Midnight Travels

When dreams are moments away from reality, Midnight, is the time when the day ends and begins at once. It is at this time that I start my travels with the experience of yesterday and the optimism of tomorrow. It is a place where fiction and fact come together and are inseparable.

Walking down the first ramp and immediately standing at the entry to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (The Authority for the Remembrance of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust) a film plays on a loop. It is in black and white and at first I was not sure what reality I was watching. Are these animations or live action? The ramp is tilted downward gently moving you in toward the film that is playing on a concrete wall framed in a tall triangle. The sensation is something at once enticing and dangerous. The narrowing of the screen at the top limits your view of what is beyond watching. There are images of children innocently waving with a hand curling inward inviting you in. There are windows in buildings with people some famous in their daily lives. There is a group dancing the hora.
I am struck at once about the purpose of architecture and function. This is a place where the two are one.

The sights and sounds of today, the first real day of our journey for 7 weeks from Israel to Greece and then Italy begin at this point in time and place, just after a recent visit to Yad Vashem by the Pope, during the re-election uprising in Iran and in the midst Japanese tourists wearing kippas in deference to those who perished, I saw Israeli soldiers and police today who left their guns at the door and they too were touring with us through Yad Vashem. If ever there was a place to train those whose job it is to protect and defend I cannot think of a more important lesson then the one right here.