Jerusalem, pt. 1

Courtyard of St. Stephen’s Convent, with a statue of St. Stephen.

St. Stephen’s Convent

Like any ancient city, Jerusalem’s “Old City” citadel is fortified. Olive groves, such as this outside the Western wall, still abound. Mere yards from this grove is a small grove (now enclosed on property belonging to the Church of the Holy Ascension [below]) believed to be the Garden of Gethsamene.

Shops and suburbs have sprung up around the Old City walls.

Church of the Holy Ascension.

A cool freize engraved on a courtyard wall outside the Church of Ascension.

Church of Ascension ceiling, Many structures in Jerusalem had similar domed ceilings, though not as ornate!

Church of Ascension interior

One of the things we did in Jerusalem was walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel which is basically a 533-meter waterway with no lights. It would have been monstrously creepy had a loud American group not gone ahead of us, squealing in the dark and generally making merry. It was fun.

My feet. We were lucky, it was shallow that day, at its deepest the water only reached my thighs. It was rather difficult taking pictures because there was no light!

We didn’t have flashlights, but the fellow in front of us lit the way with light from his cell phone…setting my camera for a long exposure turned out some pretty interesting photos!

The “light at the end” of Hezekiah’s Tunnel is the Pool of Siloam.

Israel’s military (Israeli Defense Force, or IDF) is unique in that every Israeli citizen is required to serve at least two years. Most people sign up right after high school or college, and the only exceptions that I know of are ultra-religious Orthodox Jews.

If I hadn’t been accompanied by my own dad everywhere, I may have bought my brother a hookah while there.

Did I mention the nation’s flag and subsequent Jewish inferences? I didn’t buy so many souvenirs in Israel because so many of them had the Star of David displayed so obviously on them. Wearing a shirt with the Israel flag on it would not mean “Israel” to Americans, but instead “Jewish.” You can see how quickly the novelty would wear off.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is more or less a Church built over (encompassing) a smaller church, which is built to encompass a little mausoleum that was once a tomb in a hill. It’s kind of ironic that the exterior of this place is not too much to look at considering it’s practically the holiest site in Christendom.

Pilgrim inscriptions on the wall inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Tourists queue up to enter Christ’s tomb from the moment the Church opens in the morning to the hour it closes in the evening.

The tomb is located underneath a magnificent dome.

Incense burners hang over a little shrine at the tomb’s entrance.

This is what the tomb actually looks like—an empty slab surrounded by candles and steeped in history. The interior of the tomb itself is actually very cramped, fitting only about three people at a time; a priest acts as a bouncer, literally kicking people out if they take too long…I saw him gently escort a nun out when she wouldn’t stop praying by the slab! Tough love.

Across from the tomb is an enormous Greek Orthodox sanctuary with another splendid dome, this one featuring the image of Christ.

I think I mentioned cats everywhere in a previous post. I can’t believe the numbers. I used to think that every city in the world had an impressive pigeon population, but not in Israel, and you can easily guess why…

In Judaism it’s respectful to cover your head, symbolizing your awareness and respect for God above; hence skullcaps and scarves covering hair. I bought a scarf to wear to holy sites for the sake of general etiquette.

Woah! While we were at the Western Wall plaza, there was a bomb threat. Well, it wasn’t really a bomb threat, it was a “suspicious object,” which is terribly common and is usually just a bag someone has forgotten. At any rate, they roped off the area and brought in the suspicious-object-machine.

When the suspicious-object-machine deemed the object safe, a bomb team specialist strolled over and took it. It turned out just to be a lost backpack. But they take these things seriously, obviously.

The Western Wall plaza. The Western (or “Wailing”) Wall is the holiest site in Judaism, as it is the closest accessible point to Temple Mount (the area beneath the Golden Dome, not visible), which is virtually the same place as one of the holiest sites in Islam, the Dome of the Rock (also highly regarded in many Christian circles). So there you have it. Some of the most holy sites in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all pretty much in one spot. Hotly contested, to say the least.

A Jewish scribe in his downtown shop.

The Eastern wall of the Old City.

Unfortunately in the Middle East, many women and children are cast out onto the street if the woman’s husband dies. She has technically been “given” to the husband, and when he is gone she is no longer under the protection of her own family, or his. Many widows end up as beggars.

The interior of the Augusta Victoria church on the Mount of Olives. This church had about a billion stairs and no elevator, so you can imagine how much I was hurting the next day!

But at the top, you could see for miles until the horizon just disappeared into a desert haze. Israel really isn’t that big, I bet on a clear day you could see all the way to the Jordanian border from this Jerusalem bell tower. This shot is of the outerlying fence cutting Jerusalem off from the West Bank. It’s a sad way to isolate a lot of people, but effective; there have been few, if any, attacks by terrorists in Jerusalem since this fence was built.

A Jerusalem suburbian hillside at dusk.

The Old City walls at night, with surrounding traffic.

UGGHH these things were the bane of my existence. It’s a minaret, and they’re all over cities with any kind of formidable Muslim population. They’re used these days to blare the call to prayer five times a day (that’s a 24-hour day, not sunrise to sunset), which signals to Muslims that it’s time to get out the prayer rug bow five times to Mecca in prayer. Now, under normal circumstances the call to prayer is an enchanting musical recitation, even beautiful if it’s live and not a recording. “Allah u Ahkbar” (“God is great”) and variations on that, again and again. But the first of these is at 4AM sharp, and you can hear it from ANYWHERE. It was impossible to sleep through because I was there during Ramadan, a Muslim fasting holiday, so the 4am call to prayer was kicked off by a loud BANG of a firecracker to signal that the fasting had begun (at dusk another firecracker prior to the call to prayer signified that it was OK to eat again). So while in Jerusalem, I was awakened every night at 4am by the nearest minarets.

A memorial at the Holocaust Museum. Photos weren’t allowed within the museum itself, but I can testify that it was rather horrific, as expected. I learned that I was what Nazi Germany considered to be a mischling of the second degree. A “mudblood,” if you will, hehehe. I also figured out that some of my anscestors may have suffered or perished during the Holocaust in Lithuania, where my grandfather was from.