Israeli Living

After returning from Texas, I was incredibly blessed to be able to go with my Aunt and godmother Mary and Uncle Allen to visit the Holy Land for a week, followed by a trip to Germany to hang out with Kathleen. It was a whirl-wind tour, hitting up almost all of the major sites in and around Israel, along with a couple of rare opportunities that I wouldn't have come across otherwise.

We started out in Tel Aviv. Below is a view of the Mediterranean. If you squint, you can see surfers in the water. I don't know if the rock breaks are a part of it, but there were in fact waves big enough to get a ride on, which I wouldn't have expected.


St. Peter's Church in the port town of Jaffa. This was the first of many beautiful churches we were to visit, most of them maintained by the Franciscans.


Jaffa was for a time the major port city on the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Like every old city in Israel, it has a mix of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim influences...here you can see a mosque's minaret in the foreground.


We left Jaffa to go to its successor port, Caesarea. Built by Herod, it is a modern of ancient engineering. Herod was called "Herod the Builder," and Caesarea is an example of why the name is apt. The town had it all - port, market, ampitheatre, and of course, sea-side palace with swimming pool and great views.


After Caesarea, we went to Nazareth to see the Church of the Immaculate Conception. This church has two floors, with altars on both floors. One is on the ground where the Conception is said to have taken place, while the second was built over it, enlarging the church.


A mass was being said on the lower altar. There were services going on at several of the churches we visited, which was pretty cool to see. It's nice to know that the church still serves its purpose, beyond being a pilgrimage site.


I was to learn that shorts are not allowed in most of the churches at holy sites, out of respect for the church and ground. Not yet having learned when we were in Nazareth, I had to get a piece of cloth to wrap around my legs to cover up.


The second day we drove up to the Mount of Beatitudes, the site where Jesus preached the Beatitudes. The church built there did an excellent job of integrating its architecture with its location.


The altar of the church.


With the exception of the Negev Desert, all of Israel was covered in beautiful flora. Green fields, wild mustard, and domestic olive, grape, banana, and other plants covered the countryside. The Mount was no exception, with a spectacular view overlooking the Sea of Galilee.


We left the Mount for the city of Capernaum. We toured the ruins of the city, many of which were well intact from the times before Jesus. It was here that I first started to notice the dichotomy between Christian tour guides and all others - the Christian tour guides used the AD/BC notation, while everyone else used the BCE/CE. In this photo is Aunt Mary, Uncle Allen, and our tour guide George walking through a synagogue.


We were joined in the Golan Heights by a retired Israeli General and war hero named Effie. He grew up on the Sea of Galilee, overlooked by the Golan Heights, and had many incredible stories to tell, from growing up being shot at by Syrians in the Heights, to his role in the Yom Kippur War. This is a view of the eastern side of the Golan Heights, looking down onto the border between Israel and Syria.


We also went to the site of an excavation that Effie's wife Ellit (not sure of the spelling) had spent a great deal of time organizing and executing. The Golan's geology is mostly volcanic, so the stones used to build the synagogue they found on their land were still mostly intact, just grown over. As a result, they were able to do a great deal of rebuilding the synagogue as it once was.


The Golan Heights was probably the most beautiful part of Israel. Looking down from the plateau into the valley was simply amazing. Effie spoke of how he liked to come out into the country, sit, and contemplate. I could dig it.


The next day we attemped a hike of Arbel, a series of cliffs on the Sea of Galilee. We were trying to get to some caves where Jewish rebels holed up before being smoked out by the Romans. You can see from this picture that the weather didn't want to cooperate.


We attempted to press on anyway. Aunt Mary, still looking happy.


Aunt Mary, not so happy at this point. Between how steep the trail was, and the slick rocks because of rain, we decided to turn back.


Post hiking took us to what was, archaeologically speaking, the most incredible part of the tour. What started as a small discovery in the town of Beth She'an had turned into an enormous excavation of the town, one not even close to being completed.


The town, like Effie and Ellit's synagogue, had been destroyed by a large earthquake in the 2nd century. After the earthquake, there seems to have been a mass evacuation of the area, with the ruins of the town simply left behind.


Left behind were an ampitheater, baths, temple, markets, and many other identifiable hallmarks of a typical Roman city.


Transitioning to the Negev Desert, we stopped at the place where the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, by a Bedouin looking for his goat. The next day we went to the fortress at Masada. There's a tram up the mountain, but I chose to hike it. I can tell you, if you were trying to seige the fortress, that'd be some tough work.


Herod constructed the fortress, it is thought to watch over his trade route. The fortress became famous after his death, when Jewish rebels holed up in Masada while fighting the Romans. On the verge of being overtaken, the Jewish leaders made a pact to, rather than surrender to Romans, kill themselves, first by killing their families, then by drawing lots to kill each other. One man was left behind to fight the Romans, and ultimately die. Interestingly, this story is known because a woman whose husband had already died was evidently forgotten about, and lived to tell the story to the historian Flavius Josephus.


We also went swimming in the Dead Sea. I don't have any pictures, but bobbing on a sea of salt is a pretty interesting experience. After swimming, we went to Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity. The church was originally started around the 30s AD. I don't have any good pictures of the hall of the church itself, which is too bad. It's in a style that I enjoy, grand in scale while simple in decoration. To me, it gave an air of importance to the place.

The most important sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem as well have multiple altars, Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic (and sometimes others). The place where Jesus was born does not, but the church that was built up over it does. You can see the difference between the Eastern churches and the Roman church in the altars. The Orthodox altar:


And the Roman:


Our fifth day was a Jerusalem heavy day. We walked the Via Dolorosa, which is the path of the 14 Stations of the Cross. It leads through the Old City of Jerusalem, through winding narrow roads. These are a couple of churches early in the walk.


You can see the crown of thorns in the ceiling of this church.


The Via Dolorosa ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place of the crucification. It had been raining pretty much the entire day, but the sun broke through clouds briefly as we approached the church.


The church actually has multiple chapels in it, with multiple strains of the Christian faith competing for space. In fact, a Muslim holds the keys to the church in an effort to prevent arguments between the different strains. The Russian Orthodox have an altar of the site where Jesus was crucified.


The Roman Catholics have an altar next to it. I don't have any pictures, but Jesus' tomb is also enclosed in the church, which is counterintuitive. When the church was being built, the rock surrounding the site was hewn away, which led to Jesus' tomb actually rising in relief against the rock that was torn out to create the church, so that now there is little sense of the rock surrounding the tomb.


The church was originally built by St. Helena in the 300s. As you walk through the church, you walk through time, from the Russian Orthodox construction in the 1800s to the Crusader construction of the 1100s to St. Helena's chapel, from the 300s.


The next morning started with the Dome of the Rock. It's controlled by Jordanian authority, and non-Muslims have not been allowed inside the Dome since Ariel Sharon visited, I believe in 2000. Never mind the rock's importance to the three main monotheistic faiths...


Our final day in Israel was spent mostly at an Israeli Air Force Base. This is us with our tour guides, Danny, a former USAF pilot and retired Israeli pilot, and on the far right Lou, one of the four original members of the Israeli Air Force. He had some remarkable stories of the early days.


Here's Aunt Mary and Uncle Allen in an F-16.


And me, taking out some bad guys.


Uncle Allen and I, fresh off some simulator time.


Our final visit was to the Abbey of the Dormition, where the Virgin Mother fell asleep and was brought up to Heaven. Below is the chapel constructed in the basement of the site. Again, another chapel is also built above this one.


The visit to Israel was an unbelievable experience. I think we managed to pack as much as possible into a limited amount of time, and even just having a few moments, it's impossible not to feel the full weight of some of the places you find yourself in. The experience of a lifetime.