Jerusalem’s local and universal values, as an iconic city, as a historical world city, and as the spiritual goal of billions of the faithful all over the monotheistic world. Neither was there any consideration of the needs of the residents and diverse communities that composed the city’s population in those days. Today, even though almost three generations have passed since the end of the Mandate, we face a similar dilemma. The concept of sustainable environmental planning has become a key feature

of planning all around the world, but it seems to be honored mainly in architecture schools and by responsible professionals. Unfortunately, the elected officials of contemporary cities are not chosen for their adherence to these principles, but according to entirely different criteria, criteria that stem from political goals and economic interests. Those at the top of the local government structure lack vision—or at best have a very limited one. In one of his speeches, David Ben-Gurion said: « Jerusalem’s value cannot be measured or weighed or counted. For if the land has a soul, Jerusalem is the soul of the Land of Israel ». This should be a beacon for our actions today. What guided Ronald Storrs a century ago must guide us all. The motto of Storr’s Pro-Jerusalem Society must be ours as well, with emphasis on the last phrase: “Walk about Sion and go round about the towers thereof. Mark well her bulwarks, set up houses—that ye may tell them that come after …” (Ps. 48:13–14) In light of the above, a group of concerned citizens has gathered to act with national responsibility and create the Pro-Jerusalem Council – a professional, academic, and spiritual body with no political orientation. The goal of the council is to preserve Jerusalem for the Jewish people and for the world. The council will advise the Israel Academy the Sciences and Humanities, or a similar body with no political identification, as follows:

The Pro-Jerusalem Council

A hundred years after Ronald Storrs, the first British governor of Jerusalem, founded the Pro-Jerusalem Society, we are calling today for the establishment of a Public Council for Jerusalem, which will be dedicated to protecting the manifold cultural values associated with the city. Just as it was then, at the end of the Ottoman Period, Jerusalem is today subject to planning anarchy that threatens both its physical and symbolic character. The reasons are different, but today, as then, there is no logic, no reasoning, and no cultural criteria behind the planning of Jerusalem. Proper planning for Jerusalem requires vision, an inclusive perspective, and a development policy that simultaneously reflects the city’s local and universal value, both as a national capital and as a historic world city that is the spiritual focus of billions of believers. All the relevant aspects must be balanced, taking account of the local residents and communities, and subject to general professional principles of sustainable urban planning. From the Pro-Jerusalem Society until the present day there have been various initiatives to encourage proper planning for Jerusalem, to accord the city its rightful importance and meaning, and to empower the residents as its trustees. Like its predecessor, the Public Council for Jerusalem will consider every part of the city, from its most ancient streets to the newest neighborhoods,

in the knowledge that urban development must relate to every element of a city and all its aspects. Without making light of the political complexities that bedevil Jerusalem, the Pro-Jerusalem Council will be strictly apolitical, and will seek to co-opt architectural professionals, academics, intellectuals, residents, and representatives of organizations from the entire political spectrum and from the sectors and communities to which the city is home. The Council will also endeavor to set up an international advisory forum. Accordingly, “we hereby announce the formation of the Public Council for Jerusalem”. The Council will serve as a professional and public forum for discussion and criticism of planning and development in Jerusalem, and will serve as an address for communities to express their opinions about the plans advanced by the planning authorities. It will promote a long-term contemporary vision for the city, one that reflects both its local and universal values and the obligation to its present and future residents.