I'm working with my 5th graders on Cause and Effect.

Cause: I'm getting sick.

Effect: I've quarantined myself in my room with a glass of water, a glass of juice, a mug of herbal tea, Season Two of the West Wing, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, and an internet full of history on The Temple Mount, The Western Wall, The Dome of the Rock, and al-Aqsa Mosque. I thought it a reasonable goal to understand the significance of these places when I see them next month, but holy monuments, Batman. There's really no way to understand Jerusalem unless you start at the beginning. I read today that a Palestinian Authority spokesman said that Jews have no historical connection to the Western Wall, and there are websites devoted to proposed re-builds of the Second Temple, one of which would sit on top of the Dome of the Rock. And they say the peace process couldn't be set back any further....


I tutor a 9th grader who goes to Jesuit High School, and we've been studying Exodus and Deuteronomy for his Sacred Scriptures class. We left off where the Lord told Moses to climb Mt. Nebo and look at the land beyond that Jordan River that had been promised to the people of Israel. He would never cross the river because he had disobeyed the Lord, so he died on Mt. Nebo. I think it's mostly laziness that has kept me from studying the Biblical origins of the P/I conflict (I figured the last century was complicated enough) but the Old Testament found me anyway. As I read the chapters of Deuteronomy aloud, I kept thinking, "I'm going to Jericho" or "I'm going to cross the River Jordan." I've never read the the Bible from start to finish, but I do have three weeks and a very long plane ride....


To continue this Biblical investment, I just spent the last hour reading about plans to build a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, which is off-limits to non-Mulim worship. Several Christan and Jewish groups are devoted to this goal. According to the Torah, in order to re-gain the purity required to pray at the Mount, Jews need to bathe in the ashes of a red heifer, and not just any red heifer. A perfectly red, unworked, 3-year-old, Israel-born heifer. Sightings have been few and far between, but there's a minister from Mississippi who recently shipped a red heifer to Israel, and if this heifer breeds a calf that is accepted as pure (the last candidate was disqualified in 2002), then it will set the prophetic wheels in motion for the coming of the Messiah, who is supposed to sacrifice the "Tenth Heifer." First the new Temple would have to be built, and there are problems there, as some believe the Old Temple existed where the Islamic Dome of the Rock now stands.

And I thought reading the Old Testament was going to be boring...