In Search of Mary Magdalene

Sunday, June 7

I am boarding El Al airline flight 0002 (an unlikely number, it seems to me, but then again I suppose there are not that many flights to Tel Aviv from New York City.) I am being questioned by a very stern 20-something security agent. “What is the purpose of this trip? Do you speak Hebrew? What will you do while you are there?” I realize the reason for heightened security to such a volatile place, and look around to notice that many of my co-travelers are wearing yarmulkes and/or long curling sideburns. The women’s heads, arms and legs are covered and they wear no makeup. The children are perfectly behaved. It is a far cry from my American Airlines flight to NYC from LAX, which was complete with screaming babies, teens in baggy pants, and women whose cleavage would never make it onto that El Al flight. I am a stranger here. I answer with deference and check my bags.

The 10 hour flight from row 54 is eventless. There is a TV in the back of the seat in front of me but no film is being shown so my only entertainment is watching the slow-motion airplane icon follow its dotted course across the Atlantic – Greenland, “oh look, there’s Reykjavik” – and onward. I alternate reading the paperback I’ve picked up in the bookstore, Obama’s The Audacity of Hope and scribbling notes onto the legal pad where I’ve been hashing out ideas for my second draft of my screenplay about Mary Magdalene. My hope for this project feels audacious, indeed, and I like peppering my work with inspiration from our very articulate president.


I am fine until descent, when turbulence hits. I reach for the bag. Yes, that bag. That awful little bag that no one ever wants to use but everyone is glad to have nearby when it is needed. And so it was that I landed in Israel for the first time.


Monday June 8

I wake up after sleeping heavily in the beautiful King David Hotel in Jerusalem. I’ve driven 30 minutes east from Tel Aviv and am astounded to realize my view from the room is of the Jaffa Gate entrance to the majesty of Old City Jerusalem. There are cute little sugar-coated jellies and a platter of fruit in the room, and I graze listlessly as I try to figure how to turn my body’s time schedule around. Three days ago I was on Pacific Time, now I am 10 hours ahead and feel my brain is somewhere back over Europe. I go out to a neighborhood restaurant for a salmon dinner, and am solicited as I walk down the street to bring my business to them. A sweet girl who works for a local bar realizes I am American and we strike up a conversation. She tells me she learned English in school and perfected it when she lived in Florida last year. Her boss has asked her to chat up the tourists who wander down the street from the hotels. I feel guilty when I don’t want to eat in her bar. After dinner I look up above the street lights lining the cobblestone street and see a very full, very orange moon. It lights my way up the hill to the hotel. I call it an early night in anticipation of launching out to the Old City tomorrow.


Tuesday June 9


I awaken at 5:30 am local time. I eat some more fruit and one of those little sugar jellies (Apricot? Peach?) I apply 50 SPF sunscreen. I put on a loose cotton dress and flat walking shoes. I remember everything but water as I walk out into the warm-getting-hotter-by-the-minute morning. The stroll to the Jaffa Gate is only 15-20 minutes. The sun rises over the stone walls – it is misty and sherbet-orange, like a watercolor remnant of last night’s moon. The people of Jerusalem are slowly stretching awake, a few cars wind through the narrow streets, and vendors are barely beginning to set up their fruit stands and their cafes. I have to climb over 50 steps to get to the entryway of the Old City; I am shocked to see the machine guns slung over shoulders of two Israeli guards drinking their morning coffee. This will come to be commonplace as I travel through Israel, as common as women hitch-hiking, men bobbing and praying with shawls over their heads, and other anomalies that catch me off guard.


Wandering the streets of the Old City is almost indescribable. I feel I am in a marble labyrinth. I remember a mouse-maze I built for the Science Fair in 7th grade, and imagine that from above, God can see me scurry up and down the narrow stone passages. I veer right at a fork, following two militant looking young women in olive dresses, black boots, and long braided hair. The quickly tuck out of sight and I realize I am lost. Everything I see says “Armenian” on it – a chapel here, a souvenir shop there. Nothing is open yet. My heart quickens as I hear footsteps behind me. I realize I am actually quite vulnerable in this moment. No one knows I am here, and I don’t even know exactly where “here” is. The man passes by me without a word, and I soldier on with a prayer for safety – again mindful I am in a place where machine guns are as common as Turkish coffee.


I have been away from the hotel for the better part of an hour now. It seems I am living within the walls of a rook in a chess game. The regular squared-off intervals form a serrated edge – the city is a knife that cuts into the sun rising over it. I am a mouse in a maze, an amazed mouse. And now, a thirsty one. I see only one man as I wander. He is dressed in a Muslim tunic and head cover, and is sweeping the stone walkway by a parking lot. I approach him, ready to perform pantomime to try to get a drink. “Water?” I ask him. He shakes his head, says something in Hebrew which may as well be gibberish to me. I mime holding a glass, pretending to drink. “Water?” No response. I touch my throat, indicating distress with my face. “Water?” No response. I then remember the flight attendant on El Al walking up and down the aisles. ”Mayim?” she’d asked again and again, offering water in little carafes. How this comes to me I’ll never know, call it desperation. Mayim is water! I am so thrilled I say it too loudly. “Mayim!” My new friend smiles back at me. “Water,” he says, and goes to fetch me the coldest most wonderful bottle of water I’ve ever seen from a hidden nook at the bottom of the parking lot. I point to the little map in my hand – much too vague to have been of any help, as it turns out. But in the center is a picture of my destination, The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He points in the general direction and says “Street, street, street, left.” I set out smiling. Guess he does know some English after all. I thank him and watch him return to sweeping as I climb the shadowy stone stairs through an archway and into what is finally the Christian quarter of the city.


The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the most sacred physical site in Christianity. It is said to have been built over the site of Golgotha, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion. Contained within the large structure is a smaller basilica. It looks like a small domed building within the building. Benches surround it on three sides; a small thrust juts out into where the faithful meet for worship. Candles, ornate lamps, podiums, all the usual accoutrements attend this most central of all churches. I am unprepared for what happens next. Only three other people are here this early as I sit in meditation on a rear bench. I am praying for my family, one by one by name. I am asking God’s special grace to protect and guide them. And then an organ blast announces the entrance of a round priest in a red robe. He is attended by one acolyte, and followed by one housewife-tourist who looks about 55. They walk up to the thrust, entering a room past a heavy gilded door. The other three people who were sitting on the benches near me rise and quickly follow the priest. I look left, look right, and seeing no reason not to follow suit, fall in line like a soldier.

I must dip my head to enter the door, and once inside I realize that the priest is speaking in Italian and that this is a Catholic mass. Having lived in Milan as a model in the early 80’s, I understand about 1/3 of what I hear; but having rarely missed a mass in 18 years, growing up with a Catholic mother, I almost completely translate, verbatim, the familiar text of the mass. I am standing in an ante-chamber – it is so small that if there were one more person it would be uncomfortably intimate. There is one more room past the room where I stand – I am separated from it by a very low doorway carved in magnificent grey and white marble, with the image of Jesus rising bodily from an open casket carved over the flowing leaves of ivy. All I can see through the door is the edge of the red robe of the priest and the sandaled feet of the housewife. Small as we are, this perfect gathering of attendees is here to celebrate mass on a hazy Jerusalem Tuesday morning in June: the housewife-tourist, a stylish Italian woman of about 40, a gentle Italian man of maybe 33, an ageless nun with ebony skin, and me. The time comes to “pass the peace” and each of us in the antechamber reaches out a hand. “Pace” … ”Pace.” The last hand I shake is the nun’s – she wears a crisp grey linen habit, and has the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen. When I shake her hand I feel she is amorphous, like the sugar-jelly back at the hotel, or like a human who has somehow managed to elevate spiritually to a place where the body ceases to be tangible. I am concerned I may have hurt her hand, being too used to the American way of shaking hands – keep it firm, and how do you do, let me show you my confidence. Her handshake is something I will never forget. And confidence has nothing to do with it.


Communion time. It has been many years since I’ve practiced Catholicism but I am a repentant believer in Christ and sincerely pray “Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” Dogma falls away, grace resides. I know I am welcome to receive by the Father, if not by the father. The priest places the wafer on my tongue. I look into the small room that houses the tomb. I think of Mary Magdalene standing on this spot. I begin to tremble and before I realize it I am weeping -- that silent sort of tear, punctuated only by an occasional sniffle. Mass is soon over and I am invited to enter the inner sanctum. “Hurry, hurry” says the acolyte to the four of us, surprising me with his English, “Another mass begins in 2 minutes.”
The room is small, with an oculus above opening to the sky through the roof of the larger church housing it. I hear a bird fly overhead and am sure I only imagine that it might be a dove. I kneel at the side of the well-worn stone; a tentative hand reaches out to touch the place where the Roman guards laid his head 2,000 years ago. I am drunk with joy.


Wednesday June 10


Today I leave Jerusalem, with plans to return next week in order to connect with a local business contact who is an expert in regional archeology in the Holy Land. My list of questions fills most of a page of a legal pad, but for now that must wait. I am driving to the northern are of the Sea of Galilee. There is a pretty little organic farm and retreat that hugs the hillside of Golan Heights and watches down over the valley leading to the Sea. From here, I make my 30 minute drive to my second site for research, Migdal. This small town was once called Magdala, and was known as the successful fishing village home of Mary Magdalene. It is not an easy place to find.

It barely appears on most maps – indeed, it is as if there “isn’t any there, there.” Finally I find my spot, the place I have been imagining and writing about in my first draft for the past eleven months. At the foot of a small rocky mountain called Mount Arbel, the Sea of Galilee arrives in shallow warm waves onto fine, dark sand in a sad little retreat of empty picnic tables and rusted umbrella stands. As I approach to take a closer look, it is clear that this has become a sort of weekend retreat for locals. But I am here on a Wednesday afternoon, and the only sounds I hear are four raucous Russians bobbing in the water just past the “Do Not Swim” signs. Their voices echo across the empty campgrounds as I explore with my senses. The water is bath temperature, and only four inches deep for at least 10-20 feet out there. My imagination conjures fishing boats slipping easily in and out to sea, filled with sardines and fishermen’s nets.


The sand is fine and sticky and smells like sulfur. There are dozens of tine little swirling white shells washed ashore, I grab a littered plastic cup nearby and fill it with treasure – mollusk shells, a large fish bone, and my funniest surprise of the day – an upside down playing card in the sand near the water. When I turn it right side up, I smile: it is a joker, my father’s favorite card. I imagine he is somehow alive again, here with me on my adventure, and place the card in my pocket for safekeeping.


Half an hour to the north I try to enter Capernaum. I am turned away because I am wearing long cargo shorts that do not cover my (presumably indecent) knees. Capernaum is the main home of Jesus for much of his ministry, it is where he met Peter and Andrew, and nearby the location of the multiplying of loaves and fishes. In stark contrast to Migdal, this place is glorified. It is sanctified. It is marbleized and sanitized and commercialized, complete with an entrance fee and dress code. Poor Mary Magdalene, I think: the chosen handmaid of God still gets so little respect.


There are tour buses lined up in a large parking lot – Asian tours, Catholic tours, Protestant tours. All the matching people in their matching shirts or matching badges “Hi, My Name is Bessie”… I can only say that I am glad to be venturing solo.

I am glad that I have come here to lend audibility to a woman long overdue for her voice.