An Opportunity to Look and Listen

December 6th, Anna-Lee and I were given the rich opportunity to share with our home church about our trip to Israel.
What a blessing.
You can actually listen to our talk at this link:
http://www.wocc.ca/Listen
Our learning will never be done...

Over but not over

We've been home for a few days now.
Doctor's appointments, jet lag, and working at reestablishing routine has been our game plan.
The things learned in Israel do not stop with the blog though.
My learning will come out in Sunday School teaching, in the way I read the Bible, in my prayers, and a host of ways I likely do not yet know.
If you are interested in continuing listening to our thoughts, drop me a comment and I'll send you the url to my and/or Anna-Lee's main blog site.
Thanks for joining us in Israel!
Shalom

Tower of David

A couple days ago we met a friend's daughter outside King David Citadel or also known as The Tower of David Museum which includes the Citadel.
It is intriguing and fascinating from the outside, so today, on our day off, Anna-Lee and I decided to venture in.

If it is this magnificent on the outside, what is on the inside?

Inside the courtyard of the citadel, now made into a museum of the history of Jerusalem dating back 3,000 years.

Giving us a map and a "phone" with a  prerecorded self guided tour programmed in English,, Anna-Lee read the map to direct us to the 36 every-which-way stations. Each staion was a history lesson of a particular time period.

I thought I'd done most of the stairs we'd have to do this trip. But no, we decided to climb every stair possible to the highest point in one of the towers - station 4. Here we looked over a 360 degree panorama of Jerusalem. This photo shows the Temple Mount, Dome of the Rock and the inside walls of Old Jerusalem.

Inside the walls of the citadel are rooms with the history of Jerusalem in all the different time periods - Ottoman, Byzantine etc.
This is one place I would enjoy returning to as we only got about 15% of it done.

It helped me use up my remaining shekels however, as we prepared to depart to the airmport and begin the long route home

Waiting at our guest house patio for our bus to take us to the airport

Saying goodbye to one of the four feral cats in our guesthouse as it waits to sneak into the dining room.

Waiting with our team at Ben Gurion airport - Tel Aviv for our 1 a.m. 12 hour flight. Linda was selected as the sacrificial lamb to represent our team for security purposes by the security supervisor. Glad I paid attention to names as I was quizzed on the name of our tour guide and bus driver, where we'd stayed, what we did, how many on the team, what was our connection to one another, where were the other people from, if anyone else joined the team during our tour...

There were around ten stations to security. Just when we thought we were through, we had another one! Other questions I was asked were if I had an Israeli passport, if I was a part of a Jewish organization, how did I know the tour leader and if he was part of a Jewish organization, why did I want to go on the tour, and why now?

An incredible experience from beginning to end.

Shabbat Shalom - Part 2 of our day

S

Celebrating Shabbat tonight with Rifka, an Israeli Mom, and three of her four daughters.

Breaking bread

Shabbat dinner held at our guest house

A lovely time of worship, fellowship and food.
Anna-Lee slept most of the day, so managed well at the dinner.
Off to bed.

Images of Old Jerusalem

Anna-Lee is pretty run down this morning so our guide took us to a clinic nearby on Greek Street to see a doctor. The clinic was closed. Also clinic number 2 was closed and so was the pharmacy.
It is Friday - some getting ready for Shabbat. Others take it as a weekend day. Some open late.

We decided today to just take it at our own speed, so we did not go with the majority of the group to the Jewish market on this our first free day..

Instead we wandered the nearby area of Old Jerusalem catching some images.

The money changer is quite active here in Old Jerusalem. We need NIS - New Israeli Shekels.Money changers seem to be on every street corner, but this is the one we were told to trust by our guide and guesthouse. Granny getting some shekels for lunch time.

Shop owners opening up by putting their wares on display. This is in the Armenian quarter.

 

Jewish men in black and motorcycles - both very common. I think the Orthodox Jewish men walk even faster than our tour guide!

Within Old Jerusalem there is an upscale outdoor "mall." Names recognizable in our Canadian malls, very posh, Also lots of cafes. Sculptures for sale at the door to every store.

,

Columbia, Adidas, Nike, Mango, Shoppers Drug Mart, American Eagle, Clark shoes...

And of course everywhere are the soldiers. Some Israelis we think were in training at this location, as groups of men were carrying huge back packs with rocks in them.

One of the more amazing sculptures

Granny with her latte.

This surprised me. A very common sight to see the Orthodox Jewish men pushing the strollers. Definitely not out for a leisurely stroll though. Before you can click the camera, they are gone.

Taking time to rest.
Sounds of Old Jerusalem through our guest house window.
church bells
cats meowing
Muslim call to prayer
Hebrew language
birds

...And on the street

• many languages - Hebrew and Aramaic, and Greek for those who live here, and then for tourists, every language, tongue and nation.
• shop owners coming out to ask you to come be their "first customer" or "let me show you my store" or "where are you from?" or "what do you need?" or "what is your favorite thing in my store?" 
• Men standing on the streets asking "do you need a guide?"
• Taxi's driving by asking "taxi, taxi, do you need a taxi?"
•  scooters zooming by
• Muslim call to prayer
• church bells

Mount of Olives, Cats, and Tombs

OK. Some of our posts have been a bit heavy because quite frankly, Israel is a place of depth.
It is also a place of cats.
We have not gone anywhere where we have not seen feral cats. 

At every hotel including wandering the dining rooms, sleeping on a patio chair, and waking us up in the night with their cat fights.

on the roads and even on the wheel of a stopped tour bus we walked past

 

and in a first century tomb we looked at.

Speaking of this tomb... this was fascinating for me. It is not at all what the Bible pictures I have seen portray.

Looking at a first century tomb minus the roof. It would have been a cave

In the Old Testament, the tombs would have had the bodies stacked up on top of one another. In the first century, there was a family tomb which you see here. But, in each tomb there are these nicches ) the holes in the walls). This is where bone boxes would be put. Sounds all dreary and gross but wait.
First, they lay the body in the tomb wrapped in clothes and spices. On the third day they would normally come back to check on the body and make sure the person was really dead. Think Lazarus. Dead for four days. Very important because they would have already checked to make sure he was really dead.
Now think Jesus. The women come back on the third day as is custom to check that the body is dead. And it is gone!
But also think Jesus. Not having the family tomb.
Just as a PS, the body then stayed in the tomb for one year, then once decayed, the bones would be put in a bone box into one of the niches.
Our guide tells us we can tell a lot by a culture by their burial customs.
As Greek mentality came into this area, the wealthy started to get their own coffins and become more separate from family.

We were up on the Mount of Olives today with lots more teaching, however here is a quick taste of some of the sights.

We don't have a sign like this outside our church! But here, signs like this are common.

Line up for garden tomb view. Not the tomb of Jesus though. In case you think no one is coming to Israel because of the "situation." We have seen tours from Florida, Nigeria, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Italy, France....

Devotional time with Alan Gilman, our tour leader, at the Garden tomb location.

View of Old Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

There are 8 gates in the Jerusalem wall. This is the Eastern gate - the only one that is closed.

 Anna-Lee is feeling pretty sick tonight with her cough and aches and exhaustion so she is unable to blog tonight.

The weather changes, from warmish in the sun, then it clouds over and the wind picks up and rains. T-shirts, to sweaters to jackets and raincoats...

Yad VaShem - The Holocaust Museum

 Itinerary Change - happening quite often

Hello all,
From Anna-Lee-
I did it! I did not think that I would be able or allowed to do this museum. It has age restriction where you can't go ten or under. We had originally planned that my mom and I would explore the grounds and look at the garden of the righteous gentiles. 
Our group leader though said that my mom should definitely go and that he would wait with me, my mom said that would be fine. I also said that was fine as I know their family personally (their family own Arise School of Dance). But somehow the word got out to someone who had recently been and he said that it would be fine for me to go. It is not that gruesome it is mostly telling about how it came to be and how it ended. 
Now I will give you my view of things, my views might be different than most peoples but that is because I am young. I got most of it but I also found things touching mostly about the people. the children who suffered great loss and struggles. 
How the museum is built is truly amazing Interested in architecture I found how much it can mean to people. You walk in and see a longish hallway - at the end there is a movie slide thing playing. It shows the Jews in Poland before the war, how happy they were and how painless life was for them. Then you walk a bit to a hall where they have two murals with piles of dead body`s all skinny, wounded, and some even with bullets stuck in them. That part shows the end of the war and all the Jews that had died because of being murdered. 
You then enter the first room having some sort of understanding of how a dramatic change occurred to the people in Europe. There in the first room you see Hitler being elected you see people cheering and shouting Heil Hitler, and long live Hitler. You then walk into the next room and see Hitler starting to hate the Jews and just the beginning of the murder. You see him taking them to ghetto type places to keep them away from all other people. 
In the next room you see the Nazis start to do their rounds taking more and more Jews you see them get more and more mistreated as the war goes on. The next room really hit me it was the room that they started to make death camps and concentration camps. Here is where you see people with nothing, they are wearing their striped pajama "uniforms" but it is caked with blood and mud. You see people with guns aimed right at them. Something I had forgotten is that the Jews would actually dig their graves and then be shot and put in right after they finished. They had TVs with people talking about their life at the camps. They were telling of the horrors how they would have to steal bread from others to be able to live. One man said that he lost his hat and if you don`t have a hat then the Nazis will kill you, so he stole someone else`s hat and witnessed that person dying instead of him.  I did not understand what this lady said except that she was shot in the head and did not die. Of course she pretended she was dead until the Nazis left but yes she did not die. 
The next room you see Auschwitz and all the other camps, you see the 500 pairs of shoes that were found in Auschwitz, and a real uniform that someone wore. the uniform was made out of leather like rough fabric and the coat that they would have been given had the star of David on it. 
The next couple of rooms show the good guys slowly defeating the Germans and the war being over you see the people that defeated the Germans going into the camps and finding all those dead bodies all the sickness and uncleanliness. 
At the end you walk out and see Old Jerusalem and New Jerusalem with all the children playing people just doing what they need to do going to work, buying supper, and cleaning their houses.

Right now we are back at our hotel. We have the rest of the day off and tomorrow we are headed out for a full day touring. We are going to the Mount of Olives, and we will also see a sound and light show. That sounds interesting!
I am glad I could write lots because I am not tired or not very tired yet. I hope to be able to tell you about the Mount of Olives tomorrow.
Anna-Lee
 
There are so many things that you would never do now that they did back then.  

From Linda
It is amazing to read the Anna-Lee's impressions because otherwise I would not know how impacting this museum had been for her.

She is right that the architecture added to the experience. The museum is like a long pathway through darkness, narrow, unending, and no way out. Once you start you cannot get out until the end.
We could only take photos outside so there are few pictures in this blog.
Yad VaShem - meaning hand and name. Taken from Isaiah 56:4-5
 
“I will give them in My house and in My walls a place [to memorialize] their deeds, and thus their name (“shem”) [will be continued].”

This museum, although a history lesson to the extreme, is personal. It treats each person who died in the Holocaust as an individual - rather than an event that caused the death of 6 million. It also has recordings of testimonies of Holocaust survivors - each with their story. Very powerful.

This is the path to the Children's memorial. The sculpture represents children who's lives have been cut off as they are broken off pillars.

The Children's memorial was a pitch dark room - you hang on to a bar as you walk around it, and listen to a person speak the name of a child, give the age and country they were from. Each child named died in the Holocaust.I said it was pitch black. Well, not quite. They had candles lit with mirrors all around to make it look like over one million candles. A million and a half children were killed.

There were some national points of light in the main museum as well. Very few, but that makes them seem that much brighter.  A Bulgarian Greek Orthodox priest who refused to hand over Jews to the Nazi's and saved many.
Fishermen from Denmark who hid Jews in their boats and helped them escape.
Finland handed 8 Jews over and then said no more.

Our tour guide asks the question what would we do? His answer I found was very good. How do we handle the little moral choices each day. If we can't handle the little moral decisions, we would probably have succumbed to the Nazi pressure too.

The trees you see in the background are oaks. Each one planted for a righteous Gentile. One who sacrificed to protect the Jewish people. Each has a name plaque. Interestingly, the two that were right here where we started were both people Anna-Lee and I had read biographies about before we came to Israel.

Old Jerusalem

Old Jerusalem = Stairs
I'm thinking we did about 400 stairs today. Maybe more.
The only flat part of today was the Temple Mount and there were even some stairs up there.

Think airport security. All bags searched and scanned, and walk through the detector. Israeli military police everywhere as well as Muslim.

 We got to the site very early. It opens at 7:30 a.m. and closes by 10:00 a.m. for non Muslims. NO audible praying on the Temple Mount unless you are a Muslim. No laughing, or singing, or disrespectful behaviour. It is also a Holy Site dress code meaning shoulders and knees must be covered

Other than the stairs to get there, the line to get in (that's why our guide wanted us up and running so early), it was completely non eventful.
We saw and learned about all the different areas such as the treasury where Jesus would have turned over the tables, outer courtyard, Gentile area, women's area, men's area, and lots of history.

Because the Temple was built on a large (super large) platform on the top of a mountain. A few football fields if I remember correctly), you can picture that the walls would be both above and below the platform. We got to see both. For those in my Sunday School class - remember we measured those huge stones and went out in the parking lot to show how big they were? We got to see those very stones!

240 ton rock

We walked the entire length of the Western Wall underneath

And of course on top where people go to pray. The holiest site for Jewish people right now as they cannot go where the temple once was (as it is now the Dome of the Rock and overseen by the Muslims.

Overlooking the Western Wall (men's section)

At the wall - women's section

The two of us outside the men's section. Very soon after this it began to rain. It is very strange weather right now.

There is a lot of heaviness in Israel. I had asked for prayer before we left because I was already feeling sorrow. Today there was some lightness as some little Jewish boys played in a park during school time. Laughter and joy.

Outside our guest house here in Old Jerusalem

As a group we walked through the Armenian, Jewish, Christian and very quickly with our tour guide in the lead setting the pace and direction, through the Muslim quarter.

Couldn't resist this one of a parrot at the entrance of one of the Muslim shops

From Anna-Lee
Hi,
Today was a very interesting yet intense day. We did lots of walking and lots of learning.
Today we went to the Temple Mount in old Jerusalem. It was interesting trying to get in with all the security. I felt as if I was back at the airport. When we were there, as we walked around, there were a lot of police and soldiers walking around.
We saw lots of old buildings and learned a lot about the first temple and the second temple built by Herod.
We also learned lots about the Muslims and we saw their shrine the Dome of the Rock. It is truly an amazing building and the colours they used are breathtaking. I always thought that the Dome was a mosque but it is really just a shrine though some Muslims do pray in there.
Next we left the Temple Mount and up a flight of stairs and another and another and another... to get to a delightful coffee place for a snack, I had a lava cake (brownie with chocolate sauce inside) and a hot chocolate, my mom had an apple pie tart (mini apple pie)!

Overlooking Old Jerusalem. We had lunch here too.

Then we walked back down the steps we came up to go to the western wall tunnels. They are mostly high cavernous stone cave like things though at some points you might not want to go if you are claustrophobic. Even I who am not felt like it would be very nice to have some fresh air. Some of the stones were huge and by huge I mean longer then your living room. Don`t forget though that they would have been moved only by animals and people they did not have machines back then.
I don`t really remember much after that, I was very tired and it had started to rain. I was wet, tired, and not feeling very good with all my coughing.
We went to a museum and saw some of the Saducees' houses or villas as they are called. We saw lots of dishes and cups and such. Also something our guide said was that they had mosaic floors because they are on Herod`s side. I had never really thought of it that way!

The remains of a Sadducee's home - very large

Example of the real mosaic flooring of a Sadducee's home

A model of one of the Sadducee's homes

I am going to say goodnight,
Anna-Lee