Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Today we left the Dead Sea to head toward Jerusalem. Our first stop was to get a view of the beautiful waterfall at Ein Gedi. This is believed to be the spot where (not yet King) David hid from King Saul. We saw several beautiful mountain goats, called ibexes, that were very comfortable posing for our cameras.
Our next stop was on Mt. Scopus, where we shared our first fiew of the beautiful city of Jerusalem. We shared in Kiddush and chanted together the Shehecheyanu prayer, then joined together in singing Hatikvah (Israel's national anthem).
We then drove into the city to leave our luggage at our hotel, the King Solomon, and went straight to the Hadassah Hospital to see and learn about the beautiful Chagall windows portraying the 12 Tribes. After a brief stop in the hospital's giftshop, we enjoyed lunch from a foodcourt in a nearby mall.
Though some members of our party elected to return to the hotel at this point, many of us went on to participate in anarcheological dig, where we were able to uncover pottery shards and other materials that may be from the time of the Maccabees. In that same area, we noticed the remains of serveral churches built by the Crusaders. On the way back to the hotel, we passed the valley where Samson met Delilah.
Dinner this evening was on our own, giving us a chance to walk around sections of Jerusalem near our hotel. Some of our party enjoyed the cuisine at Little Italy, a kosher Italian restaurant. David and I joined the Greenes for an outstanding dinner at a beautiful restaurant inside (believe it or not) the YMCA. Following dinner we walked across the street to see the famous King David Hotel, then walked past our hotel to enjoy coffee, tea and dessert at Cafe Joe.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tpday we learned a bit about those actions that actually created the State of Israel:
Palmach Museum
The weather was cold and rainy this morning as we drove from the King Solomon Hotel in Jerusalem to the Palmach Museum in Tel Aviv, about 34 miles. Our driver Zecharia continued to handle this huge tour bus as if it were a sports car as he wove it in and out of traffic, and managed to bring it to a rest at the exact spot he chose for it. When we got there, at about 10:20 AM, the sun was trying to come out, but it was still pretty cold.
The Palmach was a military fighting force that played a vital role in the creation and defense of the newborn Israel. (See "background notes" for more information.)
Upon entering the museum one of the first things one sees are large paintings and photographs on the walls; characterizations of some of the men and women who played important roles in the founding of Israel.
The museum is an interactive experience. We went from room to room, in the company of a guide. There were movie screens in each room, and the rooms themselves were fitted out to resemble the venues that appeared on the screen. If the action on the screen took place in a clearing in a wooded area, the room was made to resemble that. If the action took place in a battle-scarred town, the room was made to look like that. We were all given listening devices, which allowed us to understand what was being said in the mini-movies playing on the screen (the dialogues were, of course, in Hebrew!). When we emerged from the tour, it was easy to feel as if we had been following a unit of the Palmach as it fought for Israel’s survival in the early days up to 1948.
Lunch
We then enjoyed a light lunch in a little mall near the museum that was full of eating places and shops. I had shwarma, a pita filled with deliciously seasoned chicken and/or turkey. (A note on the pita bread here: it is different from what one might buy in Publix or Kroger here in Roswell. The pita in Israel is thicker, much more substantial, and quite tasty in its own right.)
Still in Tel Aviv, our next stop:
Independence Hall
This is in a modest house on a nondescript Tel Aviv street. It was inside this house, in the very room in which we sat, that David Ben-Gurion, on May 14, 1948, declared that the State of Israel, a place where he envisioned that any Jew could come to and live in safety, was now in existence.
NOTE: It is very important to understand the circumstances of the Jews up to this period of time in order to really understand what the creation of Israel was all about, and what it really meant. At the very end of this blog I will post a brief history and overview of this. I think it behooves Jews (and indeed anyone who loves justice and has any faith at all in the human spirit) to understand the "why" of Israel. I hope that the brief notes that follow this blog will encourage readers, on their own, to do some deeper study of this event.
Some Background about the Palmach: It must be understood that before World War Two a fair sized number of Jews lived in what was loosely called "Palestine."
NOTE: The word Palestine derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". The Philistines were mediterranean people originating from Asia Minor and Greek localities. They reached the southern coast of Israel in several waves. One group arrived in the pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they came into conflict with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. Another group, coming from Crete after being repulsed from an attempted invasion of Egypt by Rameses III in 1194 BCE, seized the southern coastal area, where they founded five settlements (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gat). In the Persian and Greek periods, foreign settlers - chiefly from the Mediterranean islands - overran the Philistine districts. From the time of Herodotus, Greeks called the eastern coast of the Mediterranean "Syria Palaestina". The Philistines were not Arabs nor even Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks. They did not speak Arabic. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs.
The area continued to change hands many times through history. At the outbreak of World War I, it was in the hands of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and the Turks used the old term "Palestine" to designate this area. After WWI, the area was passed on to the British, who then became the administrators.
The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palastina"; which is derived from the Plesheth, (root palash) was a general term meaning rolling or migratory. This referred to the Philistine's invasion and conquest of the coast from the sea.
Jews who immigrated to "Palestine" up to the outbreak of WWII were often harassed by the Arab peoples already living there, and so the Jews there created the Haganah (1920 to 1948), a defense force that was to help protect Jewish settlements from marauding and rioting Arabs. The British were none to happy about this and other Jewish militias that were in their Palestinian territory, but in the darker days of WWII, it appeared as if General Rommel and the Nazi Army might overtake northern Africa, including Palestine. The British called upon the Haganah to help fight the invading Nazi Army, should this become necessary. The Palmach, formed in 1941, was something of an elite force within the Haganah, who were ready to help the British fight Rommel.
Ayelon Institute
A laundry and bakery Kibbutz hid and underground bullet factory from the British. Even many members of the Kibbutz did not know what was going on under their own feet! On our tour of the Kibbutz, we were able to climb underground to see the set-up.
New Year’s Eve
Our bus brought us back to Jerusalem in the afternoon so we could rest and prepare for our late evening. We celebrated New Year’s Eve at Sheyan Asian Restaurant, a Kosher Chinese restaurant on Ramban Street in Jerusalem. Food was plentiful and wonderful. One of the appetizers was an eggplant dish that was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in a Chinese restaurant. We also had pineapple chicken, chicken with pecans, a spicy beef dish, deliciously prepared vegetables, rice…. and at the end, members of our group had arranged a special desert: a mass of differently flavored sorbet with two huge sparklers (bottle rockets?) protruding from it, and sang "Happy Anniversary" to David and me!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Old City
A sunny but quite chilly New Year’s Day found us at the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. We entered the Old City through the Dung Gate (Since the 2nd century, refuse has been hauled out of the city through this gate, hence the name.) Found in the south wall, this gate is closest in proximity to the Temple Mount. We then proceeded to the area of the Temple. In ancient times, the Temple area consisted of buildings, stalls, the Holy of Holies, and perhaps "offices" built upon a platform (called the Temple Mount) that was raised above street level. One of the walls that supported this platform is what we call today the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall. We stood at this wall, many of us uttering a prayer or two, and following the custom of placing a note into the cracks in the wall.
We were then led into the Western Wall Tunnel, a long underground tunnel exposing the Western Wall in its full length. The Western Wall Tunnels project commenced following the Six-Day War, as an effort to expose additional portions of this wall. Since most of the wall was blocked by buildings which were in contemporary use, the wall in its entirety could not be exposed. Instead, a 500 meter man-made tunnel was excavated along the entire length of the Western Wall, underneath these buildings. We saw remnants of walls and water collection devices called cisterns that were thousands of years old. It is important to understand that there is still archeological excavation going on at this site; in fact, we had to make way several times for some of the dust-covered workers to get past our group.
The Via Dellorosa and Related Sites
Not far from the Temple site were several churches of great significance to many Christians. The Via Dellorosa is said to be the path Jesus took, bearing the cross, on the way to the site of the Crucifixion. This road goes through the Arab Section of the Old City part of Jerusalem, and is marked by the various places Jesus is said to have stopped to rest as he was forced along the way by the Roman soldiers.
After this we had lunch… more shwarma with a salad. David had some of my shwarma, with coffee which he said was very good. (I’m not a coffee drinker, so I wouldn’t know, but he said the coffee on this trip was consistently good, and that is apparently important for coffee drinker types!) Then back to the Arab Quarter to shop, and to Ben Yahuda Street to sightsee and shop some more. Then back to the hotel to rest up a bit, and dinner. This time David and I enjoyed the cuisine at Little Italy.
