Here you can browse through my blog posts prior to February 2022. Currently I'm sharing my travel experiences, candid opinions, and what's on my mind solely on my Facebook page. — Rick
The religious scene in Jerusalem is complicated even for tourists. Before planning our day, my guide asked me my religion. Local guides know that, among Christians interested in seeing Jesus’ tomb, most Protestants prefer the tomb in the Garden Tomb while Catholics like the tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. While I’m Lutheran, this is one case where I definitely go with the Catholics.
For many Christians, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built upon on the place where Jesus was crucified and resurrected, is the holiest of churches and the highlight of their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is built upon the summit of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified. Because it’s holy for all kinds of Christians, who see things differently and don’t communicate very well, it’s a cluttered religious hodgepodge of various zones — each controlled by a different sect. There are chapels for Greek Orthodox, Franciscans, Coptic Christians, Armenians and so on — each run by a different community or sect. To make any decision about the church in general, they need to agree unanimously. That’s why nothing much gets done here in the holiest church in Christendom…and it feels that way.
The slab believed to mark the spot where the dead body of the crucified Christ was given to Mary is busy with devout pilgrims.
Of the Stations of the Cross, most lie along the Via Dolorosa. But the last five are actually in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Number 10 is where Jesus was undressed, and Number 11 marks where he was nailed to the cross. Number 12 is where he was crucified. Number 13 is where his body was given to Mary. And finally, number 14 marks his tomb. Each is busy with pilgrims.
Before Columbus and the illustrious class of 1500, many maps of the world showed Jerusalem as the center of the world. Jerusalem — holy, treasured, and long fought after among the three great monotheistic religions — has been destroyed and rebuilt 14 times. Its fabled walls are so strong that its defeats often came by starve-’em-out sieges.
The city’s religious focal point is Temple Mount — considered by many to be both the starting point or foundation stone of creation, and the closest place on earth to God in heaven. That’s why Abraham came here to sacrifice his son, Isaac. The golden Dome of the Rock, one of the most sacred sights in Islam, marks its summit. For Muslims, this rock, which marks the Altar of Isaac, is the third most holy place in Islam. While the Muslims have worshipped here since around the mid-600s, the first Jewish temple was built in Jerusalem in 925 B.C. And when debating who most belongs in Jerusalem, many are quick to note that Jerusalem is mentioned 676 times in the Bible but not once in the Koran.
Local Christians like to believe that God is everywhere but all prayers go through Jerusalem (as if it’s a cell-phone tower), and the Holy Spirit comes down to us via Jerusalem. I was told that there’s a golden phone with direct connection to God at the Vatican. To make a call, it costs $1,000. And there’s a golden phone offering the same service in Jerusalem, where the same call cost only 25 cents. When I asked why, I was told, “It’s a local call.”
People in Tel Aviv told me many don’t like the religiosity of Jerusalem. “The cities have two different mindsets. The sea makes you open. There’s no sea in Jerusalem and no beach. In Jerusalem, everybody is political, religious, or a tourist.”
Enjoying the view from the Mount of Olives, you see the glittering golden Dome of the Rock, which marks the summit of Temple Mount — holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike.
Jerusalem has a tiny historic core. Its dense and complex “old town” is contained within a mighty two-mile-long Ottoman wall. The old city within the wall is divided into four distinct quarters: Armenian (with 2,000 people); Christian (with 6,000); Jewish (with 6,000); and Muslim (with 22,000 people).
The Jewish quarter of old Jerusalem was mostly destroyed between 1948 and 1967 — its stones used as a quarry during the Muslim occupation. Since 1967 it eventually came back into Jewish hands. You can identify it by the new construction using creamy Jerusalem stone (of which the entire city is built) and by the lack of satellite dishes (though planners in the 1970s decided to bury cables for aesthetic reasons). About 90 percent of the old town Jews are Orthodox and don’t watch TV.
The Western Wall, the holiest place on earth for Jews, wasn’t designed to be that way. About 2,000 years ago, it was just the retaining wall that supported the main Jewish temple. When the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the Jews went into exile. Over the centuries, throughout the diaspora, Jews returning to Jerusalem came here — to all that was left of their temple — to pray and mourn its destruction. That’s why it is often called “The Wailing Wall.”
The sacred-to-Jews Western Wall is open to anyone, any time. My guide, Gideon Har-Hermon, illustrates with a chart the tiny segment of the original wall that survives today.The Western Wall is divided into a men’s section and a women’s section. Jews place prayers printed on paper into cracks in the wall and bob repeatedly while they pray, as part of their ritual.
Today, of Jerusalem’s 800,000 people, about two-thirds are Jewish and one-third are Arabs. And of the Arabs, 80 percent are Muslim and maybe 20 percent are Christian. The Arab Christian population of Israel and the Palestinian Territories goes back to the original fishers of men. The old town is fraught with endless little struggles. For example, the volume of call to prayer is turned up high, just to make a statement from Muslims and to annoy the Jews.
One of the most fascinating quarters of Jerusalem is Mea She’arim, the city’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. Since its population takes the Shabbat (Saturday) very seriously, Friday is a huge day as all are busy preparing for their holy day of rest. Many Israelis see these most conservative of Jews as leaders of their faith. And many others see them in a negative way. One modern and secular local told me, “To these Hassidic Jews, I — with my modern ways — am the enemy. And to me, they are parasites. They don’t work. Our taxes pay them to just sit around and learn the Torah. Their job is to be religious. They speak Yiddish because Hebrew is not for small talk. It’s a holy language.”
One of Jerusalem’s most fascinating quarters is Mea She’arim, the city’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. Kiosks sell posters of leading rabbis. Each rabbi has his own following, and the rabbi one follows influences how you live and dress.
Until 1948 Jerusalem was united. Then, after Israel won its independence, a green line divided the city, marking the border between Israel and Jordan, and giving Jordan control of the entire old city. Jews didn’t even have access to their beloved Western Wall. Since 1967, the city is united again with all religions having access to their various sacred places in town. While the Green Line is gone as a political border, it survives as a cultural one with the Jordanian side being more Arab and Muslim, and the Israeli side more Jewish.
The Green Line was the battlefront in 1967, leaving lots of destruction. After Israel rebuilt the city, one stretch of what was the infamous Green Line is now a long, modern shopping boulevard called the Mamilla Mall.
This mountain perch, atop the Golan Heights in the far north of Israel, was once a hotly contested strategic high point between Israel and Syria (which is now at war with itself, but seems at peace from this vantage point). Today, it welcomes tourists.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
For Israel, simply surviving is serious business. More and more Israeli Jews, along with people around the world who care about peace in the Middle East, think Israel would be wise to lighten up a bit. But when you travel there and hang out with the older generation, you appreciate why most of them take every threat to their nation extremely seriously and make their own rules for security without waiting for anyone else’s OK.
That’s the generation that remembers 1967, when Hebrew-language propaganda radio from Egypt broadcast to a young generation of Israelis: “Dear fish of the Mediterranean, don’t bother eating now because in a few days you’ll be dining on two million Jews.” And, while lately, the news fixates on missiles from Iran, Israel considers it has two Iranian divisions right on its border: Hamas (in Gaza) and Hezbollah (in Lebanon).
My guide, Benny Dagan, illustrated with maps and charts how Israel quadrupled in size in 1967 after the Six-Day War. For its own defense, Israel insists on keeping the land it took as a buffer, and to never again have Arab gun emplacements able to shoot down at Israel from the high ground — a kind of grinding terror the country lived with from the late 1940s to 1967.From this Syrian military post, named “High and Mighty,” Syrians looked down on Israel’s primary water source and shelled civilians at will from 1949 until 1967, when Israel “made them pay the bill” in a six-day military rout.
Photo by Trish Feaster. (for her blog, see The Travelphile.)
The Gadot Lookout in the Golan Heights overlooks the upper Jordan River valley, and is on the border of the present UN buffer zone with Syria. Since 1967, Israel has controlled the Golan Heights. As long as things are peaceful, the trenches and barbed wire here provide a kind of commando playground for visiting Israelis. Another vantage point, on Mount Bental, looks down on the road to the Syrian capital, Damascus — just 35 miles to the north. The café atop Mount Bental is named “Coffee Annan,” a clever reminder that it was United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan who once led the UN troops stationed below. And, Annan means “clouds” in Hebrew — so it’s “coffee above the clouds.”It was fascinating to drive right up to the Israel-Syria border, a tense no man’s land patrolled by United Nations troops.Souvenir T-shirts like this weave in political themes, as the political realities are a part of any curious visitor’s experience. It is thought-provoking how many mighty nations and empires once threatened Israel and how — of all of them — only Israel survives. The joke: Israel has friends in high places. (In all fairness, along with heaven, that would include Washington, D.C.)All Israelis go into service at age 18: men for three years, women for two years. While the primary purpose is to protect the country, a strong secondary purpose for the universal draft is to build social cohesion. Military service functions as a kind of cultural boot camp for first-generation Israelis — new arrivals from places like Russia, Iraq, and Ethiopia. After three years in the army, they’re no longer FOB — “fresh off the boat.”
Tourism is a big part of Israel’s economy. And much of that is Christian tourism: mostly bus tours of Americans visiting sights from Jesus’ three-year ministry–places they’ve imagined since their childhood Sunday school classes.
While Jesus was born in Bethlehem, to the south near Jerusalem, he grew up in the north in Nazareth, near the Sea of Galilee. Since the Jordan River dumps into the north end of the lake, that’s where there’s the most oxygen in the water and consequently the most fish. In that area, around Capernaum, is where the major population centers were and, of course, the most fishermen. This is where Jesus assembled his band of disciples, turning fishers of fish into fishers of men.
On the shore of Galilee, at Kibbutz Ginosar, there’s an impressive little lakeside museum containing the recently excavated scant remains of “the Jesus Boat”–a typical fisherman’s boat from the first century A.D.
The Sea of Galilee–700 feet below sea level, fed and drained by the Jordan River, and 13 miles long by 8 miles wide–is Israel’s top source of water. It’s also a popular tourist destination for Israelis and Christian tourists, and home to lots of fish.
This tourist map shows all the stops Christian tour groups can make to see where famous and beloved stories and lessons from the Bible took place.
Christian tour groups from all over the world make a vacation pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While Jerusalem is the major stop, they generally make a quick visit to Bethlehem (in the West Bank), and loop through the north to stop at several sights near the Sea of Galilee.
As a Christian, gazing out over the fabled Sea of Galilee and imagining Jesus walking on the water, I became more emotional than I had imagined I would be. Closing my eyes, I let the song of pilgrim groups singing in the distance, the sound of the little waves at my feet, and the breeze off the lake come together in a touching, personal moment.
At the altar of a new church, built atop the ruins and mosaics of a fifth-century church, is the rock upon which–according to tradition–Jesus laid the five loaves and two fish that managed to feed a gathering of 5,000.
The Church of the Primacy of St. Peter is especially important for Catholic pilgrims. Delightfully set on the Sea of Galilee, it’s built upon the rock where, tradition holds, the resurrected Jesus ate with his disciples and told Peter to “feed my sheep.” That is one reason why the Roman Catholic Church believes in the primacy of St. Peter.
At each Christian pilgrimage site, our Jewish guide Benny read with passion passages from the Bible. I found the scriptures talking about the Sermon on the Mount, feeding the masses with a few fish and loaves, Jesus calming the water, and the Beatitudes (“blessed are the meek,” and so on) particularly impactful here on the sites where those events occurred.
From the Sea of Galilee (700 feet below sea level), the Jordan River flows south watering the fertile and strategic Jordan Valley, until it reaches the Dead Sea (about 1,400 feet below sea level). According to tradition, John the Baptist baptized Jesus where the Jordan leaves the Sea of Galilee. Today, many Christians flock to this spot to be baptized or re-baptized. I found this sight the most lively…but the least spiritual.
