I used to despise the Old City of Jerusalem.

It felt intimidating, heavy, tense. Everyone seemed to belong to some tribe I did not belong to, dressed for a ritual I could not relate to, heading somewhere with absolute purpose.

There was the Kotel. There were the obligatory Bar Mitzvah celebrations. There were stones everyone told me I was supposed to find moving.

I felt nothing singing inside my soul.

And we do not change after fifty, right?

I enrolled in an Israeli tour guiding course almost on a whim, following my love of travel and learning. What followed was a year and a half of intense study, countless exhausting and fascinating field trips, and some extraordinary guides who showed us Jerusalem from completely different angles.

Slowly, almost against my will, the city got under my skin.

I cannot tell you exactly when it happened. I only know that now, when I park at Mamilla and start walking toward Jaffa Gate, my heart beats a little faster with anticipation.

Every building hides a thousand years of stories, and every coffee stop seems to bring a fascinating stranger into your day.

On one evening you can find yourself swept into a Christian wedding dance in the street, watch an Armenian funeral procession pass by, see Muslim shopkeepers near the Muristan passionately absorbed in a game of backgammon, hear about Russian pilgrims spending the night locked inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and then watch streams of young religious Jews in white shirts moving through the Old City toward the Kotel for slichot.

Jewish prayers rise from the Kotel.

For years I experienced all this as tension. Now I hear it as Jerusalem’s swirl of time and space, where sounds from different........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)