Come with me and Micha on a climb from Hell click here

My mother-in-law once said to me “Michael, climbing, it is not a Jewish sport.”. So what sports are, I asked her. “Tennis and swimming” she replied.. Jews are people of the Book. And so are climbers. Just different books.. When I was young I probably read the entire genre of climbing books. Where some survived and many died. You’ve read  “The White Spider”. When I say “There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men” you know whom I am quoting. I used to fantasise about my future contribution to this genre and that my story of survival would be dramatic.

As a teenager I climbed with protection that would terrify me now. After a friend of mine died in a climbing accident, I went skiing and wasted twenty years. But I came back to climbing.

Early in my second climbing career I hired a local Israeli guide, Micha, to update me. We were climbing a 15 metre 5a on a small crag in a park in the centre of Jerusalem. The climb was called, rather mundanely but accurately, The Hole. Above us was a hotel and a cinema complex. Behind us was the Old City. Not exactly storm lashed peaks.

I was on belay, and Micha stopped half way up. Because, rapping down next to our route, was a guy in black dress pants, black street shoes, and a white business shirt. It is the dress of a Talmud scholar. What was most odd was that he wore a teffilah. A tefillah is a small black leather box containing parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, attached to the upper arm. Now we were all Jews together, so we knew what it was. But usually it is only worn in synagogue at morning prayers. Outside synagogue, wearing it is distinctly strange. Half way down a crag is unique.

 Micha, though as far as I knew not a religious Jew, secured himself to the rock and started a Talmudic discussion. Why wear ritual objects outside of prayers? Why endanger yourself (a form of sin in Judaism) and risk it being caught in the rappel device? Our new friend explained that to raise his spiritual level he always wore a teffilah in the mornings. But we never found out why rapping down the cliff was also a spiritual activity. Micha continued up and our friend continued down.

By climbing do you endanger your body and your soul - or do you raise your spiritual level? This is a version of an old Jewish question. Apparently for both the Talmud scholar and my mother in law. Micha went on to Everest. He was the third Israeli to climb it, as part of the Everest Climb for Peace to show that people of different faiths could work together. His Palestinian companion stopped at 7,000 metres. But both Israeli and Palestinian flags were planted on the summit. On the way down Micha lost two toes from frostbite.

So in his way Micha again contributed to the Talmudic debate about your actions possibly endangering or uplifting your body and soul.

Me, I remained a weekend and vacation climber. Although once I joined a commercial Himalayan expedition. (Amadablam by the regular route. I didn’t summit, since you ask). When I checked in at Heathrow airport, wearing high altitude boots and holding my air ticket to Kathmandu, I became, for a moment, a character from the climbing books of my childhood.

But I never described a new route on the Matterhorn. There is no story of my epic survival on an Alaskan peak. My hike to Everest Base Camp is not worth a book.

However, because of our climb in Jerusalem, I can contribute to a very small body of Jewish climbing literature. The name of the park, as transliterated from Hebrew, is Guy Bin Hinom. In English this is Valley of Gehenna. If you check on Google, you will see that Gehenna is reputed to be an ancient place of child sacrifice. And, by Jewish tradition, the entrance to Hell was here.

So I now have my long awaited and dramatic climbing story of survival. “The Climb up from Hell’.