Vısıt to Jerusalem

 

 

The wall ın Jerusalem dıvıdıng the West Bank from Israel



We were out bright and early the next morning having sailed south from Haifa, past Tel Aviv to the main port of Israel at Ashdod.  Again our tour guide Joe was waiting for us at the dock.  We drove east for more than one hour to the view point of Mt Scopus just outside of Jerusalem.  It gave us our first look at the symbol of this divided land – a concrete wall that separates Israel and the West Bank.



Vıew from Mt of Olıves wıth Jewısh Cemetery ın foreground



 Before entering Jerusalem we stopped at the Mt. of Olives.  The old city was directly across from us on the other side of the small valley.  We stood in a huge Jewish Cemetery which covers the hillside.  Gesemane is at the bottom of the valley beneath the walled old city and Mt. Zion just to the left of the old city.  Golgatha, the place of the crucifixion, is now inside the walls (built long after the Roman period by the Turkish Ottoman Empire).  These key New Testament places were much nearer to each other than we had imagined.



Gethsemane place of Jesus prayıng



 We started with a visit to the Basilica of Agony built over the, “the rock” where Jesus prayed before he was arrested.  The church is recent and is a very solemn and quiet place, in contrast to all the other places we visited which are noisy, crowded and far from feeling sacred or holy.  The olive garden next to the church (no relation to an Italian restaurant!), where the disciples slept while Jesus prayed and where Judas identified Jesus, boasts one tree that is 900 years old.



Colorful array of foods ın the Arab market



 We popped back into our van, drove closer to the old city, leaving the van at a convenient car wash/parking lot near the famous Damascus Gate.  Soon we were immersed in the very busy and noisy Arab market with its stalls selling everything imaginable, including these colorful bins of olives and vegetables.  Women in burkas pawing through bins of underwear were an unusual sight.  The market continued through an arch into the Jewish quarter, where the chaos quieted, order reigned, and cleanliness was welcomed.  Two very different cultures presenting their wares in two very different ways  separated by only an arch.   The Jewish quarter was destroyed when Jordan occupied Jerusalem in 1948 and then was rebuilt after the 1967 war when the Israelis reclaimed the city.

We walked along the Via Dolorosa stopping at the Stations of the Cross until we reached the Church of the Sepulcher, a huge structure with many, many chapels.  The first stop was the Coptic chapel, where we crawled down a tunnel into an ancient cistern.  Oh the joys of traveling in a small tour group of 6!  Water is and was a problem.  Israel is now in the middle of a serious draught.  The Sea of Galilee is a primary source of water, but if the level continues to fall it will become salty like the Dead Sea.  Just outside this Coptic Church, whose followers are Egyptian, Joe explained that six different Christian churches struggle to control the site believed to be the place of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus:   Coptic, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Jacobeans  (Syrian), Armenian, and Ethiopian (land of the Queen of Sheba).   Each has followers who reside here and have conducted turf wars over the years.  Even today they continue to act in a most un-Christian like fashion.   The problem of who would control the key to the church was settled by picking a Muslim family to lock and unlock the church – and pass the key down from generation to generation.  We climbed stairs to the rock where the cross was placed.  About 100 feet away from the crucifixion is a chapel built over Jesus’ tomb.  While we were there, the priests from each church took turns entering the large chapel, swinging their incense and then retreating to their individual chapels.



Dad gets a new hat



 The Western Wall or Wailing Wall of the city was truly memorable.  Men are separated from the women by a screen.  Jon donned the loaner yamika while I covered my head with a shawl.   The women, after quietly praying, backed away from the wall in small steps and bowing all the way for several yards before turning to leave.



Entering Bethlehem.  Very prison lıke



 Then the really interesting part of the afternoon began.  Our Israeli guide is not allowed into Bethlehem which is in the West Bank and governed by the Palestinian Authority.   Bethlehem is essentially a suburb of Jerusalem.  Joe arranged for an Arab guide to take over our tour of Bethlehem.   He instructed us to go through the checkpoint and “Ask for Salim.” A bus full of Palestinian day workers , all young men, were just entering the entrance of the checkpoint upon their return from working in Jerusalem, so we followed them into the prison-like entrance gate.  We were given “cuts” to the front of the line, for which we thanked the workers, just flashing our passports to the guard for quick access.  Then we proceded single file around a series of crowd control railings before finally reaching some waiting men on the other side of the wall.  One stepped forward and said the name of our tour provider.  Salim was waiting just as we hoped.   He was a cab driver and put three of us in a second cab while he took three and we were off.   When we arrived in the old city, we were handed over to our guide Nido and then we entered the church whose notoriety is that it is “CLOSE to where Jesus was born”.   Hundreds of tourists in large groups waited in line in the sanctuary to gain access to the small room downstairs just below the altar where the sacred spot is marked with a star in the floor.



Birthplace of Jesus ın Bethlehem



Our guide said, “Follow me, please”.  We entered the EXIT area just outside the small room, where  our guide spoke to the guards.  We were allowed to access the room immediately, two at a time, walking down a stairway against the exiting traffic.  We took a quick look around and snapped a picture.  We learned later that the wait in the regular line was more than two hours.  Again, it was nice to be in a small group with a “fixer”.

After the church we walked over to a small souvenir shop with our taxi driver.  Our guide disappeared once we got to the shop— I guess he didn’t expect tips.  As it was beginning to get dark, we were anxious to be on our way.  A new 2^nd cab was hailed for 3 of us and we just hoped we would get to the RIGHT meeting point with Joe, as we still had more than an hour’s ride ahead of us back to the ship.  After one wrong turn, we were soon on our way out of the Bethlehem during rush hour and, after a delay in traffic, finally spotted Joe and his van in a taxi stand between two freeways.  We were VERY GLAD to see him and vice versa, as we were approaching the “cutting it close hour” of getting back to the ship.

One final comment about Jerusalem.  So many of our memories are of televised terrorist explosions during the infatada or uprising by the Palestinians which started in 2000.  Today there is almost no evidence of security, police, weapons or army troops (except for a number a off-duty women in uniform who seemed to be tourists).  In Bethlehem we repeatedly heard how tourism completely stopped in 2000 and only started to recover in 2004.  Taxi drivers, guides, shop owners, restaurant workers all had a miserable time.  Joe, speaking with Israeli optimism and confidence, believes that the likelihood of another uprising is very remote because of the economic consequences to the Arab community.   Meeting  him gave us hope for the future of this sacred land.