AMONG THE MONEY CHANGERS
If you would be cheated out of your eyeteeth, come to Jerusalem. Its
bazaars are filled with tricksters and traders, and it has its usurers
and money changers as in the days of the Saviour. The people prey upon
the pilgrims and tourists. Their main object is to get gain, and they
work the holiness of the Holy City for all it is worth. They sell candles
which if burnt in the Church of the Sepulchre will carry away your sins
in their smoke; and rosaries upon which if you count your prayers you may
be sure of their ascending to heaven.
The rosary business is a big factor in Jerusalem. The beads are cut out
in great quantities at Bethlehem and are shipped abroad by the millions.
They are sent to the Holy City for sale, and there are some stores which
have nothing else except perhaps crucifixes and collection plates.
The merchants who sell rosaries are often great rascals. I know one, a
Bethlehemite, who has just received a lesson which he is not likely soon
to forget. The man’s rosary store is situated down Christian Street, not
far from the place where you turn in to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
His lesson came from a Jesuit priest, who lives in Chicago, and who
is just now starting home. The holy father had come into the shop to
buy some rosaries to carry back to his friends. He had picked out a
half-dozen beautiful ones, and had paid the price without bargaining. As
the storekeeper wrapped up his purchase, the priest looked at him out
of the tail of his eye and saw him slip under the counter the rosaries
selected and put some cheaper ones in their place. The Jesuit said
nothing, but he took up several beautiful carvings representing the
Crucifixion and Ascension, each of which was worth about twice as much as
the rosaries he had chosen. Handing these to the man, he told him to wrap
them up. This being done, he took both parcels and started out of the
store. The Bethlehemite merchant ran after him, and told him he had not
paid for the carvings. The father replied:
“My friend, I saw you change those rosaries and give me the cheaper ones,
and you may consider this a judgment of God upon you for cheating. I
shall keep these carvings, and if you do not immediately return to your
store I will report you to the Mohammedan courts.”
The man, seeing he was caught, let the priest go.
Another large business is the selling of candles. Jerusalem is full of
shrines, and the pilgrims buy candles to burn at the holy places. They
set them up at the score or more sacred spots in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre and at the stations along the Via Dolorosa where Christ walked
on His way to Golgotha. They carry them to the Mount of Olives and to
the Garden of Gethsemane. Some buy several candles for each shrine, and
the richer purchase some of enormous size and many colours. The candle
business is especially brisk at Easter time.
[Illustration: Bethlehem maids are the prettiest in all Palestine. They
bring fresh vegetables into Jerusalem each day and sell them in the
markets]
[Illustration: The rosaries sold by the bushel in Jerusalem are made in
Bethlehem of carved olive wood and of mother-of-pearl from the United
States. Besides the thousands sold to tourists quantities are exported
every year]
As I have said before, many of the streets are vaulted over, and we often
pass for a half-mile through what might be called a subterranean cavern
lighted by openings from the top and pierced at the sides with cavelike
stores. The smallest business shops in the world are in Jerusalem. A
great many of the stores are no bigger than a dry-goods box. They have
no windows. I stopped this afternoon before a shoe repair shop, and, out
of curiosity, took its measurements. It was a hole in the wall with its
bottom edge four feet above the cobblestone street. A rude stone two
feet high was the step by which the shoemaker crawled in. It was just
three feet wide, five feet high, and eight feet deep. It was as dark as a
pocket, and the shoemaker squatting in the entrance with a board on his
lap filled it completely. He was working at a pair of rough Bedouin shoes
the owner of which sat cross-legged and in his bare feet in the street
outside. As the cobbler waxed his thread he was careful to move his hands
toward the street and back into the shop. The place was so small that had
he pulled his thread in the ordinary way he would have barked his elbows
against the walls.
Next to this shoe shop there was a Jerusalem restaurant. It was an oval
hole cut into the hill twelve feet high, eight feet wide, and forty feet
deep. At the front was the cooking stove of Jerusalem, a rude slab of
limestone with holes cut in the top as big around as a workman’s dinner
bucket, and with other holes piercing these from the sides. A few inches
from the top of each hole was a rude iron grating upon which the charcoal
was laid. The draft which came in from below kept the fire going. The
slab was mounted on cord-wood posts and had five fireplaces. At the back
a rough table without a cloth was set for the guests. The only chairs
were little stools a foot high and about a foot square the seats of
which were of woven cords.
Each kind of business, or trade, has its own bazaar. There is a
shoemaker’s bazaar where scores of cobblers are working. At the entrance
to each cavelike shop two shoemakers sit sewing away with untanned
calfskin aprons tight about them. Between them on a block of wood, an
olive tree stump it may be, rests a slab of white marble. This is the
shoemakers’ bench, upon which they pound the wet leather to make it soft
with what looks like a brass paper weight. It is as big around as a
tumbler and of about the same height, tapering from the top to the bottom.
The shoes are all made with needle and thread. The soles are of camel
hide and the uppers of kidskin or goatskin. These are the common shoes of
the peasant. As I watched the cobblers I asked about their wages and was
told they received from forty to sixty cents for labouring from sunrise
to sunset.
In another street tinsmiths are at work making pots and pans out of oil
cans. Their shops are not much bigger than cupboards, and the workmen are
long-bearded men in fez caps and gowns.
Farther on is the grain market, consisting of many great vaulted chambers
one or more of which belongs to each merchant. The vaults are filled with
piles of wheat, corn, barley, oats, and millet spread out on the floor.
The grain is sold by measure. I saw a Bedouin come in to buy two bushels
of oats. It was dipped out by the peck, the merchant shaking the measure
to make the grain solid, and then heaping up the top with his hands so
that the oats formed a cone. This was the “good measure pressed down,
shaken together, and running over,” as mentioned in St. Luke. The people
here never buy grain by the sack, for they want to see it measured out
before their eyes. But I am told that the grain sellers are sometimes
able to impose upon those who purchase, making them think they get more
than they really do.
Much of the grain of the Holy City is ground at home and a great deal
of that of Palestine is made into flour with hand mills. Some flour is
imported and some is ground in mills worked by camels or donkeys. In
baking bread the dough is kneaded at home and brought in great lumps to
the public ovens to be found in almost every street. They are cave-like
vaults running down below the street level. At the back of each vault is
the oven with a sort of well before its open door. In the well stands the
baker with a long paddle in his hand upon which he puts in and takes out
the loaves. I have seen many bakeries of this kind. The fuel is olive
wood, and the oven floor is marked out in blocks, so that the baking of
each family may be put on a separate block. The loaves are about an inch
thick and the size of a tea plate. Each has a hole in the centre. The
baker gets a few cents for each half-dozen loaves, or he may instead take
a toll of one loaf for each dozen. Before starting the baking he greases
the floor of the oven with olive oil.
The reason for these public bakeries is the great cost of fuel. The Arabs
have a proverb showing that such baking is the cheapest. This runs: “Send
your bread to the oven of the baker even though he should eat the half of
it.”
I frequently see boys carrying dough to these bakeries, or bringing bread
home from them. They use trays which they bear on their heads. Ancient
Jerusalem had its Bakers’ Street, for we read that King Zedekiah put the
prophet Jeremiah into the court of the prison and commanded that they
“should give him daily a piece of bread out of the Bakers’ Street.”
During my stay in Jerusalem I have enjoyed the salad which is served at
the hotel with an olive oil dressing. This is a land of olives and the
oil is delicious. It is as clear as honey with a tint like the green of
chartreuse. I say I have enjoyed it, but I doubt whether I shall enjoy it
hereafter. Why? I have seen how it is made.
Come with me to an oil mill which is kept in a cave just off David
Street, not more than a stone’s throw from the Pool of Hezekiah. At the
side of the door there is a stone ledge. In the centre of this is a hole
as big around as a flour barrel in which, with his clothes tied up about
his waist, with bare legs and bare feet, stands a sweating Ethiopian
treading the oil out of the ground olives. Peeping over into the well in
which he is standing, we see that he has a linen cloth laid on the top of
the mushy mixture. He tramps this cloth into the olives with his feet and
taking it up wet, wrings out the oil into a red clay basin from whence it
is poured into pots to be strained for the market.
Farther back stand a camel and a very small, knotty little donkey
munching away while the mill is not going. These animals grind up the
olives, and in another cave opening into this we can see the mill itself.
It is much like a horsepower grist mill, or the bark mill of a country
tannery, and the camel and donkey walk round and round in a circle
hitched to a bar which turns the mill. Their food is a brown cake made
from what is left of the olives after the oil has been pressed out of
them.
[Illustration: In the Turkish restaurants food is cooked over holes in
a limestone slab, while below the charcoal fire is fed through other
openings which also make the draught]
[Illustration: During the day the low cavelike shop of the Jerusalem
shoemaker opens directly upon the street. At night it is closed by two
swinging doors on rude hinges]
[Illustration: Christ’s happiest hours were spent with his friends at
Bethany, the village where He lived when He was teaching in Jerusalem
near by. Here the “tomb of Lazarus” and the “house of Martha and Mary”
are pointed out to the traveller]
But let us go to market at the Jaffa Gate and see what the people have
brought in from the country for sale. There are scores of women with
baskets of vegetables before them. They have lettuce and eggplants and
beautiful cauliflowers with heads as white as snow. They have lemons and
oranges from Jaffa and apples and pears from the highlands of Judea.
Many of the sellers are Bethlehem girls. Here are people selling beads,
although most of the bead sellers are about the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. Many of the beads are of glass and come from Hebron, not far
from the cave which is Abraham’s tomb. Hebron is the chief town of south
Palestine and is a manufacturing centre. It makes lamps and bottles as
well as glass trinkets and glass beads, which are sold all over the Holy
Land.
The cock which reminded St. Peter of his denial of his Master has many
descendants. You may see some of them in this market, tied by the legs
and lying on the stones. The Holy City has no ordinance against crowing
cocks, and nearly every family here keeps its own rooster. There are so
many that the city resounds with their music, and about daybreak they
start up a concert which murders sleep. I am living in the heart of
Jerusalem—I might as well be in a barnyard. The rooster symphony begins
with sunrise and keeps on until evening, and then the donkeys and camels
take up the strain. The donkeys bray louder than did Balaam’s ass, and
the camels whine and grumble all night. In addition to these noises,
there are others which trouble the tourists. The people rise with the
chickens and the stone streets reëcho their steps. The birds sing and
the pedlars shout. At the same time the bells begin ringing to show that
it is day, and the trumpets of the soldiers in David’s Tower add to the
din. One can easily sleep in a railroad depot or near a boiler factory,
for the noises there are of one or two kinds and the ear comes to know
them. Here there is a new sound every minute.