The Western/Wailing Wall

The morning was spent exploring inside and outside the old city (the 14 stations of the cross on the Via Dolorosa, a number of churches, the bazaar, the new Temple Archaeology center, to name a few).

The Western Wall and other original remains of the temple (rubble from General Titus' sacking of the temple, and the original steps that Jesus walked on), were the highlights for me. This city has so much history from its first settlement in 3500 BC to when Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac on Mt Moriah (the temple mount) through to Jesus' trial and crucifixion to the destruction of Jerusalem (which Jesus predicted) to the Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Ottoman, British Mandate and now Reconstituted Israeli periods. Perhaps no one single piece of real estate in the world has been fought over as much or had such significance in world affairs as this little city of Jerusalem. I can't wait to grab 3 or 4 books on it to read right away, and come back for a month sometime just to explore and learn.

Our guide took us to the synagogue area which connects to the wall to the left of the photo above. Men and boys were praying, touching the wall, reading Torah and studying the commentaries of the rabbis (photo to the right). We had to put a yarmulke on our heads to be able to go to the wall and pray. In the photo below, men are putting on teffilin (phylacteries: Scripture bound to their left arms and foreheads in small leather boxes).

It was an incredibly moving experience praying at this wall which was part of the temple in Jesus' day. My prayer was that these people who have been chosen by God, but have rejected His Son and the salvation He offers, might have the blinders taken off. In this country of over seven million wonderful people, it is estimated that there are probably only 4000-5000 genuine followers of Christ in the whole nation. Our guide can cite New Testament events, passages and theology with great precision, but at the end of the day, it's just a quaint belief system to him. Incredibly sad.

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Bonus: From Crete to Tel Aviv

The last few hours of the flight were spectacular, and I'm not being poetic. I had a window seat and could see the outlines in sparkling lights of many of the Greek islands. As the golden glow of dawn sped up, we passed by Crete and I could see the island's outline of Paphos (see photo), where Paul was in Acts 13 (my phone speller wanted to default from Paphos to pathos then phosphate). I think of the expression, "He's such a Cretan" and ponder Paul's statement in Titus 1:12: "Even one of their own prophets has said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.' " Hmm. Anyway, this glimpse out the window is a bonus as I'm not on a "Journeys of Paul" tour.

Seeing the long, straight coast of Israel in the early morning light for the very first time was deeply moving for me. And clearly for the ultra-Orthodox who put on shawls and strapped the little square leathered boxes of phylacteries to their foreheads. One of them went up our aisle, congratulating his kinsmen in Hebrew. "Are you Jewish?" he asked me. I kind of felt like I got the runner-up prize when I told him no: "Welcome to Israel [anyway]."

The capitol, Tel Aviv, looked spectacular as we came in to land. A great mix of the old and the new.

In Flight

We got a late start. Weather and all that. The pastor next to me moved back to more spacious accommodations, so the guy a seat over (an American who made aliyah when he was in high school then did his mandatory 3-year stint in the army) said, "We'll get there on time. The pilot probably has a mistress in Tel Aviv and she's expecting him to pick her up at seven."

We're over the Swiss alps now. Three hours to go. Nice meal. Great hummus. Early into the flight 8 ultra-Orthodox (10 constitutes a synagogue) gathered in the small space by the emergency exit and hallway a few seats in front of me. They were gearing up to pray, with all their accoutrements, when the turbulence hit and the fasten seat belt sign came on. They really started rocking back and forth then. A steward told them to sit down. They ignored him. The guy next to me rolled his eyes, leaned over and said, "They think God's on their side. That nothing will happen to them. They don't give a ____!" Hmmm. The two sides of Israel. Secular and Sacred. With some stuck in between. (They did eventually sit down.)

The tension reminds me of a story in the book, Real Jews. The ultra-Orthodox chief rabbi concluded that flying over a certain cemetery constituted ritual defilement by a dead body so El Al would need to alter their flight path. They were not so keen to do this so the U.Orthodox made plans to don full-zip-up body bags in flight to prevent contamination. El Al changed their flight path. The same author referended a light-hearted, but telling, exchange between flight staff during an in-flight prayer time like the one in front of me. "You open the door," one whispered, "and I'll push."

I guess there are a lot of different ways to be Jewish.

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El Al Here We Go

Sitting on the plane ready to go up and down but hopefully not too fast. Next to a neat African American pastor from North Carolina.

Lots of Hebrew being spoken around me. Lots of black hats and ringlets. Haredim ultra-Orthodox.

BTW, did I ever mention anywhere in this blog that I'm excited?

"One day, Jerusalem," as the saying goes. Well, it may be Tiberias, but we'll get to Zion eventually.

The word for going up/ascending to Jerusalem (it's up high) is aliyah. Jews coming back to the homeland are said to "make aliyah." This goy/gentile is doing the anglo substitute.

Gotta go. Shalom.

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Another Great Book

Yeah, I'm a real bibliophile, a sucker for books. I devoured Israel is Real. It was so good, I bought the company. Oops, that's a line from a Gillette ad. It was so good, I bought the book. (The first read was from the library which meant I couldn't highlight it in my favorite yellow. Bummer. But now I own it, I can read it again. And highlight it.)

But first, I have to finish reading this one, Real Jews, pictured to the right. Ok, first I have to answer the question if all books, to be genuinely Jewish, must have "Real" in the title. Hmmm.

This one, also from the library, is an intriguing look at an aspect of Israeli life that I've really not been aware of: the disdain (hatred?) the majority of Jews in this secular state have for the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox fundamentalist Jews.

A sample: "That is why I cannot get out of my head the jokes about gassing ultra-Orthodox or pushing them out of planes. Growing up in the United States, I was innocent of anti-Semitism. I never experienced it: I was never insulted; I was denied nothing because of my religion. Anti-Semitism existed as a grand abstraction, like communism, an unseen threat to all that I loved, an organizing principle of my worldview, but it was utterly absent from my life in any practical way. My first encounter with anti-Semitism was in Israel, and the anti-Semites were my people, my heroes, the people I'd moved halfway around the world to join. After many years, I had finally seen the face of anti-Semitism, and it looked surprisingly like my own" (p 10).