israel post 7

More from Tuesday, April 30...we'll finish it up this evening!

From the Mount of Olives, we walked down a very, very steep road to get to the Chapel of Dominus Flevit. Dominus Flevit, which translates as "The Lord Wept", is built on the spot where, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus, while walking toward the city of Jerusalem, becomes overwhelmed by the beauty of the Second Temple and predicting its future destruction, and weeps openly. The chapel itself was very pretty, with ornate ceilings are artwork. In the fourth photo, you will see a Muslim Mosque, with gold tops...I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but at a lot of these "holy" sites that dealt with Jesus, other religions, for some reason, always wanted to build their stuff right in the same area. Kind of like they were "over-riding" Jesus...

From the chapel, we headed nearby to the Garden of Gethsemane. I didn't end up taking a lot of photos there, and the fifth one below is one from that small batch. It is an olive tree (there are a lot of olive trees in Israel, olives and olive oil are big for them); this tree, in the Garden, is thousands of years old. So that was neat to see. According to all four gospels, immediately after the Last Supper, Jesus took a walk to pray in the area that is now the Garden.

The Chapel of Dominus Flevit (you can see a bit of the mosque in the upper right corner)

The beautiful ceiling within the chapel

A fresco of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

The Muslim mosque

An ancient olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane

A funny story that occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane...one of Chris' coworkers requested that he bring her back a little bit of dirt from the Holy Land. That's all she wanted. So, we found these little glass viles at one of the gift shops, and Chris was determined to get some dirt at one of our locations. He decided he would try at the Garden. There was a little box of dirt around one of the trees, and he stooped down to get some. Except the dirt was quite hard and he wasn't able to get much at all. Out of nowhere, a native shows up at his side and puts his hand out to take the vial. Chris figured that he was busted for trying to "steal" Holy Land dirt! He followed the guy, and he went inside the area that we weren't able to visit. He stooped, got some dirt in the vial, and handed it back to Chris. Woo hoo! We gave him a few bucks for his kindness :) Even funnier -- later, after we left the Garden to head to the bus, we had to continue down that very, very steep road...and Chris was telling Neeley the story of how he got the dirt. And then...yes...he dropped the little vial and it began to roll roll roll down this very steep hill! It was quite a sight, watching him run after it!

So, from there...that was the end of our daily touring, so we headed to our third hotel to check in. This one was the Ramada Hotel of Jerusalem and was pretty nice. We had free wi fi in all the hotel lobbies except this one though, and we were here the longest! But that's ok. :) We got settled into our new room and then had another group dinner with the company. Our day was not over however! We had a night tour scheduled to visit the Western Wall (or the Wailing Wall, as some refer to it). So, we boarded back onto our bus and headed to our next site!

The Western Wall was quite interesting. It is a remnant of the ancient wall that surrounded the Jewish Temple's courtyard, and is arguably the most sacred site recognized by the Jewish faith. Their Temple was destroyed, and this is basically all that they have left -- the closest thing to their Temple. It honestly blew my mind to see how the Jewish people treated the Wall. The Wall was divided into two section...one for men, one for women. The men's side was twice the size of the woman's side. When we arrived, the men went their way and us women went our way. At first, Kim and I stood at the back of the area, taking it in. There were a lot of women there. All held tiny prayer books, had their eyes closed, and were praying silently with lips moving. Many were seated and were rocking back and forth. Many were standing at the Wall, touching it and kissing it, etc. There were cracks between the large boulders, and those cracks were filled with tiny pieces of paper that had prayers written on them. In Herod's day, when the wall was built, they didn't use mortar between the stones, so there was plenty of room for the prayers. As Kim and I watched, we noticed that the women would never turn their back to the Wall. They had to always face Jerusalem, so they would walk backwards away from the Wall. Kim and I watched for a bit and decided to head up to the Wall ourselves. We had to wait a bit until there was room for us there, but finally we were able to touch the Wall ourselves and say some prayers. For me, this was a weird site for me. I didn't really feel the Spirit here at all, and that didn't make me feel good because it was obvious that all the local women there were really into it. But, that's my honest take on it. 

When Kim and I left our section, we were able to stand on the outside of the men's section and get some photos of the guys in their section. You can see a photo of Chris, below. The men had to have their heads covered, so they gave out a kipa to each man that needed one. I just asked Chris what he felt at the Wall, and this is what he said: I think I really wanted to feel something there, but I didn't. So, I guess he was in the same boat as me! It was very interesting to see though... 

The Western Wall; you can see the dividing wall that separates the men from women.

Chris, praying at the Western Wall

The women's side of the Wall

Chris and I in front of the Western Wall

After we visited the Wall, we were able to do a night time tour of the Rabbi's Tunnels which is an underground tunnel exposing the full length of the Western Wall. The tunnel is adjacent to the Western Wall and is located under buildings of the Old City of Jerusalem. The tunnel allows access to an additional 1,591 ft of the wall. There were a lot of neat things to see under there!

So, that wraps up our Tuesday...yes, it was a long day, but filled with so much good stuff! Next we'll move on to Wednesday...Bethlehem! Dead Sea Scrolls! Hollocaust Museum. Herod Museum. Ben Yehuda City!