I don’t have any status to report today on the SEED applications because I can’t get in to Sun’s
network to read my email. I trust that Tanya has everything well in hand and I will send an update
when I am home on Monday.
From Herzliya, John and I took a day-long tour of Masada, the oasis at Ein Gedi, Qumran caves
(where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found), and the Dead Sea itself. It was very
interesting to me to see how much the Masada area has developed in the 25 years
since I was last there. In particular, my 1979 experience of running up the snake
trail in less than 1/2 hour and arriving at the top of the Masada mesa completely out
of breath was very much on my mind as our tour group took the brief cable car ride up from the
multi-storey parking structure and visitors’ center to the top. I had not remembered
all of the birds among the ruins: orange winged black birds, ravens, sparrows, and pigeons
were in abundance. The ibexes that we had seen on the drive in had also been among the
ruins at the top – their scat was everywhere. My memory of the Judean dessert below the
mesa being virtually empty except for the huge squares marking where the Roman beseigers had their
camps did not match the new network of roads and buildings now running right up to the
edges of the ancient ruins. Masada is still a disturbing and fascinating site, just much more
civilized than I remembered.
The tour bus dropped us off at the end of the day at our Jerusalem hotel. We were quite ready
to be out of the bus since hearing the driver’s non-stop and virulent anti-Palestinean opinions had gotten
very tiresome. He was set off when we passed through several groups of Bedouin camps on the way to
and from the Dead Sea. Watching the boys herding their goats or sheep on the limestone strewn hillsides
brought to mind King David’s boyhood occupation. We also saw ostriches and donkeys used to clean up
the grass and litter under the date palms of the kibbutzim. We even saw a camel with a fancy saddle which
could be rented for rides and photos with the “Sea Level” sign on the way down to the Dead Sea far below.
The land between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea reminded me very strongly of Nevada and the dryer parts
of California. There were even tumbleweeds!
Yesterday was our first day in Jerusalem. Our hotel was near the YMCA and King David Hotel.
We started off by walking to the Jaffa Gate and from there to the Church of the Holy Sephulcre.
There were very few people around so we got to spend an unusually long amount of time at Golgotha
and Christ’s Tomb before the tour groups started arriving. It was interesting to read in our guide book that
an 1852 agreement (“Status Quo”) divides custody of this church between the Armenians, Greeks,
Copts, Roman Catholics, Ethiopians, and Syrians with some communal areas. We Protestants do
not seem to have any presence at all. There are parts of this church which feel very real to me, such
as the crosses visitors have cut into the stones. There are big cuts and little ones, some overlapping and
touching at the edges, some very ancient and complex and others just as obviously recent and no more than
two scratches. These are humble reminders of all of the lives which have shared the place of Christ’s Crucifixion, burial, and Resurrection. Other parts of the Church of the Holy Sephulcre feel very foreign and strange in
their complex symbolism and ornamentation.
We did our best to complete our shopping lists once we had left the Church of the Holy Sephulcre. Some
items were easy to find – like olive wood Jerusalem crosses – and others were much harder. We wandered
through Jerusalem’s Arab, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian quarters until after lunch (kababs and salads
at Sindebad’s) and then headed to St. George’s on Nablus Road. St. George’s is a baby among the churches
of Jerusalem, having only been built 96 years ago. However, it is our own Anglican cathedral here so we
went for a visit. Most interesting were the kneelers
which had been enbroidered by Anglican churches around the world for use in Jerusalem. Kneelers are small
rectangular pillows to go between the knees and hard marble floor during services. Each yellow brown kneeler
in St. George’s had the symbol of a church or a saint on top and the name of the place that sent it around the sides.
We saw kneelers from England (of course), Wales, Scotland, USA, Australia, South Africa, and Jerusalem itself.
After visiting the cathedral and finding out when Sunday services would be in English, we went to
St. George’s Bazaar across the street to finish our shopping. The proprieter is named Ibrahim and his canary is
Roley and they put up with lots of dithering on our part until we had assembled our hoard. Roley likes classical
English choral music to sing by so we got to listen to his favorite tapes while shopping. We finished the day with
a Moroccan dinner at Darna. The two tables near by were full of loud political discussions but the food was good.
Today, we went to services at St. George’s, ate a sinful snack of 6 kinds of baklava, konafa, and other local
pastries (with mint tea, of course), walked the ramparts on top of the Old City wall between the Jaffa and
Dung Gates (getting a great view of the huge graveyards on the sides of the Mount of Olives and the backsides
of many famous buildings), visited the Western Wall, were turned away from visiting the Dome of the Rock
(it was too late in the day), and ate dinner at Sindebad’s. We are all done packing and ready for our early
morning flight home tomorrow.
KatysBlog 