Jerusalem, Israel (by Karla)

1 comment // Apr 21st, 2009 // Uncategorized

Wow! I can’t believe we are in Israel. In our initial itinerary, we didn’t plan on coming to Israel, but we realized that we gave ourselves plenty of time for Egypt and Jordan so why not go see Alan’s nephew, Ryan, and check out the Holy Land during Easter.

We crossed over into Israel from Taba, Egypt (a small beach and diving resort) then through Eilat, Israel (another small beach resort town). We took a bus to Taba then walked to the border by foot and arrived in Eilat. When we arrived in Eilat, we were just in shock. Tons of cars and people camping out on the beach of the Red Sea, it felt like we were at a 4th of July BBQ on a lake in Colorado. but it was the Jewish holiday Passover (Pesach). So many different looking people running in bikini’s with pop music playing…I took a deep breath and smiled. Oh ya, we are out of women suppressed, worrying about what to wear, 3rd world countries!

I was so excited when I saw someone use a debit card at the mini-market, something I haven’t seen this since Thailand…we don’t have to worry about having cash in hand at all times! I started to realize how much I am missing the conveniences of America.

We arrived at Ryan and Inbar’s then headed to Inbar’s parents for dinner. It was a fabulous dinner that was “Kosher” for the Passover holiday – it was sooo yummy. To be ‘kosher’ there were no breads or grains that make bread, and the Matza was used instead of bread with yeast. Matza is bread that is flat and unrisen. Like big crackers. I was loving Matza with the hummus, baba ganoush, pate, peppers and tomatoes starters!! We talked a lot about basketball since Inbar and her sister are playing in the women’s Israel semi-pro league and asked a bunch questions about the passover holiday in Israel. We learned that nothing is open during Passover. There is only one gas station in all of Jerusalem that is open for the days of Sabbath (friday night and saturday day) and passover. All of the shops are closed and only restaurants that serve “kosher” food are open.

The next day we headed to check out some Holy sites. Ryan and Inbar had a place in downtown Jerusalem, which is in walking distance of the Old City where most of the Holy Land sites are located. Inbar and Ryan first drove us around Jeruselam and showed us all of the different areas. It was the day of Sabbath (Saturday), the a day where no one drives. I think we were truly the only car on the road. It was great! We saw the entire city in an hour and then headed over to Old City. We wanted to see one of the processions at the Church of Holy Sepulchre the place where Jesus died and was resurrected. The procession was for the Jesus walk of Via Dolorosa and was very beautiful with the re-enacting the path that Jesus took, carrying his cross, on the way to his crucifixion. There were 9 stops in the old city, where the procession would stop and preform a little ceremony for each station (i.e. Christ falling down or the meeting between Jesus and his mother), then finish at the Church of Holy Sepulchre. The picture below shows the Via Dolorosa going into the Holy of Sepulchre.

After watching the procession at the church, we walked the entire Via Dolorosa street and checked out all the stations. The street crosses the Muslim and the Christian quarters in the Old City, it was interesting to see the stations of Via Dolorosa marked really well in the Christian quarters and not so good in the Muslim area. We actually missed a few of the stations because they weren’t marked very well in the Muslim area. As we walked through both quarters I was really surprised how everyone was getting a long, there wasn’t much animosity displayed between the two religions and with the Jewish quarter close by. I expected to see more yelling and fighting in the Old City, but it seemed very harmonious overall.

The next day we went back to the Old City with Ryan and a few of his friends. Ryan’s buddy, Ben, was our personal tour guide, giving us all these great facts and info on the Old City. They took us to a Arabic restaurant (not kosher), then over to the Western Wall, where we put our prayers inside the wall. First we stopped at a lookout spot that overlooked the Wall. Up there we found some other people mainly orthodox Jews that were praying toward trees, bowing their head over and over and over. I had never seen this before, read a little about it, but I could help but wonder why the head bob?

As we headed over to the wall, they separate the men from the women so I took the camera in with me. The women’s side was incredibly packed with women and children. There were several women praying, sitting reading their scriptures and then you had to finess your way up to the wall, where women were praying, reading and touching the wall. I place my prayer in the crack of the wall, then said good bye to crowd of women. As I was walking away I saw all these girls walking backwards to leave, I had no idea what that meant…so I stood there watching for a minute to see if any other women would walk backwards…but they didn’t. I guess some orthodox Jews believe it is disrespectful to turn your back to the wall. But when I saw it at the beginning I thought, I was going to be on some prank TV show where a group of people does something really odd and other people just join in cuz everyone else is doing it and then they are told they are on TV.

The next day was Alan’s Birthday! He’s 32! We initally were going to go to Bethlehem but we forgot our passports, so we didn’t get the chance to go, but we met up with a Alba a friend from Egypt and checked out the Tomb of the Virgin Mary and back to the Holy Church of S. After visiting more of the holy sites, Alan watched a big juicy burger for his birthday, so we had dinner at a burger joint and blew a few candles with his french fries.

That night we went to an concert of Jasmin Levy, a Sephardic musician, which is a mix of Ladino/Judeo-Spanish language and culture of Spanish Jewry and Flamenco dancing with Ryan and Inbar.