| Submitted by: Mark Nowak United States |
| Submission Date: 11 February 2005 |
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Outside I took a picture of the windows behind bullet-proof glass. They were once damaged during an attack, and the artist had to come back in his eighties to repair them.
We then went to Mount Zion just south of the Old City where we visited King David's Tomb and the room of the Last Supper, respectively. During the walk between the two I could see small school girls jumping rope. We were able to see the Catholic Church of the Dormition (named after the belief that the Virgin Mary did not die but just went to sleep). The Tomb of David was huge. Rami told us that the Torah scrolls above it were scrolls that had been hidden from the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The scrolls were passed down generation after generation, but a generation only lasted about a week.
There were a couple of tourist groups in the room of the last supper. As with many of the things we saw, you had to take location with a slight grain of salt. Most likely we were just in the area where it might have been held. A white pigeon (or are doves more common there?) in the room caught my eye before we left.
We ate lunch at the same place we ate on the previous day. Shelley quickly bolted to find something else. I followed, and soon we had a good-sized group of us checking out other nearby establishments which all turned out to be closed. We sadly returned to the cafeteria which had such a long line we hadn't missed anything. It was Ash Wednesday, so to avoid meat like a good Catholic I had spaghetti which turned out to be significantly cheaper anyway. I sat with Naomal and Hiro.
At one point there was some commotion where there were sirens and soldiers rushing about that I later heard was about a stabbing in the city. We also heard some more sonic booms.
Entering through the Jaffa Gate on the west side of the Old City, we saw some more soldiers and entered the The Citadel of King Herod (also known as King David's Tower although it had nothing to do with King David). The place has a great museum that tells the history of the Israel and that of the fertile crescent in general. Going up the tower, we were also offered a spectacular view of the city. Afterwards, we stopped at a very large menorah which was decorated with 29 reliefs of figures and events of Jewish history. It was a gift from the British. There was also some kind of pleasant smelling herb growing around us. We were basically across the street from the Knesset, the Israeli legislature. Israel has its capital in Jerusalem, but the United States doesn't recognize it there, so our embassy is in Tel Aviv.
We drove around the Knesset to the Israeli Museum which was quite a complex. It had become cloudy again, and I was getting pretty cold listening to Rami's telling of the story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The seven scrolls were found in 1947. One of them talks about a fight between the sons of darkness and the sons of light at the end of the world. Consequently, at the surface of the Shrine of the Book there is a large white dome being hosed with water and a huge rectangular black monolith. You enter it on the monolith side and exit under the dome. Inside we saw many old scroll fragments, some copies and parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The display at the center of the Dome has a copy of the scroll which contains the Book of Isaiah.
We didn't have much time left before we had to leave, so Ginger, Norman (who was from New Zealand) and I rushed to see other parts of the museum, passing by a sculpture garden. We entered the main building and looked around hurriedly before we had to leave. I was disappointed that we didn't get to linger as much as I would have liked, especially since we didn't have anyplace else to go (besides the hotel) after the museum.
I called Sara again when I got back to my room. I would find out later that these calls were costing me about a dollar and a half per minute. As it turned out, I had spaghetti again for dinner in the hotel with Shelley and her parents.
Tonight was the dinner show which I hadn't signed up for. Food doesn't represent a lot of adventure or offer much besides sustenance for me (and maybe I'm just biased from an awful dinner at a dinner show in Beijing). Besides -- it was $27 a plate. I did, however, end up going to the folk dancing show ($18) afterwards. I tried to get Stacy to go, but she couldn't join us. Baruch picked up those of us who hadn't wanted to go for the dinner but wanted to go to the folk dancing. I think it was just six of us -- Shelley, her parents, possibly the couple from New Zealand (Norman and Vera McMillan) and me. The show was performed at the YMCA. I asked the others about the dinner, and it seemed like you either hated it or you liked it a lot. Trini complained about the smell of the food. Naomal said that those people who were into culinary adventures tended to enjoy it more. The theater filled up with tour groups from all over the world. I recognized some from earlier in the day. The audience was asked to call out their countries -- our group was pretty quiet. I sat with Perry and Trini. The Jewish and Arab dancing (which included a couple of horas) performed by the Tzabarim folkdance group was quite good. Most of the dancers seemed to be teenagers.
I ended up going to sleep very late and getting only about three hours of sleep.
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Thursday, March 2
MASADA, DEAD SEA, CAVES OF QUMRAN
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On our way to Masada we stopped at a scenic overlook of Jerusalem where we took some more pictures, and I finally broke down and bought a poster of the city for one dollar. One of the other great bargains around is getting 30 postcards for a dollar. I must have gone for that deal at least twice. We also stopped near a Bedouin camp to take a few pictures. Bedouins are nomads who live of the land and herd animals like sheep. Their homes often look very poor, but we did notice television antennas in some homes, and televisions are very expensive in Israel. When we got off the bus, we saw a bunch of kids start running toward us. When they reached us, they put out their hands and kept repeating the word 'money.'
Masada is a massive rock natural structure rising some 1400 feet above the Dead Sea. The Zealots resisted the Romans from within its fortress for three years. The Romans built a huge ramp and broke into it in A.D. 73, but not before 960 of them killed themselves rather than be taken. The desert was very desolate, and the sky was clear, so the sun was shining brightly. Rami made us bring water with us, or buy it if we hadn't brought any along. I wanted to hike up the snake path, but Rami said we'd be leaving by the time I got up there. I felt he was seriously underestimating me.
We took the cable car up to the top. Not all of us were in the same car, and Shelley and I were in the first car. Once on top, correctly guessing Rami wouldn't take us everywhere, we set off on our own. Shelley was more into caves, and I was more into covering area, so we ended up splitting up as well. The view was spectacular. It was very scenic. Looking over the edge I could see crows flying, the Roman ramp eroded by over 1900 years of weathering and the remains of the Roman camps which looked like giant squares in the sand. I think there were about eight of them. The path the Romans took to get water from a canyon in the distance was also visible. I entered and explored cisterns and circled the perimeter of the surface, getting some great pictures. I was coming around full circle when I entered Herod's Roman style bath-house with a lot of grammar school kids. I noticed that their chaperones were carrying rifles. What bothered me more was that a child was carrying a rifle. Later I learned that it was the law in Israel that such field trips have armed escorts. Since basically all males are in the military and can use a gun, it's not hard to find an older brother or father to take his gun along. The child was probably being allowed to feel like a protector by carrying a rifle.
The group was moving slowly, and once inside, I was pretty much trapped. I was getting concerned that I hadn't run into my group yet. I had worked up quite a sweat the way I covered the surface of Masada. There was some commotion when the children saw a mouse running around on the floor of the bath-house. When we got out, I saw my my group just entering the bath-house. Apparently, Rami had kept the group near the cable cars and spent all that time just talking about Masada. No one had seen Shelley yet. I saw a tourist lose a pair of sunglasses when they fell between the cracks of the wooden floor. Rami told me I had broken the first rule of the desert by going off by myself without telling anyone. He may have been right, but I still thought it would be hard to get lost on Masada.
Shelley showed up. We had been separated from the group for the better part of an hour. Rami walked us to the Northern Palace, but he didn't take us to the lower terraces, so I left the group again to explore them. I knew Rami was watching out for the rest of the group since they were significantly older, and he didn't want to make this experience an unpleasant one for them. He then took us to the ramp and into the oldest synagogue in the world and showed us some catapult rocks with which the Romans would have pelted the Zealots. He told us that he had been there when the mini-series 'Masada' was being filmed. When he saw Shelley, he told us not to leave the group again until we got back down. I still hadn't been up the tower-like structure, so I waited for him to go through the gate which led back to the cable cars before I ran up to the structure and took the stairs to the top. I didn't touch the water I'd bought until we got back down.
We drove further south along the Dead Sea to a resort where many of us changed into swimwear and swam in the Dead Sea. Swimming in the Dead Sea was a real treat. The water seemed cold at first, but you quickly got used to it. It also had somewhat of a slimy feel to it from all the minerals. The heavy water made you so buoyant that it took no effort to keep your head above water. In fact you could stand in water that was very deep or lie on your back with your hands and feet in the air and not sink. It was a blast. You had to be careful not to get any of the water in your mouth or eyes because it was so salty, but that wasn't a problem. There were quite a few people in the water at the time. In the distance you could see a white shoreline from all the minerals left from the evaporating water.
After showering and changing, I ate some pizza with Naomal and Hiro and then treated myself to a chocolate shake. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (the latter is actually in Jordan) were further south, but we didn't go there. We headed back up north to the Caves of Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. I have to say I was tired and thirsty by the time we reached Qumran where the Essenes, a Jewish sect which wrote the scrolls, lived. They stored more water than they needed and didn't believe in marriage. The cave where the scrolls were found was a neat site. Rami told us that once when he was there with a tour group there had been a flash flood.
I left a message for Stacy and then called her at 7:00 PM before joining Shelley, Dan and Glennis for dinner. A waitress named Elia in the hotel restaurant had given us directions to a restaurant she recommended near the Mahane Yehuda Market. I wanted to walk it, but I was outvoted. We took a cab, but the cab driver ended up taking a less than direct way to the place. He also tried to talk us out of going there, saying that everything would be closed. Traffic got bad, so we walked the remaining distance to the area. As it turned out, the restaurant we wanted was closed. Shelley was extremely excited about all the fresh fruits and vegetables being sold and bought some strawberries. |
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