Losing Sharpness

Dearest Rachel –

I’m not going to claim that this wouldn’t have happened if you were still here with me. You did a lot of the packing for our many trips, to be sure, but there were certain personal things that were left up to me to handle. In fact, I would generally be the one to pack my suitcase with my preferred shirts, pants, underwear, socks and toiletries – which on a trip like this, could more than fill an average suitcase to a reasonable level.

So, this one was entirely on me.

You see, when it comes to my overnight toiletry bag, all I usually worry about are my hairbrush and deodorant, as they’re bulky enough to nearly preclude me from closing it and putting it in storage when we’re not traveling.  Generally, I have a spare toothbrush and travel-size toothpaste (although I’ve just about depleted my second tube this trip; I’m going to need to stick up when we get home), and several razors already stored in there.

Generally.

For whatever reason, when I got to our first hotel, I realized that I had but one razor packed in there, and with no idea how old or how used it was.  But it was all I had, so I had to make the best of it.  And it worked sufficiently well… until it didn’t 

By yesterday morning, I was noticing that my jaw was still prickly, even after scraping the soap off of it.  Five times across, and it was still a little bristly.  Clearly, this razor was losing its sharpness, with little point to keeping it – or to keep trying to run it over my face.  Why go through that level of discomfort for to no effect?

It had me thinking of the analogy of ‘the salt of the earth.’  You and I always found the comparison strange, after all.  For one thing, how could it lose its saltiness?  You might as well expect water to cease being wet.  But, of course, we are used to pure iodized salt in our modern times.  The salt you might find in the Dead Sea had all kinds of other minerals in it, which wouldn’t have tasted near as salty necessarily.  But secondly, even if salt were to be thrown out onto the streets and trampled underfoot, we in Chicago would find that just as useful, if not more so.  Anyone trying to make their way around in winter can appreciate that.

However, a razor that has lost its sharpness has absolutely no use. You can’t even throw it out on the ground, to be trampled, underfoot, because you’d either tear up your shoes or your foot.  So it looks like I’m going to remain stubbly for at least another day.

Of course, razors aren’t the only things that lose their sharpness. It seems that I’m more than capable of that myself – as if not checking to see if I had enough razors wasn’t proof enough of that. As we boarded the bus, and began to drive off to the museum from the hotel, Yael reminded us that, in order to go to Bethlehem (which is within the Palestinian Authority), we would need our passports.

Wouldn’t you know it, I was the only one to forget.

Technically, I wasn’t the only one, as Daniel didn’t have his with him, either. But that was as much on me as my own. And since I have been to see the museum (and the model of second temple era Jerusalem), and he had not, I told him to go with the group, while I took the ride of shame alone back to the hotel to pick them up.

There is so little I can write about the Dead Sea Scrolls, partly because I can’t take pictures with the museum (for obvious reasons), but also because I can’t bring out my iPhone, as a precaution against the proscription.  Yes, I’m probably applying a rule to a rule myself.

But one of the interesting things I noted, was the fact that, at Qumran, they managed to find texts for almost the entirety of the Old Testament, save for Esther and Nehemiah, all in near-identical text to the Masoretic texts of a millennia later.

The museum doesn’t open for another 20 minutes, and we have places to be. Yeah, I am points out the sculpture garden, and mentions the Japanese-American sculptor, who built it along with several other similar parks in the States, adding that “when you visit again, you really must check it out.” 

Kathy, in particular is amused by this phrasing, and tells Yael so. She smiles and responds with a simple “well, I know you’ll come back.”

Of course, this is where we part company with her, as she is not allowed into the Palestinian Authority territory. It’s nothing personal; she’s merely an Israeli, and the Palestinians don’t want her kind there (for all the talk of an apartheid state, I ask, who’s keeping whom out, here?). She will be joining us later, once we’re back in Israel proper, but for now, we will have a different guide, and a different story.

And with that being said, I will let you go for now, so I can work on that different story. Keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.