April 21 – Ashdod-Jerusalem, Israel. Well it's another two days of bus travel. If I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. It's just that bus travel is not nearly so inviting to me as it was when I was 35. I love the walking tours and the small van tours that we sometimes get but big buses are a pain. That's what produces the somewhat negative feel to my prose. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the sights I'm seeing. The nice thing here is that we don't have a marathon bus trip to get to our destinations. It'll be about half the time we spent getting to Cairo.
It has been 30 years since I have been in Israel. I went there in 1968 when I was in the US Air Force, in civilian clothes of course. Diana and I went back in 1982 with our church in Bellflower. The pastor there loved Israel and led a tour there every other year for as long as he was able. He had a hand-selected guide, critical to a successful trip and was able to organize the itinerary to his liking. It was 16 days but with the 2 days of travel to and from you spent 2 weeks on the ground. It was great!
This trip will be 2 days and it's going to be an interesting two days. This is Passover for the Jews and Holy Week for the Christians. The only group sitting this week out will be the Muslims. Passover and Easter don't usually occur at the same time so this is the year of the double whammy. Jerusalem should be packed with both Jews and Christians from all over the world. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of our stops were eliminated or shortened because it's going to be crowded, especially at the locations that have anything to do with Holy Week. Unfortunately that's just about half of the old city of Jerusalem.
I teach a class on the Feasts of the Lord in Israel and this week covers three of them and one of the most important ones, Passover. The two other spring feasts are Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits. For Jews these feasts celebrate their deliverance from bondage in Egypt, the fact that they were ordered to not eat leaven (yeast, often a symbol in scriptures for sin) for a week and the spring renewal of the earth and the bounty of food it supplies. (That's way oversimplified but after running on and on about pyramids and pharaohs I'm feeling a little guilty!) For Christians if means all that plus the events fulfilling prophecies of the Messiah who we believe was Jesus Christ. Passover commemorates His crucifixion, Unleavened Bread his sinless life and his body sacrificed for us and Firstfruits His resurrection to eternal life with the Father, foreshadowing our future resurrection. It's easy to see why this week is important to both religions.
The political nation of Israel was formed in 1948 after the British grew tired of managing the disputes between the Arabs and the Jews. Palestine was a nation formed by treaty and not any sort of ethnicity or race. Basically they are Islamic of one sort or another. Our ever vigilant and mostly ignorant media has foisted the false dichotomy between Jew and Palestinian on us. As one indication of how determined they were to reestablish a Jewish homeland in their historic real estate they wanted to select a language to unify them. Even though Ancient Hebrew was an all but dead language without vowels, punctuation and the like they revived it, made the necessary changes and it became the national language of Israel. Now that's determination. They could just as easily selected one of the more common languages spoken by the people who immigrated starting in the early 1900s but that would not have served the purpose of forming a national identity to unify them.
Political Stupidity Note: Jews are descendants of the Israeli tribes of Judah and Benjamin with Levites thrown in. As a people they have been know since ancient history. Palestinians are people who happened to live in this area as the result of its long-term occupation by the Ottoman Empire when the British formed the protectorate of Palestine in the last century or thereabouts. Not exactly an apples to apples comparison. They are ethnically and religiously not significantly different from the residents of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or Egypt, countries who banded together to drive the newly formed nation of Israel into the sea in 1948. Their combined military might should have crushed the new nation in a matter of days. Instead they had their butts kicked soundly and didn't really try again until 1967 when again they had their butts kicked even harder and lost a lot of land to the Israelis, the so-called West Bank, Gaza and the entire Sinai Peninsula. They traded the Sinai back to Egypt for a peace treaty and so far that has worked well. With the current problems in Egypt we'll have to see if that trend continues.
They returned the so-called Gaza Strip to the Palestinians and that has not worked nearly as well. It's probably significant that, although they are brothers ethnically and religiously, the aggressors in the 1948 war did not allow them to assimilate into their society and that's why they insist they have a right to a nation of their own. This is like all the illegal aliens in the USA demanding that we give them land for a nation inside our borders. Just a little bit too silly a concept for serious consideration and yet somehow the UN and now unfortunately the USA seems to think is a good idea for the Jews of Israel. Most Palestinians just want to go about their business in peace. Unfortunately they are the true definition of a 'silent majority.' The are unwilling or unable to control the radical minority among them that is constantly sending young men and women as human bombs to harass Israel. I'd have a lot more respect for them if the religious leaders went as the human bombs themselves instead of sending children. To misquote Nathan Hale, one of my favorite American patriots, "My only regret is that I only have a few hundred children's lives to lose for my country." I doubt we'd remember the phrase has he been that much a coward.
The short message is that if the Islamic countries had been successful in any of their wars against Israel I doubt that the UN or USA or anyone else would be entertaining the idea of portioning any part of the Muslim victor's land to make as home state for the Jews. And secondly, if Israel ever agrees to a separate Palestinian state inside the borders of what is now Israel we will know they have finally lost their minds completely. Can you imagine a separate Mexican state in and around Saint Louis or Atlanta? As a friend of mine in the Air Force was fond of saying, "Sooner or later there's gonna be trouble!" I warned you about reading the italics and now you know why. I've been relatively calm on this trip so there haven't been many.
Israeli ingenuity and inventiveness never fails to impress me. Every port we've been in all over the world then the ship nears the pier the sailors toss a light line to the handlers ashore and they pull the heavy lines that keep the ship in place across by hand, often requiring two or mover men to get the heavy wet rope up to the pier from the water. These two line handlers ere having none of that hard, wet work. When the light line came across they put it on the far side of the large cleat from this small pickup truck. One man tied the line to the trailer hitch of the truck and drove away from the cleat until the heavy line got to it and the second man flipped the spliced in loop over the bollard and the ship could winch away until we were positioned correctly. Amazingly easy and efficient.
As you would expect security here is tight. They have created a perimeter of cargo containers around a large section of the pier closest to the ship and security people are in evidence both inside and outside this area.
We departed the ship and began driving across the Maritimes, the section of Israel along the Mediterranean. This coastal zone is warm and gets more rain than the other zones of the country. As you begin to climb into the hills you get to the foothills of the Judean Hills. Here it's cooler and a little less rainy. Atop the Judean Hills it's still cooler, Jerusalem, at the very top, gets snow in the winter.
Practical Note: That's why we are almost certain Jesus was not born in December; no shepherd in his right mind would be grazing his sheep high in the Judean hills in December. December twenty fifth coincides with a pagan celebration and since many of the early Christians were slaves it was safe to have Christmas at that time because their masters were otherwise occupied. His actual birth is much more likely to have occurred in late spring. The date of the birth and celebration are of little importance. The important thing is that it happened and that we remember it.
When you cross the ridge of the Judean Hills the change is immediate and drastic. The eastern slope of the Judean Hills get almost no rain. In the Bible this area is referred to as the Wilderness. It isn't a sand desert but it is almost completely free of any sort of vegetation. Anywhere you see anything green is either the location of a spring or irrigated. At the base of the Wilderness you are in the Jordan Rift Valley and the site of the Jordan River. Like Egypt, where anything near the Nile is green and anything not is parched Sahara, the Jordan River valley is as green as anything you'll ever see. Date palms, banana trees, olives, citrus, figs and all sorts of fruits and vegetables are grown here. There are also large ponds for aquaculture. There are several species of fish they farm here. Since the river is now the border between Jordan and Israel the treaty between the two has allowed them to cooperate on using the river's water. The Israelis taught the Jordanians their farming techniques and the two parties agreed on how to use the water. Last time we were here the treaty had not been signed and you could tell where the river ran from miles away because the Israeli side was green farmland and the Jordanian side was desert.
Back to the bus. Our guide's name is Yaya and he's carrying his trumpet to play as we tour. It will be our signal to gather to return to the bus as well as our rallying point for moving to the next location on a walk. As we drove across the coastal plane it was very clear that the Israelis have spent a lot of time and money on infrastructure. Last time we drove from the coast up to Jerusalem it was on a two-lane road. Now there's a four-lane divided highway that seems to be taking the same route for the most part. There were some scattered small villages on the way that have now grown into respectable towns with most of the new construction being condominium or apartment buildings. With the huge influx of Russian Jews after Glasnost and Perestroika, Russian is now one of the top three foreign languages spoken in the country.
When we arrived in Jerusalem it was all but unrecognizable until we got to the walls of the old city. These had not changed since Suliman the Magnificent had them built in the 1500s during the Ottoman occupation. However everything outside them was different. Our bus dropped us off at the middle of the western city wall, not to be confused with the Western (Wailing) Wall of the temple mount. We walked along the wall until we got to the Jaffa Gate where we entered the old city. Our guide gave us a restroom break here and since I didn't need one I immediately looked around for something to do.
Standing nearby was a small group of police officers. Here in Israel they look more like infantry soldiers, armed to the teeth, wearing flack jackets and carrying a lot of gear but the uniforms are gray/blue and not olive drab. Four were in a small group but the oldest, and tallest, one stood a little off to one side near the security barricade. I wondered over and said hello to him and he answered in English, pay dirt right off the bat. We chatted a little about Israel and Jerusalem and he seemed both surprised and pleased when I told him I was here in 1968 while I was in the Air Force. I would guess that was almost 20 years before he was born. We chatted a little about the changes I noticed since 1982 and he told me that all the improvements around the Jaffa gate had just opened last month. Two of his squad members were women, and very cute women at that. I remarked that the female police officers were every bit as attractive as their counterparts in the Israeli Army. He grinned broadly and told me that he had to agree as his wife was currently in the police but he met her when she was in the army. On that note Yaya's trumpet sounded and we were off for our walk through the old city.
The walls of the old city as well as every building in it are made of or faced with Jerusalem limestone. At most times this gray stone with a slight yellow or ocher tinge is not really very remarkable, but when the sun gets low at dawn or dusk (the golden hours landscape photography) it literally glows with a honey gold hue. It's almost as though the stone has an internal light source. Quite remarkable. The law is, and has been for 50-60 years that if the building is not constructed with the stone it has to be faced with it.
Our first destination was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. After entering by the Jaffa Gate we walked down David Street and after some very Venice like twists, turns and small alleys we found ourselves outside the Church of the Redeemer, the Lutheran headquarters for Jerusalem. It was built in the late 1800s on the side of a former Crusader church. It's right next to the square of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher but we didn't enter as the guide was told the church was not open.
We waited around for a while and then decided to set off to see our next sight the Coenaculum. It was originally constructed by the Crusaders but became a mosque under Ottoman control and Jews and Christians were not allowed in. After the West Bank was added to Israel during the 1967 war it was opened up to visitors. In Christian tradition this is the site of the Last Supper where Jesus instituted the rite of the Eucharist as part of his last Passover Seder dinner. Seven weeks later on the day of Pentecost, Mary, the Apostles and others were gathered here when they received the Holy Spirit. No one can be absolutely certain of many of these locations. The commemoration of important events is the significant part, not where or when we remember them.
The Coenaculum is certainly a small place. It's located on Mount Zion just outside the Zion Gate in the old city wall. Inside the structure still has the ribbed cross vaults typical of Crusader construction but with the niche indicating the direction of Mecca and the mosque pulpit. It's an interesting space but not particularly impressive. The traditional tomb of David and the church commemorating the Assumption of Mary are in the same area of Mt. Zion. We also visited a historic and ancient Jewish synagogue.
As we were exiting the synagogue Yaya told us that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was going to be open for a short time and we should go directly back there. It's about half way across the old city so we hustled back to find that our way in was blocked by the police. Undeterred, Yaya took us around a second way only to find it mobbed by people going the opposite direction. I'll say this for Yaya he doesn't give up. He said he knew one more way into the church square and I couldn't believe it when we found that direction almost deserted.
The same can't be said for the square itself. It was pretty full but Yaya led us toward the church door, which was still closed. Our little group gathered about 8 feet from the door and waited. As we did the square started to fill up and people started cramming themselves into the space like sardines. Eventually the door opened and to everyone's surprise there were people inside that needed to get out before we could get in. It was a little dangerous as people started moving in one direction to provide a path and there was not sufficient free space for them to accomplish that. For a while it was tight enough so that if someone had wanted to take a nap they would have had no problem staying upright. About the time I was starting to look for a way to get us to a safe spot if real pressure started to build up. The people in front of us started moving into the church just in time to prevent me instituting evasive action.
This church is sort of a United Nations for the Orthodox Christians. The Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic, Syrian and Ethiopian Orthodox denominations share in the management of the church building and its services. Each has a small area for it's exclusive use and the other parts and the structure itself are treated as common area and all parties have to agree to any changes and that includes maintenance. They have a strict schedule for use of the common areas.
Because all these parties have to agree on any changes in the common area nothing has been changed since 1852. Consequently the exterior and interior of the church are in poor repair. This fact has produced a most unusual sight on the front façade of the structure. If you look closely you can see a ladder on the top of the carved molding and extending up to the window on the right. That ladder has been there since 1852 because all repairs were stopped at that time due to the disagreement over what should be done. Fortunately some of the shrines inside belong to only one of the groups and can be maintained.
The last five Stations of the Cross are inside this church. According to church tradition, all the events of the crucifixion, preparation and burial took place here. We were able to visit the Stone of Unction the traditional spot commemorating the preparation of Jesus' body for burial and the Sepulcher of Christ the small chapel within the church that is the traditional spot of His burial. The other three stations are upstairs and it was packed with people and not moving. We've been inside before so we headed out to the plaza to people watch and there were a lot of people to observe. There were nuns and priests of various orders from places that still wear traditional habits. Some of them are very pretty, others are just plain funny. Eventually Yaya started playing his trumpet and we all assembled and filed out of the square.
On the way out we walked through the Jewish Quarter and some shops were open. One t-shirt shop caught my eye. It stocked some pretty funny shirts with a Jewish flavor. One had a picture of an F-18 and said 'Don't worry America, Israel will protect you!' Some other examples were, 'Guns n Moses', 'Israel, Uzi does it.' But my favorite had a picture of our president with an Islamic beard and mullah's hat that said 'Obama Bin Laden'. Priceless. It also had several Russian leaders looking like Yasser Arafat. We headed back across the old city to the Zion Gate and out to our waiting bus.
From Jerusalem we are heading south to the town of Bethlehem. It's not very far in miles but it's quite a distance in culture. Bethlehem is in what they call the Palestinian Area of Responsibility created by the Wye Memorandum of 2000. Here the Palestinians are responsible for civil affairs, internal security and public order. You may have seen this area when Israel was constructing a security wall between it and the Jewish area because murder bombings were getting to be a regular occurrence in the late 1990s. Because Yaya is a Jew he could not go with us. We dropped him off before we cleared Israeli security and picked up a Palestinian guide after we cleared through their security. We got lucky; our guide was a Palestinian Christian. When we got back to the ship some buses had gotten Islamic guides and they were nasty, not very informative and rude according to the reports I received. Our guide was great! We came here to visit the Basilica of the Nativity, the traditional site that commemorates Jesus' birth. Bethlehem is home to many Palestinian Christians probably because of the presence of this site. I feel a little sorry for them. Because they are Palestinian the Israelis don't trust them although they are not hostile towards Israel and don't participate in the bombings and other terrorist activities. They are a definite minority and just have to roll with the punches.
Our first stop was at a shop that deals in olive wood carvings among other things. The workmanship was beautiful. They had everything from small statues to huge nativity scenes and in various grades of detail and of course prices. Diana bought some small manger scenes carved from olive wood and I got a fridgie.
One nice thing about it being Easter is that the attention is focused on Jerusalem and not Bethlehem. I've been in Nativity Square three times now and I've never seen it so empty. We didn't have to wait to enter the church. The entrance is called the Door of Humility and it's only 4 feet high and there's a step up immediately inside it. There's no way to enter without bowing and quite a few people bump their heads as they try to bend over and also negotiate the step up.
Bethlehem is 'House of Bread' in Hebrew foreshadowing the birth of the Bread of Life in this city. Both King David of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament were born here. The Basilica of the Nativity has a long history and is one of those 'traditional' sites that modern archeology is tending to prove is the actual site of the event it commemorates. Early Christians revered this site so much that in 135 AD, just 60 years after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and only 100 years after the crucifixion, the emperor Hadrian dedicated the grotto to the god Adonis to eradicate the Christian veneration of the site. There is no record of when this site was first identified as the place of Jesus' birth. In 332, after Constantine had converted the Roman Empire to Christianity from Paganism, Christians were again allowed to come here to worship. It has been a place of worship ever since.
Constantine built the first church, which was destroyed in the Samaritan revolt of the early Sixth Century. Justinian built the present church in 530. It looks more like a fortress than a church because he was taking no chances with further revolts and wanted it to be defensible. The original function of the Door of Humility was to hinder Moslem invaders when they tried to enter the building. It's one of the oldest surviving churches in the holy land because the Persian invaders destroyed most of them. This church was spared because a mosaic on the façade of the church depicted the Three Magi visiting the baby Jesus wearing Persian clothing.
There are trapdoors in the floor of the church that can be opened to disclose mosaics from Constantine's 332 AD church. Today Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian priests, share the church. Unlike the Church of the Nativity, here they get along fine and things can be kept up properly.
The real treasure of the church is the cave under the apse of the sanctuary, the Grotto of the Nativity. There are three altars in a very small space. The primary one is the traditional site of Jesus' birth. It's marked by a silver star with 14 points lit by 15 oil lamps representing the Christian communities of the world. A little distance from this site is a marble slab marking the traditional site of the manger and another commemorating the visit by the Three Magi.
Back up in the church we were exiting through the Armenian chapel some priests were praying led by a priest in a sliver robe and an Archbishop's hat and another man in a golden/orange robe. The rest were dressed in maroon robes with a gold border at the hem and golden yoke over their shoulders and chest. It was an interesting scene but with no flash I don't think my photo will be very clear. It's dark in here. They had a bottle of wine and a Dutch oven like metal pot before them so they might have been getting ready to celebrate communion.
Right next door is the Church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria built in 1881. It's atop the ruins of a Crusader church. This is the site of the Roman Catholic Christmas Eve service that is broadcast worldwide. They have a statue of Saint Jerome, translator of the Vulgate Bible, in the forecourt of the church. He took the ancient Scriptures both Old and New Testaments and translated them from Hebrew and Greek to Latin.
On the walk back down to the parking lot we passed a coffee shop named Stars & Bucks. It's using the same green and white signs and circular logo that looks very much like Starbucks except there are four cups of coffee in the center and not the mermaid. First time I was here in 1968 I saw a burger restaurant called McDavid's with a happy Hassidic man holding orange juice and a hamburger. A cheeseburger could never be kosher because one of the rules is no dairy with meat. I guess you could have a cheese vegiburger but who would want one?
Back in the bus we exited the Palestinian Zone and returned to Israeli control. The guides changed again back to Yaya and we continued back to Jerusalem where we'll spend the night at the Olive Tree Hotel.
On the way we drove up the Kidron Valley between the eastern wall of the old city of Jerusalem atop the western slope and the Mount of Olives to the east. We stopped in front of the Basilica of the Agony, also known as the Church of All Nations because so many countries cooperated in building it. This church commemorates the night that Jesus spent praying in the Garden of Gethsemane just before His arrest. Inside the church is a rock with a short fence surrounding it that is fashioned like a crown of thorns. The roof of the church is covered with little domes that have stained glass windows at their apex displaying the flags of the countries involved in the project. I did locate the USA's dome. They were just starting a mass so I snapped a quick picture of the rock and left the building.
The mosaic across the tympanum over the three-arched front façade is the highlight of the structure. It's very colorful with a lot of golden tiles. Jesus is in the middle with a group of men on the left and women on the right. The men are a soldier, a king (with his crown set on the ground), a student, a musician and an old man dressed as a philosopher. On the woman's side are a mother, a queen, and what appear to be three nuns or women in traditional garb that I don't recognize. Some of each is looking up in worship and others looking down in sadness. There are angels around and some geometric designs. God is at the apex looking down on Jesus who is looking up at God and seems to be asking, 'Must I?' The same question He was asking as he prayed that last evening.
Above the mosaic, at the roof's gable, there's cross between two deer that both face it. Someone commented that it seemed somewhat odd but it's taken from Psalm 42:1 "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. Metaphorically the deer are looking at the source of Living Water. You just gotta love religious symbolism. I'm sure that hundreds of things in every site go right over my head but it's like solving a puzzle to try to interpret what the artist was trying to show. Sort of like reading Shakespeare, not for everyone I guess.
Up the side of the Mount of Olives we could see the golden onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. It's a pretty sight because the church is mostly white with a very pale blue roof.
Directly across the valley is the Golden Gate in the Eastern Wall of Jerusalem. The Muslims closed that gate during the Ottoman occupation and a Muslim cemetery was put in front of it. The New Testament predicts that when the Messiah returns he will come to the Mount of Olives and enter Jerusalem through the Golden Gate. The Muslims are trying to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to ever open the gate to make that possible.
On the way to the hotel we encountered a family belonging to a new ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism that I had not encountered before. The man wore a fur hat but different in design from those I've seen before. He had a long full beard and his side curls were also extremely long. But what made me look twice and notice that he was different was his wife. Her head, what I could see of it from under the scarf she was wearing appeared to be bald. I asked Yaya about them later and he said that they were followers of a certain rabbi and that the women of that sect have to shave their heads. They were waiting to cross a busy intersection and the line up was practically perfect.
After checking in and having dinner we drove up to the top of the Mount of Olives for a view of the old city at night. They have lights on many of the monuments but especially the Dome of the Rock, a mosque that currently occupies the center of the Temple Mount. There's another large more typical mosque on the Temple Mount against the southern wall but they built this one to make sure that the Jews could not build a new temple there and begin the process of ritual sacrifices as predicted in both the Old and New Testaments.
From the Mount of Olives we drove in a huge traffic jam to as near to the Dung Gate in the old wall as we could get. From there we walked into the Jewish Quarter of the old city and to the Western (Wailing) Wall. When the temple was active on the Temple Mount according to Jewish scriptures God dwelt inside it. After 70AD when the Romans destroyed the city including the temple the only spot that remains is the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. This became the holiest site in the Jewish religion and it's part of the reason they won't return the so-called West Bank of Jordan to that country or to the Palestinians. At the start of the Jewish Sabbath, Friday at sunset, this place is mobbed. It's 10 o'clock on Thursday evening and it's pretty busy right not. Of course, it's Passover week so every day is a holy day but the first and last days are Sabbaths and have the additional 'no work' provision active.
The men and women are strictly segregated here, men to the left side, women to the right. There's a white curtain between the two sides. Passover is a joyous occasion for Jews, celebrating their deliverance from Egyptian oppression and oppression in general. There was a group of men in a circle dancing near the wall. Everyone seemed to be in a happy mood. As happy as the ultra-orthodox will allow themselves to show anyway.
One of the men on our tour uses a walker and really does not get around well. All day he mostly stayed on the bus when we toured various sites and the old city. He did get off for meals and at the hotel. But he wanted to get to the Western Wall and had three small pieces of paper he wanted to put in the cracks. It's traditional to put prayers or wishes in the cracks in the wall. Darryl from the Shorex Office helped the man get near the wall using his walker but the crowd was pretty thick right at the wall and it was going to be hard to get space enough for the man to touch it. Darryl had him park the walker and took him by the arm towards the wall. One of the men praying there must have seen them coming and said something in Hebrew because the men against the wall parted like the Red Sea and allowed the man and Darryl to get right up to the wall where he delivered his prayer papers and stood for a short while before backing away. Just like the Red Sea the men closed back to their original positions and the wall was once again completely covered. It was a scene of such grace and kindness on the part of everyone involved that I was too much in awe to preserve the event in pictures. It's these random acts of kindness that keep me from losing all faith in humanity.
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