More Wondrous Than Petra

    There are eight wonders of the world.  With seven of them, you pay when you visit.  With one, you’ll pay if you don’t.  I learned this last Monday when we visited Petra in Jordan.
    Petra, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, lies a kilometer or two west of the path by which Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land.  When you leave Eilat and enter Jordan, you’re walking in the footsteps of your ancestors.  Did they skirt the Wadi Rum, as we did, marveling at the jagged, low mountains and mesas that jut straight skyward from sand dunes?  Now Israelis love to camp there.  Did they thank God that the countryside is less dry than what they traversed in Sinai, or did they peer through mountain passes, craning to get a glimpse of their land, hoping that it was not as sere as it looked.  Today’s Jordan sits on an entirely different plate of the earth from Israel, so soil, climate, and scenery differ somewhat from Israel’s Arava.  It’s desert, yes, but more like Arizona than the Sahara. 
    After turning from the King’s Highway, a four-lane between Aqaba and Amman through territory peppered with Bedouin tents and villages, we head toward Petra.  In the distance on the left and overlooking Israel, a bright white spot tops a craggy, high peak.  The purported tomb of Aaron, Moses’ brother, stands blindingly white against the blue sky, and the mountain, Jebel Nebi Harun, Aaron’s mountain, Mt. Hor from the Torah.  Not all agree that Aaron died on this 4800 foot peak.  Nevertheless, I cannot tear my eyes from it, until at last it is out of sight.  Onward we press to Petra, the abandoned Nabateaean city made famous by Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
    Petra demands a long downhill walk through a canyon whose colors of red, blue, yellow, green, and beige, tell-tale signs of the minerals found there, streak through tall sandstone cliffs forming a narrow defile.  Along the way, too, are tombs and sculptures testifying to a civilization as fixated on trade as it was on the afterlife.  The narrow, twisting canyon surely qualifies as one of nature’s greatest wonders, the most magnificent city gateway in all the world, ancient or modern.  When at last the end is near, a few columns of “The Treasury,” Petra’s most famous facade, can be glimpsed, hinting at a greater human presence only meters away and beckoning the traveler from the cool canyon to the ancient city’s broad street and warm sun.
    Then you stand before it, The Treasury, so named because the Bedouins in the area were sure that treasure lay hidden somewhere within.  They searched for centuries, but found nothing.  In fact, The Treasury is a tomb, like all the great facades of Petra, tombs carved into the rock, with very little room behind them, for people did not live there.  Only the dead occupied the great “buildings” 2000 years ago.  More recently, Bedouins lived in the spaces, making a life in rooms the ancients had decreed fit only for corpses on their way to Paradise.  The ancient city of Petra, capital of the Nabataean world, existed on the flat places between the hillsides.  Little remains to behold of that life, but Petra retains the way they treated their honored dead, and The Treasury is the best of many such monuments.
    We walked, we climbed, we learned from our guide, we saw and photographed, and then we made the long upward march back to the site’s beginning.  “Why do they call this area ‘Wadi Musa’?” I asked the guide, who explained that locals deemed this the place where Moses had led the Israelites when, dying of thirst, they demanded water.  God told Moses to speak to a stone, and water would come forth for the people.  Moses, however, struck the rock with his staff.  Though water flowed forth nonetheless, God told Moses that he had disobeyed and condemned him never to set foot in the Promised Land.  Then the guide smiled.  “The rock and the fountain of water are here.  Remind me. I’ll take you there after lunch.”
       We ate quickly because we wanted to see the rock, see the water source, Ayn Musa.  A mere minute from our restaurant, the guide was parking his car in front of a small, three-domed structure open to all.  I crossed the street and stepped inside.  A rock that would fit just under a table for six stood above an oblong pool where water continuously gurgled from the earth.  Ayn Musa. 
    I touched the rock, put my hand in the water, considered the Torah traditions and history behind this place, then stood back and let others have their turn.  As Muslims pass in their vehicles, they stop for minute and do as I did.  Our guide said that despite recent drought-filled years, Ayn Musa was giving more water than ever.  “I think it’s a miracle,” he declared.
    I pondered that Moses moment.  Why did it cause God to withhold him from the Land of Israel?  Years before, Moses had struck a rock, and it gave water, but that was early in the Exodus, when he was leading a slave people who had known only the rule of force.  The new generation could not be threatened by a beating.  They were free people, and just as Moses was told to communicate with the rock, so he would have to communicate with the Israelites in order to lead them.  Striking the rock signified to God that, with only 100 miles to the Jericho crossing, Moses was not ever going to become the great communicator.  He led slaves well, but Moses could not lead a free people into the Land.  We, too, are generations that understand communication, reason, feeling, but not force.
    There was another lesson to be learned at that rock.  Petra means “rock.”  Ayn Musa is also a rock.  Petra is Nabataean rock, Roman, Byzantine and Crusader rocks.  Ayn Musa is a Jewish rock.  Loren and I saw Petra’s architecture, its beauty, its stunning canyon colors – one of the 7 wonders of the world.
    Rather do I commend to you the 8th wonder of the world, better than all the rest,  the wonder of a Jewish heart that finds a fountain of inspiration in its own history.  The Musa stone is in Jordan, but it’s Jewish.  The Musa water is in Jordan, but it’s Jewish.  The stone and the water are in a Muslim memorial, but it’s Jewish, too.  Moses, the stone, the water – they tell our story, bring us a step closer to Israel, testify to our God-given need to be free and to speak our truths.
    We paid a price to visit Petra, and it was worth it, though Petra is largely a monument to the dead.  Nearby, Ayn Musa touches the eighth wonder of the world, the living Jewish heart, which must revisit the message of Moses’ rock in every generation.  It calls us to renew Jewish life and leadership in our time, to grow as free people do, through heartfelt communication, not through force.  If we Jews do not speak our hearts to each other, there’s a price to pay: the cost is our future.