Jerusalem and Bethlehem

Long time no see....we have been so busy! This one's a bit of novel summing up  a few days!

We took a bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem 4 days ago...this is a pretty cool city with a million things to see and do...incredible history. It's an extremely expensive city to stay in so we actually ended up staying at a hostel but fortunately for us, it is a great hostel and we are really enjoying the atmosphere here!

Our first afternoon we joined in on a free walking tour of the old city...mostly just to get our bearings.
We arrived on the first day of  a big Jewish holiday called Sukkot. It is an 8 day holiday where the Jewish people honour the 40 years their ancestors travelled through the desert from Egypt to the promise land by building these huts outside their houses with palm leaves that they eat and sleep in all week. The first day of Sukkot was a major holiday here and the city literally shut down...like Christmas day shut down..it's been getting progressively more busy and tons of celebrations and parties are happening every night.

Day two we went on a day trip to see Masada, a huge hilltop fort that was the sight of the last Jewish stronghold in 70AD when the Romans defeated Jerusalem. When they were losing the war, instead of becoming slaves to the Romans, everyone committed suicide. It is a popular place of pilgrimage with stunning views.

 

 

Day 3 was spent traveling into the West Bank to Palestinian Territory to visit Bethlehem. Israeli citizens are not allowed to enter it and the Palestinians have difficulty getting special permission to leave. It was really sad to see:  the Israeli government has built a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian Territories. It stands three times the height of the Berlin Wall and when it is complete will eventually run for over 760km! The wall is illegal under international law and essentially turns Palestine into the world's largest open prison. You have to cross checkpoints and show your passport to enter and leave. Israeli's say the wall is a necessary measure to fight against terrorism and curb suicide attacks from the west bank. A lot of Palestinian settlements are surrounded on all sides making a simple trip to school or a neighbouring village arduous...in some places farmland has become inaccessible. The wall is covered in graffiti and reminded me a lot of the Berlin wall.  I don't anticipate this wall coming down anytime soon.

In Bethlehem we visited the Church of the Nativity. It is believed to be the birthplace of Jesus and and gets thousands of people in pilgrimage's every day. The original cave where he is believed to have been born is covered by a huge church owed by several different religions each fighting over their claim to part of it. You descend down a set of rock stairs in the middle into the cave rooms of the original Church. People were crying and singing Christmas carols while lining up to touch the spot marking the birth and the manger.

Sarah touching the star marking Jesus' birth place.

Original mosaic floors.

When we arrived back into Jerusalem after the trip to Bethlehem we spent the afternoon in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. It was an incredible museum and memorial to the millions of Jews who were murdered in the holocaust. We spent several hours pouring over their very well laid out exhibits that chronologically take you through the entire history of the holocaust as it weaves you through an amazingly unique architecturally designed building. It was very moving and heartbreaking.

Then, as if our day wasn't full enough, we did a midnight biking tour. It would have been a really fun tour but we had some bum luck and got stuck with a large family full of 8 ungrateful, whiny teenagers who loudly voiced their displeasure from the start and couldn't even ride the bikes very well. It was supposed to be a 3 hour trip biking all over Jerusalem but ended up with us following the guide for 20 meters then waiting for several minutes while the kids complained and literally walked their bikes from spot to spot. The parents, strangely, didn't seem remotely disappointed in their children's horrible attitudes and I'm baffled as to why they signed them up for something like this if they clearly didn't want to be there, especially at the expense of other tourists in the group. Finally about 30 minutes from the end, as the kids refused to ride their bikes back up the hill to the start point, they called a cab abandoning their bikes at Zion gate for the company to pick up leaving me and Sarah and the guide a short time to actually ride our bikes and see a few things before the tour was over.

Finally we are caught up with today!

We took another tour this morning that took us to all the main sights within the walls of the Jerusalem old city. The old city is fascinating. It is thousands of years old and separated into 4 different quarters...the Muslim quarter, the Armenian quarter, the Christian quarter and the Jewish quarter. Winding, twisty maze like streets full of mosques, churches, shops, schools, and homes are stacked on top of each other. As a holy city for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Jerusalem has always been of great symbolic importance. It is recognized by all three religions as the site of Abraham's sacrifice. It is built on the top of a mountain called Mount Moriah, which according to Jewish tradition, the world was founded from this peak. On the top of this peak King David built the first temple which was destroyed and eventually rebuilt in the first century B.C. by Herod the Great who expanded and refurbished a Second Temple built by Jews who had returned after their banishment. It is here that, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ lashed out against the money changers and was later crucified a few hundred yards away. The Roman general Titus exacted revenge against Jewish rebels, sacking and burning the Temple in A.D. 70.

Dome of the Rock

 

 

Temple Mount

 

 

When Herod build the Temple, he leveled off the top of the mountain to make it bigger by building four huge retaining walls and filling them in resulting in the construction of a huge platform on which to build this glorious temple. Built upon the rocks, that were believed to be the beginning of the world, it became the holiest of all temples attracting Jewish pilgrims from all over to pray. After it was destroyed, these retaining walls remained standing along with the platform itself. Today this platform is called the Temple Mount, and since the destruction of the last temple a mosque called the Dome of the Rock sits on the same spot...Muslims believe this spot was where Mohammad ascended to heaven. Part of the Western Wall remained exposed after the destruction of the Temple and since it was the closest area to the Temple’s Holy of Holy's that remained accessible, it became a place of Jewish prayer for millennium. It is called the Western wall or Wailing wall and people flock to pray here and also write their prayers on paper to stick it in the cracks in the wall.

Paper with prayers stuffed in the cracks of the Wailing Wall.

 

The wailing wall was fascinating to see... hundred of people praying, crying, kissing the wall, and reading the bible.

The second big sight we saw today was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is in the Old City of Jerusalem and is the holiest Christian site in the world. It stands on a site that is believed to be where Jesus was crucified, and the tomb (sepulchre) where he was buried and was resurrected. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been an important pilgrimage destination since the 4th century. The church has also been fought over by many different religions claiming it to be theirs.

Inside the front doors lay the anointing stone where it is said that Jesus' body was cleansed and prepared for his crucifixion. People lined up to touch this stone and were crying, kissing it, rubbing themselves and their belongings all over it. It was absolutely fascinating, as an atheist, to witness so many people having these profoundly religious experiences throughout many of the sites we saw in Jerusalem.
 

Church of the Holy Sephulcre
 

People touching the anointing stone

 

The primary custodians are the Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic and Roman Catholic Churches, with the Greek Orthodox Church having the lion's share. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox acquired lesser responsibilities, which include shrines and other structures within and around the building. Times and places of worship for each community are strictly regulated in common areas.

In 1853 in an end to halt the fighting and violence over ownership/rights to the church a status quo was enacted that was an agreement that nothing will be changed without all in agreement. It did not entirely halt the violence, which continues to break out every so often even in modern times. On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians, and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fight.

A fascinating sign of the status quo can be witnessed on the ledge over the churches entrance. Someone placed a ladder there sometime before 1852, when the status quo defined both the doors as common areas. the ladder is there to this day, in the exact position it can be seen to occupy in century old photographs and etchings.

No group controls the main entrance doors....in 1152 responsibility for the doors was granted to a muslim family who, to this day, open and close the church everyday.

Well, that's all for Israel!

We are off to Athens tomorrow morning. This has been a fascinating country to travel through, we feel very lucky to have witnessed the places where so much history has taken place!

The wooden ladder in the same place since 1852.

Mount of Olives

On Temple Mount