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Before I talk about the day’s sights I think I should say
something about our tour guide Yair. He is a very interesting character. He is a 46 year old very proud and
patriotic Israeli. He wore a sort
of Crocodile Dundee hat and carried in addition to a backpack a leather case
with a trumpet. Like most Jews,
male and female, he served in the Israeli Defense Force for several years as a
medical paratrooper and then in
the reserves. At various
stops along the way, he would pull out of his backpack the Good News Bible and
would ask a member of the group to read a passage particularly relevant to the
place we were seeing. Then he
would take out his trumpet and play a short piece which also was meaningful to
where we were.
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| Yair with his trumpet |
Our first stop of the day before the crowds came was the
Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is supposed to have prayed on the night before
his arrest. The garden is on the Mount of Olives and was a place that Christ
and his disciples were known to frequent. Thus Judas was able to lead the
authorities there to make their
arrest. Next to the Garden is the
Roman Catholic Church of All Nations.
As with every other edifice in this city, when construction and
renovation is done remains of earlier buildings are found. On this site the remains of a chapel
dating to the 4th century have been found. Also in the church is a piece of bedrock on which Jesus is
said to have prayed. The church
has many beautiful mosaics both inside and outside.
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| Garden of Gethsemane |
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| Mosaics on the facade of the Church of All Nations |
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| Mosaic above the altar of the Church |
We entered the Old City through the Zion Gate. We walked through the Jewish Quarter
to what some believe is King
David’s tomb. It’s located in a
corner of a room in what at one
time was a Byzantine church. It
was very unprepossessing. Who
knows if it is the real site because nothing has been authenticated. As we were leaving the tomb we
encountered a parade of sorts with young boys beating drums and parents who were
Orthodox Jews carrying signs with a man’s face on them and some writing in
Hebrew. Yair, our guide, whipped
out his trumpet and played a Hebrew melody. The parade people cheered and clapped and wanted us to join
them but Yair told them we had to go.
We asked him when they had passed what they were parading for. He told us they were followers of a
rabbi who had died 25 years ago and they believed would come back as the
Messiah. What was interesting
about that was that this particular rabbi was from Crown Heights in New York
and had never been to Israel!
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| The parade for the Crown Heights Rabbi |
We continued walking through the Jewish quarter and saw some
of the old ruins which lie under the city. There are countless layers of civilizations beneath the
current buildings. The city is
built on Mt. Zion which is believed to be the site on which Abraham was going
to sacrifice Isaac, his first born son until God stopped him. All around us were places which are
part of history. It’s kind of
awesome to walk through these streets and alleyways.
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| Ancient ruins uncovered in the Jewish Quarter |
We crossed into the Christian quarter and made our way to
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The emperor Constantine converted to Christianity early in the 4th
century and sent his mother Helena to Jerusalem to look for Christ’s tomb. With the help of two bishops she
reportedly found three crosses near a tomb. This led them to believe that they had found Golgotha, in
Hebrew the place of the skulls, which in Latin was called Calvary. It was on this site that Christ was
crucified and buried in a cave. A
church was built on the spot and over the centuries edifices there have been destroyed; each time
a new church has been built. Parts of what we now see date back to the 12th
century. Inside are two of the
holiest sites in Christianity, the spot on which He was crucified and the tomb
where His body was placed and from which He rose from the dead.
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| Front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Notice the ladder propped up by the window on the 2nd floor |
There is something about this Church which provides a window
into the problems of the Middle East in general. The Church is administered by 6 different branches of the
Catholic faith. In order for
anything to be done to the building all six sects must agree. On the second level of the façade near
the entrance is an old wooden ladder.
It was there when we visited 5 years ago and it’s still propped up
against the wall. It has apparently
been there for more than a century because there has been no agreement about
moving it. Back in the 16th
century one of the Caliphs of the Ottoman Empire realized the Christians
couldn’t agree on things and he gave over the keeping of the keys to the church
and the opening of its doors to two Muslim families. To this day descendants of those families maintain those
responsibilities. So here is an
interesting thing to think about.
If 6 Christian sects can’t agree on something, how are we to expect Christians,
Muslims, and Jews to agree on things?
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| Pontius Pilate's Palace |
After a brief walk through the Armenian quarter and lunch
there we ended our visit to Jerusalem.
It was on to Bethlehem which is located in the West Bank and under
Palestinian control. Our guide was
not allowed to go through the checkpoint with us so we dropped him off. We went through the wall which Israel
has built to separate the Palestinian areas. I won’t go into the politics of this as told to us by
Yair. I’ll just say that the
Israelis have very strong feelings about the need for and success of the fence.
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| A portion of the wall |
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| Border checkpoint through the bus window |
There was a marked difference when we crossed the
“border.” The city of Bethlehem
looked no where near as prosperous.
Interestingly the major tourist site of the city, the Church of the
Nativity, is under the control of Christians, both Armenian and Palestinian. While small, there is a Palestine
Christian community. Our guide for this part of the tour was one of these and
had been baptized in the Church of the Nativity. Before going to the church we stopped in a large gift shop
owned by some of this small community.
Their principal source of income is selling things to tourists and we
made our contribution.
The Church of the Nativity is actually three different
churches connected to one another.
The first and the one built above the grotto where Christ is supposed to
have been born is Greek Orthodox.
Because of the masses of people in there we were only able to see the
entrance to the grotto which lies beneath the altar. The other churches are an Armenian one and a Roman Catholic
one. The latter is the one from which Midnight Mass is televised on Christmas
Eve. The Greek Orthodox Church was
the most ornate one with mosaics dating back to the 4th and 6th
centuries.
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| The very ornate altar area of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Nativity. The grotto where Christ was born lies below |
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| Roman Catholic Church of Nativity |
After a pretty brief visit we were taken back across the
checkpoint, picked up Yair and headed north to meet our ship in Haifa. Once again we passed through fields of
grapes, olives, citrus and other fruit trees. At every turn the Israelis have planted. It’s quite remarkable what they have
done. Traffic was horrendous! Because of the heat wave there are a
number of brush fires around the country which have closed some roads. That combined with the fact that Thursday
afternoon is the beginning of the Jewish weekend made for a long and slow ride
up to Haifa.
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| Haifa at night as we sailed away |
We had two long, very hot days in Israel but they were worth
the time. It’s hard to put it into
words, but as we walked through these places which we’ve learned about and in
which things happened that were so momentous, we couldn’t help feeling
something stirring within our souls.
That may sound trite or cheesy, but everyone we spoke with felt the same
thing.
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