Israel emails - part 3

Ben's email - 14/08/2009

Hi all,

We are on our last day in Israel and thought that we would leave you with some thoughts on our trip here, as our last email was a bit rushed.

Mel has come down with a bad head cold this morning, and is not feeling well at all. I found some cold and flu stuff at a Pharmacy here (after searching for an hour and a half due to some dodgy directions from the concierge) and hopefully she’ll recover somewhat before our flight tonight.

We wrote an email earlier about our experiences on the first couple of days in Jerusalem before our tour started, which some of you would have received, so we won’t touch on that. However, we would like to talk some more about the rest of our trip.

Jerusalem has a strange vibe to it. Although everyone we dealt with there was very nice, you could feel that something just wasn’t right, and we wouldn’t want to live there. The Old City was cramped and more than a little dodgy, and the New City was like any other modern city.

Between 1948 and 1954 and then again from 1964 all buildings much be covered in Limestone, giving the city a stunning appearance. As it has been over 30 degrees every day the light reflects of the limestone straight into the eyes, which takes some getting used to.

Yad Vashem the Holocaust Museum was very moving. The museum is very large and has various displays in chronological order We were encouraged by our guide to skip over the historical information at each display and instead make our way to the screens at the displays on which they had holocaust survivors talking about their personal experiences – it was devastating. It is amazing that some people have the audacity to suggest that the Holocaust never happened whilst the survivors are still alive. I would suggest that they look into the eyes of these people as they tell you of the horrors they have witnessed and tell them that they’re lying. Not to mention the reams of documented evidence. As our guide said, the Germans were extremely accurate and pedantic with their records, which is one of the reasons we know exactly how many people were lost and where, when and how they died.

The Church of the Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem is a very interesting building. It is the most holy place in Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, being the purported place of the crucifixion and burial (and resurrection). Each of the denominations owns a room in this church (Armenian, Greek, Roman Catholic and Egyptian) and each has decorated their rooms differently. The end result is a hodgepodge of different styles, which gives the church a very strange appearance. I have never seen a church decorated like this anywhere else in the world.

The Western Wall was very moving for me. I said a prayer and went inside to listen to the Ultra Orthodox who were holding a service in a building which runs off the wall. Mel went to the women’s section and said a prayer also, she said you could feel the energy coming off the wall.

The Western Wall was a retaining wall used to hold up a platform on which part of the 2nd Temple stood. It was built as part of Herod’s renovations around 20 BCE to extend the area of the temple (they had to build a platform because the original temple was build on a mountain so there was only so much flat space).

We visited Masada, which was a fortress where, during the revolt around 70 CE which culminated in the destruction of the Temple, the inhabitants chose to kill themselves rather than become Roman slaves. It was very interesting. It is astonishing to think of the effort it would take to build something like that (high up on a flat top mountain) in the heat with no food, hauling water from springs kilometers away. It was 40 degrees when we were there, and we couldn’t even imagine what it would have been like to live and work there. They only get 0.7 inches of rain per annum in that area, and you can feel yourself dehydrating just breathing.

Incidentally, Herod’s Palace at Masada contained country club, including a pool and a wet sauna. Who wants a wet sauna in the desert ?!!

Mel and I went for a float in the Dead Sea, which was a great experience. As you are walking out to the level at which you can float your leg suddenly sinks knee deep in a sink hole and you are covered in mud.

Before we went in our tour guide warned us not to get the water in our eyes unless we like pain, as the water is 7 times saltier than normal sea water. Also he told us not to breathe in if we fell in by accident, because if the magnesium in the water reached our lungs we would die – comforting isn’t he ? =D

The floating was awesome fun though and we covered ourselves with mud. We stayed out there for maybe 45 mins, and the water was very warm.

We had an exhausting day where we traveled for several hours in the bus, and went wandering through various ruins that I can tell you about when we get back before arriving at Ein Gev.

Ein Gev is the name of a Kibbutz , and I was worried that we were going to be roughing it in Kibbutz style cabins, possibly working for our supper. I needn’t have worried. We stayed at the Ein Gev Holiday Resort where we were housed in little self contained rooms with excellent air con, and a balcony with a gorgeous view of the sea of Galilee – it was not too shabby….

We discovered that they had a laundry there, which made Mel exceptionally happy, we had previously been washing our clothes in the sink, and when I say we, I mean Mel.

Mel said that she felt a lot more like we were on holiday now that we were out of the city and picked up in terms of mood and energy – I stayed grumpy cos that’s what I do :)

(he really didn’t, he’s just being sheepish about his initial grumpiness =P – from Mel, who is helping write this email)

Some of the other things included going to visit Syrian Bunkers on the Golan Heights, going to Capernaum, to Tiberius, and Megiddo which was an excavation of Solomon’s stables and is actually a tell where there are 14 layers of cities atop each other, amazing layers of history.

All around Israel you can see tents where they are excavating different cities from various time periods. We kept thinking that it would be hellish trying to build a sewage system or lay a foundation anywhere, cos at every place you wanted to dig you’d need to have an archeologist check it over.

Yesterday we left Ein Gev and stopped off at Tzfat to visit the two old synagogues there. They are very interesting. Joseph Caro wrote the Shulchan Aruch (“Set Table”) there while living in one of the synagogues, which is a concise synthesis of the decisions reached in the Babylonian and Israeli Talmuds. It is still used by Orthodox Jews today as a reference guide for how to live. The other synagogue is named in honor of the man who popularized the Zohar – the main text of the Kabbalah.

Then we went to the Crypt of St John and underground crusader city in Acre (or Acco). Mel and I really liked this place for some reason. Even though it was used by the Ottoman Empire and the British as a jail over the years. We still liked the feel of it.

We stopped at Haifa to look at the Bahai Gardens. The Bahai believe that you should always respect others’ opinions and that you should not challenge their opinion (difficult for the Jews to comprehend perhaps). They believe that gardens are calming and good for the soul, so they built a beautiful symmetrical garden at Haifa. Unfortunately, the shrine is under renovation at the moment, so we couldn’t go inside.

We stopped at Caesarea to look at the Roman Statues and Theatre, where they still have performances nightly. It was a very interesting city, and very pretty, being right on the Mediterranean.

We then moved on to Tel Aviv where we are now!

We have made good friends with another Australian couple who live in Gippsland. We are having dinner with them tonight. We are then getting picked at 1.30am tonight for a 5am plane .We then have an 8 hour stopover in London before going to Amsterdam. This is one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but now looks hellish as it has come closer.

Anyhow, we’ll stop writing now, as we’ve taken up more than enough of your time! It’s almost time for me to look at my Supercoach Football team (got to keep your priorities straight =D)

By for now, we’ll write again from Amsterdam…


Ben & Mel