Dreams of Stitching

Israel.  A lifetime of memories. Anticipation.  Our meeting was Feb 6th and we got a booklet from the tour company.  I made my lists…  Found the suitcase.  Measured it.  Started putting things in it.

Fast forward to the 10th. Flew to Seattle cause I hate driving.  And the car logistics.  Stayed in a very inexpensive motel.  Didn’t sleep much.

3/11 Got up at 2:30AM cause we were supposed to be at the airport by 3:30AM for a 6:30 AM flight.  But of course, there was no one there to take our bags, so we yawned at each other.  Did the e-check in using the passport – slick!  Waiting at the airport, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan was constant on the TV.  Praying.  Boarded for our flight to JFK.    Read and talked and napped. 6 hr planned layover in JFK (expensive food!) turned into 8 1/2 hrs because the plane coming in was the last one out of Tokyo…  Prelude to the 11 hour flight with no neck pillow.  I wish I had slept like my seatmates! Flew all night and crossed the Dateline.

3/12 Landed at Tel Aviv

and were met by folks from the tour company that got us to the Hotel.  We took our bags up and then went to dinner.  Weird for us cause we had had breakfast on the plane about 3 hours before.  10 hours ahead of Pacific time.  Food the first night seemed strange because it is buffet and laid out all around the room, so I missed some things but had plenty, of course.

3/13 Oh boy – here we go!  Load the suitcases and find a seat,  Greet the folks who had gone to London prior and try to remember names…  Heading for Caesarea (Maritima, not Philipi, which we visited later.)  Ceasarea was built by Herod the Great in the Roman style.  The Romans built every town in such a way that any Roman could walk into a city and know where the theater was and the bath house and the markeplace…  The main NS street was the Cardo. (We saw part of the Cardo excavated in the middle of old Jerusalem later.) Caesarea was where the apostle Paul was tried before being sent to Rome. If you want to see details, you can click once or even twice on any picture to enlarge it.

We saw an old sarcophagus, The remains of Herod’s palace including some mosaics from his swimming pool, and part of the aqueduct system bringing water to this city that once housed at least 60,000 people, and at one time twice that.

From Caesarea, we traveled to a lunch site and ate felafel.  Nicole Renard took some awesome pictures, which I include because they were better than mine.

We visited Mt. Carmel after lunch and enjoyed the incredible view of the Yizrael (aka Jezreel) Valley, with Mt Tabor (of the Transfiguration) and Nazareth in the distance, center.  Bible study from 1Kings 18 there.

Next we visited Tel (“mound”, referring to the practice of building city upon city in one place) Megiddo.   Called Har Megiddo (the mountain of Megiddo, where we get the term Armegeddon.)  Bible Study here.  We see all kinds of ruins and end by walking down into a monstrous large cistern and coming out near the spring that filled it once.  We descended 183 steps and then walked along a long horizontal portion before passing the spring and climbing a short way out.

We drove through Nazareth and Cana on the way to the Kibbutz-run Nof Ginnosar guesthouse right on Yam Kinnaret (Gennesaret in Luke 5:1) (aka Sea of Galilee or Lake Tiberias.)  So, the little snatches of history or name variations, etc. are only tiny snippets of the information stuffed into our heads each day by our intrepid leader Avi.  He was amazing.  After serving in the Israeli Army for 25 years, he has been doing this for 9 years.  And he is great!   So upbeat, though occasionally overwhelmed at trying to herd 57 wayward individuals…  One of the best things about this hotel is that the lobby has wireless  internet.  We had fun little sessions hanging out and connecting with those back home.

3/14 First we breakfast in true Israeli style.  I cannot even explain that one island contains things I have no idea what they are, except the cheese, which is excellent.  I usually have protein, frequently eggs in some fashion, whole grain, though they had oatmeal only once on the whole trip…   Yogurt and fruit.  Lunch is often late and I love breakfast. After breakfast, we walk to the Ancient Galilee  Boat Museum.  They show a movie about how the boat was found and transported for study. cleaned up, and the types of wood identified.  Wild.  Outside, lovely mosaics adorn the building and a long bench.  And our first serious shopping at the store here.  I got a book and a mezuzah for the office.

After the museum, we head for the Mount of the Beatitudes.  When we arrive, the religious community is singing and the acoustics were awesome.  We gathered outside and worshiped and had a Bible study before we wandered through the church.

Third stop Capernaum (Capharnaum) With 1st century town ruins, a ruined synagogue where Matt did the Bible study, and Peter’s house with a secret room for meeting despite persecution.  A church has been build over the latter, but built in such a way that you can see the ruins.  In addition we headed down to the water where Steve taught the Bible Study, we saw the Golan Heights and got close to the Sea.

The we got to get into a tour boat and ride across the Sea for lunch.

(Why Mt Arbel? “Nearby are the ruins of an ancient Jewish settlement with a Synagogue from the fourth century C.E. with extend pews and columns, and dug into the mountain itself are a number of cliff dwellings. The extant cliff dwellings are from the 17th century and were built by the Druze. There are documented Jewish cliff dwellings dating back to the Second temple period, in the area. ”

After Lunch, we got in the bus and went to Kursi, a church that was built to commemorate Jesus’ healing of a boy in “the country of the Gadarenes” by sending the demons into the pigs that dove into the Sea.  There were seats behind the arch where we sat for another Bible study.  I loved the mosaics.

Finally, we went to the Jordan where many of our group would be baptized.   It is near the outlet of the Sea.  (And although Jesus was likely baptized nearer Jerusalem, that area is part of the West Bank.)  On our way, we passed the 1st kibbutz, begun in 1903.  I got some pictures of the wall outside the baptismal site and then dropped my camera so I did not get pictures of our group in their suits covered by the gown “shroud.”

‘In those days, Jesus came from …

At last, we were on our way back to the hotel.  A lovely, long day.

3/15 The Jordan River is formed from 3 streams.  Today, our first stop was the national park at Tel Dan.  The Dan Stream flowing through the first part of our walk.

The first part of the site is the top layer, the city of Dan, which group conquered the City of Laish (Judges 18).  Thick walls, pavings and city gates with the Judges seat just inside.

1King11:27 Therefore the king asked advice, made two calves of gold, and said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!” 29  And he set up one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. 30  Now this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan.

We got to worship and have a Bible study on these scriptures on the steps to the right. From Tel Dan, you can see the area contested with Syria when they wanted to divert water from the Dan, which was not acceptable to the Israaelis.  I addition, from this overlook, you can see to Lebanon (North.)  Those white things are greenhouses in Lebanon.

That is an Israeli military road in the foreground. The final highlight of the visit to Tel Dan, was the remains of the 2,000-plus year old gate of Laish.  Also, some of the original paving remains!

Caesarea Philipi was our next stop, though now called Banias.  The 2nd stream going to form the Jordan is here.  We had worship and a Bible study here, which included the reference to the verse Mt 16:18  “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”  The Rock is this entire hill, and Peter is a “little rock,” that is, “a chip off the big Rock.”   Cool promise there, too!  We did not look much at the ruins of Caesarea Philipi, but I got one picture.

Then we had a delicious buffet lunch (we were the only tour there, I think – very unusual…) at the Kibbutz HaGoshrim.  Funny cat on the roof drank from the gutter.

The rest of the day was spent at Nimrod Castle and Mt Bental on the Golan Heights.  This is one small part of the whole Fortress.

My first picture above is from the far left below.  See the top of Mt Hermon?

The Golan Heights.  The border with Syria is near.  This military outpost overlooks the border.  The next picture is looking down into Syria.

I read The Lemon Tree before my trip (intense but great book.)  Avi filled in on the history of this contested area here.  Mt Hermon is Israel’s only ski area…  and we believe must have been where Jesus went when, as in Mark 9:2 and Matt 17:2,  “Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves;  and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.”  Or perhaps it was on Mt Tabor to the West of the Galilee. A very long day.  Back to the hotel for our last night in Tiberias.

3/16 We pack up and eat our breakfast and after the bus is loaded, off we go to Bet She’an, an excavated Roman city with a theater, a bath house, a Cardo with mosaics all down the sidewalks and more…

The theater to the right and the bath house to the left and the Cardo (always the main N/S street) up the middle with an unexcavated Tel in the background.

So, the floor is missing, but slaves stoked fires which heated the water and these clay bumps made it all into steam for the hot room.

There were VIP meeting rooms, one with a mosaic still intact.

Then we went to Gideon’s Spring, where Mitch gave the Bible Study, reminding us how God shows his power, after whittling down the number of cowardly Gideon’s men at this site.

Judges Chap 7 “The LORD said to Gideon, “Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set apart by himself; likewise everyone who gets down on his knees to drink.” And the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men; but all the rest of the people got down on their knees to drink water. Then the LORD said to Gideon, “By the three hundred men who lapped I will save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the other people go, every man to his place. ” ” From here we went to Sachne, a warm spring for swimming, though I chose not to.  We were given box lunches with sandwiches, salad and an apple.  Dolores and I wandered about the lovely park.  No pictures… I got pretty sleepy on the drive to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  So I missed getting pictures of the amazing aqueduct system. There were quite a few ritual baths, called mikvah.

The Le Meridien was a very fancy hotel.  Floating in the Dead Sea was the best part of that stay.  The floating is so profound that one must thrash a bit to get one’s feet back down!

3/17 Masada!

What to say about this summer palace cum fortress?  Well they had to be self  sufficient and able to hold out in a siege.  It is very exposed up there and even in March, the desert this close the equator was warm…   And it was an isolated mesa, seemingly impregnable, until the Romans decided to build a ramp.

Water in the desert?  When it rained in the hills far to the west, there would be a flood.  The engineering to harness this was quite sophisticated.  Several dams would slow and direct the flow to the aqueducts and fill phenomenally huge cisterns.  In the top tier, you can see 2 sets of three tiny arches and two single ones below them in the 2nd tier.   In the demo, Avi poured water on the “hills” above and the cisterns filled (and in the demo recycled to the cup to be reused.)

Masada had a dovecote for food, a synagogue, store house complex, bath house, quarry, etc.

The Romans had a number of camps around the mountain, built a wall, and then the ramp.

As we left, I got one last picture of the whole mesa

Next stop, Ein Gedi

Later that afternoon, we have a surprise – dinner and a camel ride.  The scene was laid by an engaging fellow, who took us “back in time” to Father Abraham.  We donned “robes”  and went down the hill.

On the way to Jerusalem, we saw a number of these Bedouin camps.

We have arrived in the Holy City.  We make a stop on top of Mt Scopus to see the view before we head to the hotel via an incredible Olive Wood shop – I made a couple of purchases including a pair of earrings.

3/18

Our first day in Jerusalem.  Another early morning as we have the first two slots in the tour of the Western Wall tunnel!  I had no idea what to expect.  As we wait, we get a few shots of each other in this historic place.  This picture shows the wall, but not the part you’ll see later.  Two things notable are that the masonry on the wall  shows the obvious transition from old to new and that big, ugly thing built up to the wall is a ramp that the Muslims made for getting up to the Mount and that we will go up in  couple of days…  Remember, click the picture to see it larger.

Inside the tunnel, we get to see quite a bit of the original, stupendous masonry (even the paving stones were a foot thick) and the later adaptations built to accommodate  the changes on the temple mount over the centuries.  We come back to this theme when we we go to the Southern Wall steps in a couple of days.

Those holes held stones used to climb the stone while cutting it to fit.  The stones are mostly gone and prayers have been inserted in the holes.

There were little niches and benches throughout the tunnel where people were praying.  This part of the tunnel was very open and high, but a large part of it was tight and low and very claustophobia-inducing for some of our group.

This was not the tightest part – we were absolutely single file for awhile… Ah, emerging – into the Muslim Quarter…

We walked back to the Western Wall area.  There were all kinds of people in the plaza.  The women were on the right and the men on the left.  Amusing was women standing on chairs looking into the men’s area – probably to see a special event going on over there.

Then we went to Shilo in the 19 ton bus with the double paned bulletproof glass, because it is in the West Bank and we went past Ramallah to get there…  We had a Bible study there.  It was cool because you were to eat your portion of the sacrifice (barbecue with God!) within sight of the tabernacle.  Then, the tradition developed that you broke your dishes, so there was lots of pottery shards.  I got no pictures besides this.

Then we went back into the old city to eat lunch and look about for awhile. After lunch I managed to sprain my ankle on the low spot in the paving that serves for drainage.  So, I did not do as much poking around in shops that the rest did.

I did see an amazing piece of needle art – a rug of a menorah, the base of which was of Jerusalem.  I looked at for awhile, though forgot to take  a picture of it…

3/19 Bethlehem.  The Shepherd’s fields and the Church of the Nativity.  We had a lovely worship and challenging Bible Study here.

What besides a sheep could survive on those limestone strewn hills?  Jill and Chelsea in the cave that was likely once a sheep fold.

The Church of the Nativity was built over a previous church and is supposedly over the birth site of Jesus.  We had a group picture taken out front.  Next door is St.Catherine’s.  Notice that the tops of the pillars are sooty from pre-electric illumination.  They decided not to clean them.  But the lower parts of the these limestone (what else, the country is covered in it!) columns are polished by people against them.

Impossible to get on my knees and look inside after my injury…

The floor of the current church had been removed over a small section to reveal fabulous mosaics – this is one small portion…

Next door at St. Catherine’s, a stained glass window stuns:

We go to another olive wood shop and I get a few more things, primarily gifts.  I am exhausted!  I do not remember lunch this day.  I went to the hotel and took a nap while the others shopped in the old city.

3/20 We went via the Lion’s Gate into the Muslim Quarter and visited the Pools of Bethesda (ruins) and St. Anne’s Church, which had amazing acoustics.  When we got there, a group of tourists, who were evidently a choir, were singing.  So we spontaneously did a couple of songs ourselves after the y were done (the choir group stayed and enjoyed our efforts.) Then we walked part of the Via Dolorosa (Jesus walked with His cross) and across and out the Dung Gate and down a big hill (ouch, ouch!  downhill and my ankle is nuts) to the City of David, where Hezekiah’s Tunnel (built to have access to water even in a siege) begins.  We watched a 3-D video about the City of David (the original Jerusalem the Israelites came into.)  And then waited while the folks going in got ready and left.   The “gimps” stayed behind… Then we headed to the the corner of the Western and Southern walls of the Temple Mount.  There to see (on the left) ruins of an arch that supported a walkway up to the top of the mount.  Known as Robinson’s Arch, the second one is a rendering of what it looked like.

And the ruins of the mikvah, marketplace and where the moneychangers were across from it, as well as the damage from stones that fell and landed on and broke the paving stones.

Then we went around to the area known as the southern steps, by which the Jews coming to the temple often approached.  Pic of this later…

After going through the arches they climbed more steps inside the wall…

We went in the bus to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum.  We lunched there and then became immersed in an experience that defies words.  Overwhelming comes close.  Multimedia, there were several small seating areas with videos looping of survivors talking on various topics.  We couldn’t take pictures so here is a link to explore if you like:   http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/index.asp  At a given time we met Avi and he took us to the children’s memorial: “This unique memorial, hollowed out from an underground cavern, is a tribute to the approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust. Memorial candles, a customary Jewish tradition to remember the dead, are reflected infinitely in a dark and somber space, creating the impression of millions of stars shining in the firmament. The names of murdered children, their ages and countries of origin can be heard in the background.”

Whew!  Then we went to the Israel Museum, where we saw a scale reproduction of Jerusalem during the 2nd Temple period and the Shrine of the Book with portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls and artifacts found with them.

If you look past the white buildings beyond the right side of the temple, the gate is the one we think Jesus went out of on the way to Golgotha to be crucified.  (Click to enlarge)

Then we went to the Valley of Elah, where The Israelite army met the Philistines and David slew Goliath.  We had a Bible study and searched for good giant killing stones…  We returned to the hotel late, ready for dinner.

3/21 Last day. We are at the Mount of Olives!  You see alot, but at our feet is a Jewish graveyard.  A great picture of the Southern steps and the El-Aqsa mosque (black dome) up on the mount.

The garden doesn’t look far, but it was a long downhill (ouch! ouch!)  Thanks Matt for your shoulder to lean on.

The we head back in by the Dung Gate and go through a stringent security check and head up to the temple mount (Mount Moriah is under there somewhere…)  Avi talked to us a bit, but, other than the shrine (dome of the rock) and the foot washing fountain, we really did not know what we were looking at.  But the tile work on the shrine was incredible.

The tile work was amazing.  We went down and ate felafel for lunch, shopped and then went into a cave deep beneath the old city known as King Solomon’s Quarries.  The steps were rough so the gimps waited while the rest explored…  Then we drove to Golgotha and the Garden Tomb.  The skull looked pretty good – not how I pictured it.  He told us that the Romans liked people to see the crucifixions, and since there was a main thoroughfare at the foot of the hill, it is likely at the foot, not the top, where the Lord died.  The spot we were looking at Calvary (Latin, Golgotha is Greek, all means Place of the Skull…) from is on the same property as a tomb of the style used in the 1st century.  The area is a lovely garden, and we ducked in for a quick look-see and it was strange to imagine that sort of burial, laid on a shelf in a cave.  We gathered for a Bible study and took communion together.  From there we split from the folks going on to Jordan, and went to have dinner on the way to Tel Aviv and the flight home.

If, by chance, you want to see all of my pictures, with the captions, go near the top of this blog page, on the right, is a strip titled “Pictures From Life.”  At the bottom of the strip is a blue arrow “More Pictures,” click it.  The Flickr site comes up, and click the Israel 2011 album on the right.  Start the Slideshow and then click on the first picture with the mouse and the captions will come up.

Fin