Jerusalem Days

This past week in Jerusalem has been interesting enough. I'm going to post separately on Mini Israel and my trip to Bethlehem and Hebron, but lets see if I can get the rest out in one shot.

Waking up the day my parents left, I'd made arrangements to go to church and into Jerusalem with Becky. Her boyfriend, Ambrose, was taking the day down in the Negev to see how farming is done in the desert (he is himself a farmer).

First things first, though: I checked into the Pilgrim Guest House at St. George's Cathedral. What a great place. I've since canceled my reservations at a slightly cheaper place in order to stay here during Maria's visit; it's just that good.

So after church the two of us went through the Old City and out the Dung Gate, just south of the Western Wall Plaza, to the excavations of the City of David. In the times of David and Solomon and during the Herodian period (Jesus' day), this was within the city walls, but the later Crusader and Ottoman walls have moved the Old City north of its original location (Jesus' Jerusalem, built by successive Herods, encompased both Solomonic Jerusalem and the contemporary Old City, and more). The digs there are impressive, though you really have to know what you're looking at. Currently, two major structures are under excavation: the so-called Large Stone Structure and the Stepped Stone Structure. The latter, I believe, is the complex thought to be either a pre-Davidic Jebusite fortress (the one David captured in 2 Samuel 5) or the palace of King David himself. Either way, several houses are built atop the structure, and contrary to popular imagination, the Israeli government isn't just going to bulldoze them despite the cache of information held within.

After crawling through the dry section of the ancient water system, Becky and I made our way west along the southern wall up to Mount Zion. There we went in Dormition Abbey, the Franciscan church commemorating the spot of the Virgin Mary's death and ascension into heaven. The church is very impressive, containing mosaics with designs from nations across the globe; the crypt beneath also has a series of alcoves with unique cultural features. It's a welcome change from the darkness of the Holy Sepulcher or the opulence of some other churches here.

The following day Ambrose had returned, and we linked up with two other remaining members of the group, Ashley and her mother Mayra. I was named the official tour guide for the day (they had gone the previous day to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum, which I have yet to get to but not for lack of trying), so we went to the Jaffa Gate to do the ramparts walk. This walk took us around the northern city walls, from the Jaffa Gate, over the New, Damascus, and Herod's or Flowers Gate, and then back to ground level at St. Stephen's or the Lion's Gate. From where Becky and Ambrose went off to have the day together, and I led Ashley and Mayra to the City of David.

I wanted to do this again because the previous day I had no appropriate swimwear, and the most interesting part of the site is the tunnel of Hezekiah. Ashley was up for it, too. Hezekiah's tunnel is a water channel dug between the Gihon Spring, outside the city walls, and the Pool of Siloam, an essential source of water for the city. Previously, the Israelites had utilized the Canaanite tunnel, the now-dry course that I'd walked the previous day with Becky. However, the Canaanite tunnel was inefficient and now easily concealable. When the Assyrians threatened a siege of Jerusalem, the King Hezekiah ordered the Gihon Spring camouflaged so that the Assyrians could not make use of it or cut off the city's water, and then ordered construction of a deeper, more efficient tunnel (cf. 2 Chronicles 32). Water still flows through it today, and you need to have water shoes, a flashlight, and pants you're willing to get wet to make the 40-minute walk end to end. It was good fun.

That evening, we met up with Ambrose and Becky again for a nice dinner together in the American Colony Hotel. Ambrose was wonderfully generous, paying for that final meal himself.
The next morning I woke up quite alone, but determined to make it to Latrun. Latrun is the likely and traditional site of the biblical Emmaus, toward which the distraught disciples were walking when they encountered the risen Christ in Luke 24. Today, it hosts the educational and absurd theme park Mini Israel and, on a more classical note, the famous Latrun. This was also my first experience with the Israeli bus system, Egged. After being dropped off seemingly in the official Middle of Nowhere, I followed the directions from Lonely Planet and Google Earth toward Mini Israel, a mile hike down the highway. This is the ridiculousness I found:

Pictured: Mini Tel Aviv

With more about that later, I made my way back to the bus stop, across the intersecting street, and up the hill to the Latrun Monastery. To be honest, there really isn't too much to do there, but it's a very nice place operates vineyards known throughout the country.

After realizing that I hadn't used my voice the entire day and had encountered no native English speakers, I was relieved that the following day I was scheduled to meet Vlad on Ben Yehuda St. Vladimir Fefer is a great friend from high school. We did a lot of theater and choir together, and he did improv comedy for D.C. for awhile. For the past four years, he's been here in Jerusalem studying at yeshiva (Jewish seminary), learning Torah and Talmud. He's also hilarious.
Lunch with Vlad was exactly what I needed. Plus, it gave me the chance to find Ben Yehuda St, a centrally located marketing district that's a fifteen minute walk from St. George's. We had a nice leisurely lunch for a couple hours, talking life and religion- he filled me in on the details of some first and second century Jewish sages whom I find fascinating- until he had to get back to yeshiva for seder. Unfortunately, that probably won't be happening again, as he's almost always under lock and key there, and had to make a special exception to come see me. That, of course, was doubly nice of him.

At that point all the sites were closed, and I've been trying to make it to the temple mount, the Crusader Citadel, and Yad Vashem ever since with no luck. In fact, just this morning I waited for the bus to Mt. Herzl, the national cemetery adjacent to Yad Vashem, only to be told about six different things by two bus drivers. I'll try again tomorrow. As for today, I'm going to make another attempt at the Haram al-Sharif (temple mount) and the Citadel.

The next day was Hebron and Bethlehem with the Alternative Tourism Group, but as I said, that gets it's own post. The upshot of that, however, is that I met a guy on the tour from Waldorf Maryland named Mark. We ended up spending the evening together as well, and linked up the next two nights as well. Saturday night, we ended up at the Western Wall during Shabbat. What a party! Lets be clear: Jewish Saturday is not Christian Sunday. Every Shabbat is Christmas and Easter in to one. It's a time of joy and celebration at God's upholding of his covenant with Israel and the capstone of his creation (completed at sundown on Friday, the beginning of Shabbat), when the Jewish people can celebrate all the good things Yahweh has given them in his good creation. Just as Shabbat was starting, when cameras are not allowed to be used in the Jewish Quarter (electronic devices constitute making a fire, cf. Ex 35:3), I managed to snap one last photo of congregating soldiers and other young men to capture the atmosphere:
After seeing Shabbat, we headed toward the Holy Sepulcher. Remember the hour and a half line on my previous visit? This time the line was fifteen or twenty minutes into the tomb, and there was no line whatsoever going up to Calvary at the other end of the church. How amazing is that?

A little about Mark: this born-again believer is half Korean, half Indian, and now lives in South Korea teaching English to schoolchildren. Like me he's a solo traveler, going in the opposite direction. Right about now he should be in Amman or Petra. You can imagine he was thrilled to have such a perfect opportunity to get in to the Holy Sepulcher. Anyways, meeting up with him was a huge blessing. We had thought about going to Jericho on Saturday for an organized half day tour, but his time here is limited and he got a better offer for a full day tour to Jericho, Masada, Qumran, and Ein Gedi. I told him to go ahead, since I was planning on going to Jericho on Monday (that didn't happen either because of the weather). No matter; I had a nice relaxing day to catch up on pictures and blog entries, as you may have noticed. We still met up that evening, though, with an Irish fellow named Seamus that he'd met on the day tour. We ate at Cafe Rimon, where I'd had lunch with Vlad, and then said goodbye to Mark, for on Sunday we was off to the Allenby-Hussein bridge.

Sunday was another calm day, with a good church service. Yesterday I made it to the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum. The former is largely under renovation, but the Shrine of the Book and the model of Jerusalem in AD 66, on the eve of the Great Jewish Revolt, are open for visitors. After two hours in the museum, that was clearly more than enough. Moreover, the previous Sunday I'd stopped in the Rockefeller Museum with Becky, which is housing many of the Israel Museum's permanent exhibitions, so no complaints there.

The Shrine of the Book (pictured left) is where the Israel Antiquities Authority houses their most extensive public display of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've already posted a bit on the site of the discovery, Qumran- its simplicity and austerity- but the displays in the Shrine of the Book really helped the life of that strange, turn-of-the-millennium community come alive. Equally fascinating was the lower level display of the Aleppo Codex, a nearly-complete, thousand year old manuscript of the Old Testament (Tanakh) in Masoretic text. You can read about its tumultuous journey elsewhere, but suffice it to say that this most critical of OT manuscripts has survived many incidents that individual Jews have not.

The Israel Museum also houses the most accurate and extensive model of first century Jerusalem in the world. Built in 1:50 scale, no one picture can do it justice. That's why I took about fifty, with their own devoted album on Facebook. The one to the right, however, is the standard view of the city from the east, atop the Mount of Olives.

The Bible Lands Museum is literally across the street. It's actual collection is hardly worth mentioning- the only piece of any significance that I could identify was a single Ebla tablet- but the displays are remarkable. The museum is arranged chronologically into fourteen sections, covering the whole of the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds from Hunter Gatherers to Sassanid (4th century AD) Persia.

From there I made my way back to St. George's through the worst rain storm Israel has seen in two years. Despite the raincoat, I arrived looking as though I'd jumped in a pool with all my clothes on. Alas, I didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture, especially not when I reached my room and discovered that the window had a leak. After not a few towels, I was changed into fresh clothes and online with Maria.
And that finally brings us up to the present.