was, from all places… a development named ‘San Diego’:
While youngsters, both Debbie and Mark had accounts at Gibraltar Savings and Loan Association of Beverly Hills, and owned, as their adverts used to say, “a piece of the rock.” Mark recalls going to the Baldwin Hills opening of the branch next door to the Baldwin Hills movie theater with his family and everyone in the family started an account. His mother kept her account there even after the bank was bought out by another company, until she moved to Poway. When Mark and Debbie started dating, she had a job at the Beverly Hills corporate office on Wilshire Blvd. We met there after work a few times to go out.
At first it seemed that going to Gibraltar while exploring Spain, Western France, and we still planned Portugal, was too much. Mark was willing to drop the Rock from the list. At Debbie’s encouragement we kept it on our list.As we drove along the coast from Torremolinos we commented, first on the road signs with Arabic text, then on how much English we saw in the advertising. The housing developments became larger and the number of golf courses increased until…
Our first view of the Rock
was, from all places… a development named ‘San Diego’:
Once again, taking a “wrong” turn led to a nice adventure. As we approached Gibraltar, it was not clear to us which of the various road signs led to the rock. We chose to follow the sign to “San Roque” (erroneously thinking “rock”) and found ourselves in a little town directly opposite Gibraltar. The English-speaking young man at the Tourist Office gave us a full history of the town. He made sure that we understood that the residents of the town of San Roque are the true “Gibraltarians,” descendants of the Spaniards living on the Rock when it was captured by the British. The town is know as the “Very Noble and Most Loyal City of San Roque, Gibraltar in Exile.” Mark asked if any of the residents had keys to their homes on the Rock, but… he received no response. After walking up to the top of the hill in San Roque, we enjoyed another wonderful view of Gibraltar
we enjoyed a light snack (but no tapas) in the garden patio
of a little tapas bar that forms part of the wall of the Plaza de Armas where modern bullfighting was supposedly invented.
The plaque behind us may have more of the story, but it’s too small to read from the photo and we did not see it then.
You need a passport to get into Gibraltar—it still belongs to Great Britain and not Spain. Almost everyone there speaks “British.” There is something a bit unreal about the place. We took a bus from the border into Main Street (its true name). The too short bus ride (we could have easily walked it, but did not know) felt almost as though we had paid our entrance fees to get to a Magic Kingdom. It’s also very commercial. At first it seemed as though certain ethnic groups have control of specific concessions: one group has liquor, another has electronics. But as we progressed that turned out not to be the case. We had noticed wealthy Muslim women in Granada. The Muslim population we saw in Gibraltar seemed different.
Mark has taught an Introduction to Judaism course nearly every year since Ordination. Towards the very beginning of his course, he explains the creation of one aspect of the physical geography of ancient Israel:
To the ancient world Gibraltar wasWe were interested to note that the cities and geographical phenomena indicated on the map in the disk represent a very Hellenistic centered view of the “The Ancient World”:
known as Mons Calpe. One of the
legendary pillars created by
Hercules as a religious shrine-and
as an entrance to Hades. To many, it
signified the non plus ultra, the
end of the then known world.
There’s also a Talmud Torah (children’s religious school) under video security surveillance and, directly across the street a Kosher “deli.”
We saw a number of interesting signs in the shop windows, for instance, an advertisement for an interfaith calendar
and one for a theater piece dealing with the Sho’a, music by Leonard Cohen.
