'Who so knows himself, whether man or woman,
knows his L-o-r-d'. -- A Sufi saying.
The Wohl Rose Park of Jerusalem (Hebrew: gan vol livradim birushalaim; hence: the Park) is a gift of Maurice (Moshe) and Vivienne (Vivyan) Wohl of 1981. It is located in West Jerusalem between the fancy building of the Bagatz (Hebrew abbreviation for the Supreme Court) and the Kneset (Hebrew: 'Parliament'). The latter being densely draped on the outside with a scaring electric fence. There are lots of park areas in this Jerusalem, but this belongs to the few big ones.
We seem to have completely lost the hermeneutical connection to the Top One Paradisical Garden, as reported in the First Book of Pentateuch. So, let us try to reconstruct and reinterpret anew the story of the First Man's triumph and fall from a post-Modernist cross-cultural prospective. Not by chance have I chosen this reporting methodology. Many usual descriptions of areas like this concentrate of mere enumerations of dozens of facts like colours, numbers, and names. This way of reporting is for me out of place here. This is so since if we want really to enjoy parks, parks should be felt rather than be treated as an intellectual exercise. We have already had enough schools to exercise our untamed cognitive 'temptations'. It is hightime we counter-fought the school writing conventions and further developed the great creative writing potential laying dormant in the excessive readers' minds.
The Biblical Gan Eden (Hebrew: 'Garden of Eden', 'Paradise') is the cultural antecedent to the Tea Garden-Party. This party is a prestigious once-in-a-life event to many of the invited ones. It is organized regularly for her few chosen ones by the Her Majesty Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Defender of Faith, Elisabeth II. The honour of being invited to this upper-class reception on ER II's premises can leave a lifelong unobliterable impression in the minds of many 5 o'clock tea-friendly subjects.
So the pursuit of the Paradise Lost can be experienced in a similar intensive way by some. Cf. the English-language book classic 'Paradise Lost' by Milton. Those some are the regular garden goers, who became fugitives from the polluted city. Actually, what else is the city downtown if not the regressive suburbs of the garden uptown progress, and not vice versa. Let us see, for example, many great examples of Renaissance, Baroque, or Romanticist poetry. These stress the import of a man's comeback to the nature: his evergreen archetypical ambiance of Mesopotamia. The message of the reintegrated Homo Sapiens (Latin: 'thinking man') with Homo Naturalis (Latin: 'natural man') is a main Aquarian message. This message is addressed directly to the dehumanized mankind trapped and enslaved to the industrial mishmash.
The holistic healing, so much stressed in the New Age, is the signal we all might have lost some human quality on the way. I mean the way during our speed-rocketing flight from the village hermit sage's straw hut and going on a 'hajj' (Arabic: 'Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, which is one of the five [mandatory] Pillars of Faith in the Islamic Tradition') into the so-called civilized gold-glittering palace of a literate atavistic hedonist.
If you ask me what the main difference between Gan Eden and Gan Wohl is, I would put it bluntly. In the former they do not litter, while in the latter they tend to do so. This Edenic area is a natural asylum zone from the concrete, glass, and aluminium of building complexes; a eye-healing green refuge from the city traffic and nauseous noise. It is an oft-frequented area for many hareydi Jews and their not less hareydi
Arab Muslim cousins, usually conspicuous en masse on their respective holidays.
Another reason why so many observant folks of different religions spend time in a place like the Wohl Rose Park is they do not watch TV for psychological and religious motives. Thus, they are TV-free, and
the silver screen addiction does not keep them enslaved to the six-wall cages of the home ghetto. From the urban anthropological perspective the evening pavement traffic and interhuman 'visitation' factors decreased drastically after the invention of low-cost TV sets. Tutto summato (Italian: 'to sum up'), there are many ways to *Nirvana* (Sanskrit: 'enlightening'); and some of them are based on the visual-based mind cleansing meditation techniques.
A common link between Mosaism (i.e., Mosaic faith or Judaism) and Islam is they have a well-developed mystical teaching, known as Kabala and Sufism respectively. (For additional first-hand first-class information on Sufi teachings, books and activities you might consult Mr. Yaaqub ibn Yusuf of Jerusalem, who runs his Olam Qatan spiritual and esoteric bookshop at Emek Refaim Street, close to Rabbi David Berg's Jerusalem Kabbalah Centre. If you happen to contact him, please do not forget to give him my words of Peace. Thanks a lot to you, Dear Friend!).
Some Rebbes (Yiddish: 'Jewish mystic leaders') would recommend their disciples to spend time in the woods as part of their regular religious practice. Some would also advise to wear clothes of the mystical white colour: a special all-white dress on shabat (Hebrew: 'Sabbath') or just a a big white woolen kipa (Hebrew: 'skullcap') worn daily, which looks to me as a crown of white made of a sacrificial animal's hair). The all-white garb is typical for some traditional Jews or Muslims of Yemen, while the white cap is characteristic for the male followers of Breslov Hasidut (Hebrew: 'Jewish spiritual teaching as taught by Rabbi Nahman of Breslov') or Islamic Hadith (Arabic: 'Muslim tradition'). The latter usually wear a headgear somewhat thinner than the Jewish one; it is made of cotton with fine interior lacing of octagonal star ornament leitmotif.
Now let me pose a rhetoric question, even two. Actually, what else does a human race tourist aware of his relife (my own term for 'real life'), who wants to purses the true Art of Living, need more in his lifelong journey than a comprehensive psychosomatic balance between the heaven his soul came from and the earth his flesh was formed from? Does not each and every of our Six Thousand Million Plus earthly pilgrims or heavenly souls imprisoned for life in the vessel of flesh and blood need but comprehensive peace accords with His Creator and all His creatures, to fulfill the G-o-d-endowed potential? Cf. the Psalmist's voice (in the desert of life's harsh jamming) in a simplified Modern Hebrew transcription:
sefer tehilim, perek kaf-gimel, psukim alef-bet:
(1) mizmor ledavid; hashem roi lo ehsar.
(2) binot deshe yarbisteni; al mey menuhot yenahaleni.
The English rendering of the afore-mentioned Psalm 23:1-2, in the unusual metrical translation:
(1) A psalm of David;
The L-o-r-D's my shepherd
I'll not want.
(2) He makes me down to lie
in pastures green;
He leadeth me
the quiet waters by.'
Also cf. a less dynamic but more literal KJV (King James Version) translation a.k.a. AV ('the Authorized
Version to be read in the churches') of 1611, q.v.:
(1) A psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.
(2) In pastures of tender grass he causeth me to lie down: beside still waters he leadeth me.'
The extensive quotations used by me in this book are meant but at the faithful presentation of the original author's style. Besides, intercontexuality is a major positive feature of the present-day Post-Modernist writing: no longer can we, the global community of all races and colours and creeds and cultures exist without each other. My own remake of his/her words could be but an asymptotic approximation to the author's mental intent. Subsequently, I might distort uneliberately the beauty of his stylistic *licentia poetica* (Latin: 'poetic licence'). For me the boundary line between poetry and non-poetry writing, be it the so-called creative or non-creative sort of writing, is very fine. So, let us hear what the ancient classics would consider the poetry.
'At the touch of love every one becomes poet. *Plato*'
(Greenberg 1963:163)
And as far as the Edenic oasis symbolism is concerned, we might consult an expert in the Rose Studies:
'Since the days of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage and an influential writer in the third century, the
*Rosa*, together with the *Corona purpurea*, had been an accepted symbol of martyrdom. (...)
'The Virgin Mary was called *Rosa mystica*. The rose was a symbol of Paradise, too (...).'
(Goor 1981:7).
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