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When the pope comes calling By Yossi Klein Tags: pope israel, israel news A papal visit might have different effects on different hosts. The writer and poet Pinhas Sadeh, for example, was not apathetic toward the visit of Pope Paul VI to Jerusalem in 1964. Sadeh decided it was the perfect time to take advantage of the crowd of well-wishers waiting for the pope in order to stand close, and then even closer, to a young woman in the crowd whom he did not know. "There can be no doubt that this was the first time in history in which someone received a pope in such a state," he explained. "Perhaps only in the days of Alexander VI, during the Renaissance, did such things happen." The official attitude toward the reception for the pope was somewhat less sensual than that of the Renaissance. Pope Paul was greeted at the city's gates with "bread and salt" by "the mayor and dignitaries." The "bread," so it was reported, was actually a loaf of Sabbath challah a half-meter long. The quality of the salt remained a mystery. Not so the status of the dignitaries. Besides municipal wheeler-dealers there was the president of the Hebrew University. A university's president no longer represents Jerusalem in official functions. Neither do the bread and salt. It was the beginning of a nice tradition in greeting popes, but it lasted for only one occasion. Another tradition, one that is not much older, is of placing a papal note in one of the crevices of the Western Wall. It's a particularly effective tradition that allows a pope to deliver messages that may be difficult for him to express out loud, such as - to name just one example - asking generations of Jews for forgiveness. Pope John Paul II made good use of that practice, and one would think that Benedict would also be happy to write something non-committal, except that he must take into account Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Western Wall's rabbi. According to one ultra-Orthodox Web site, the rabbi is unhappy. He apparently has misgivings about the visit. It might disrupt regular prayer arrangements, and as far as he is concerned, the pope would do well to find another address for his private entreaties to God. In any case such messages are subsequently published in the press. Advertisement The press might publish the content of any note Benedict XVI may choose to write, but it has failed to conceal the wide yawns with which it is receiving his visit. As is usual with traditions, this one of receiving popes also suffers from a lack of appreciation. It is doubtful whether President Peres, like president Zalman Shazar in his days, will be inclined to declare that, "The pope's visit is an unparalleled historical event." The long challah and the salt are likely to remain, so it seems, in the municipality's warehouse, not to mention the mayor himself, who will probably make himself scarce. Nowadays, popes travel by helicopter from site to site and so skip a city's symbolic gates and the tedious ceremonies that used to take place at them, since they have plenty of their own. The first papal visit was preceded by many efforts that the newspapers of the day monitored with amazement and esteem. Even 16 years after the establishment of the state, security arrangements continued to excite journalists. "The bodyguards received training in judo, target practice and use of knives," Haaretz proudly revealed. Then, as today, security arrangements were greeted with a journalistic salute, even if the terminology was different. The Shin Bet security service was not focused on "terrorists," just on "agitators, hostile elements and the mentally ill," and instead of the "explosive charges" of the present, they were looking for "time bombs." Not everybody went apoplectic over the papal visit. "The preparations create an impression that the pope is not coming to visit a sovereign state but a town in the Diaspora," protested Moshe Yudkevich from Ramat Gan, in a letter to the editor of the daily Maariv. That first papal visit took place before the Six-Day War. The press then (like today) related to Arabs with disdain, reflecting a sense of superiority. It measured and compared the effectiveness of neighboring countries to maintain law and order during the visit. As expected, the visit in Israel proceeded, at least according to the press, with "exemplary law and order." A polite crowd behaved properly (Pinhas Sadeh was, apparently, an exception) and applauded the guest. The work of the armed policemen stationed at the junctions and along the roads was easy and pleasant. Even the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, couldn't remain indifferent to the exemplary order and, according to the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, was "following Israel's achievements with admiration." Maariv quoted the "international press" as "praising the dignified reception for the Pope." In 2000, during the second visit of a pope to Israel, it transpired that such exemplary order can be burdensome. "The pope was disgusted with the suffocating ring [of security men] that enveloped him," said Yedioth. The first papal visit to Israel was perceived as a reflection of our national character, and he was treated to a cool European homage. And how did they see things on the other side? "Hullabaloo and bedlam" was the way Pope Paul's visit among the Arabs was described. There were incidents that clearly threatened Paul VI's well-being and he was, indeed, horrified. "Despite the bitter cold, the Pope's face was covered with sweat and the mob's pressure badly shook him." At the Holy Sepulchre, then in Jordanian hands, the pressure became truly life-threatening. Electric lines caught fire, and "the crowd was frightened." Thirty-six years later, during the visit of John Paul II, Palestinian inferiority did not escape Yedioth's eyes: "The Palestinians set up a communications center in Bethlehem, but you can't compare the two," it said referring to the Israeli center. The newspaper said that the information kits the Palestinians distributed were "much more aggressive and depressing" than those put together by Israel's public relations wizards, which were not at all depressing, but rather described the beauty of our country while highlighting her advantages for tourists. 'Viva Papa' Forty-five years ago, Israel still did not have television, but newspapers took up the slack with abundant descriptions. Articles, thousands of words long, covered many pages. A medley of piquant items was published for the readers' benefit: The nuns at the Mount of Beatitudes prepared a cooked chicken and St. Peter's fish for the Pope, foreign TV cameramen called out "Viva Papa" to him, drums of auto fuel were placed along his route just in case one of the cars in his convoy got stuck, and most significant of all: "President Zalman Shazar donned a diplomatic top hat, while the Russian ambassador turned up bareheaded." Occasionally a journalist allowed himself to become somewhat poetic. "As darkness descended, the cars' lights began flickering in the darkness, and the convoy seemed like a winding string of lights." The Eichmann trial, in 1961, had been the first international media event to take place here, but its scope did not come anywhere near that which accompanied the visit of Paul VI. With more than a touch of envy, the local media described how the wheels of the modern global media ran smoothly and efficiently. Air force helicopters airlifted articles and films to Lod airport, from which the material was flown to Rome. A photo lab was installed in the aircraft and the pictures were developed during the flight in order to use the time efficiently. Israel's postal service was also recruited to facilitate the process. "A post office clerk will speed in his red vehicle, following the pope's convoy at Mount Tabor," Yedioth Ahronoth took care to report in detail. The clerk in the red vehicle was to collect articles from the reporters, so that they could be quickly relayed, over telex machines, from a nearby post office. And what was reported over the telex? Popes chang, but their visits are more or less identical. There was always a big mass conducted by the pontiff on an untended piece of land that was never quite appropriate for the purpose, and whose shortcomings were discovered only when it was too late. Nonetheless, the organizers would congratulate themselves, after the event, on their creative resourcefulness at improvisation and their effective use of bulldozers. (Preparations for the current visit have also included the cutting down of trees.) Then there were prayers in Nazareth, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Pope Paul did not go to Yad Vashem, which at that time was still not set up for state visits. In 1964, the site at which dignitaries could pay respects to the memory of the Holocaust's victims was a damp cave on Mount Zion known as the Chamber of the Holocaust. It contained shocking Holocaust items and a strong fragrance of candle wax. Paul VI sent his representative there, expecting he would be met by one of the chief rabbis. The press has always sought to describe a meeting between the spiritual leader of hundreds of millions of Christian believers with those whom the State of Israel has appointed as its chief rabbis as a meeting of great spiritual minds who represent thousands of years of faith. And so, a possible meeting between popes and chief rabbis has become a sensitive issue and everybody treads around it with care. In 2000, John Paul II did not have an opportunity to meet a chief rabbi at the airport. The rabbis said they were busy preparing for the Purim holiday, which after all is accompanied with the distribution of gift food baskets and the donning of costumes. The rabbis' absence during the present visit might be attributed to the trouble connected with organizing the Lag Ba'omer bonfires. The rabbis engaged in diplomatic games, but their followers expressed their views in their own ways. Someone in Safed wanted to receive John Paul II with a pulsa denura, a mystical curse ceremony that, if conducted properly, should have completely disrupted the visit. The police intervened, the man was detained for questioning and the visit was rescued from a bitter fate. The ultra-Orthodox newspaper Hamodia was not happy about the visit or about his anticipated statements. And indeed, John Paul II did not deliver a stirring Zionist speech, nor did he sharply denounce the Palestinians. Hamodia grumbled, somewhat, with an "I told you so" and predicted that the pope's speech would "cool the level of excitement and artificial hysteria that have gone beyond all normal proportions." The great yearning for the Pope to offer an "appeal for the Jewish people's forgiveness" was somehow satisfied with the rather vague statements that John Paul made. Today, newspapers are anticipating the visit according to criteria of the fading era of "market forces." Financial journals are quoting "tourism officials" who assess the effect of the Pope's current visit from their own, specific, professional point of view, and doubt his ability to inspire masses of tourists to visit Israel. It's not John Paul II, they say with disappointment. It's not even Bar Rafaeli. It's just a man, with a German accent, who is far from being young. You know what?, they say. If you really wanted a Christian personality, you should have brought Madonna. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Theft in Gaza Elite IDF soldier confesses to stealing credit card from Gaza home during Gaza war. Raising the Bar Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli voted 3rd hottest woman by Maxim magazine.

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