Israel Day 5 Sept 23

Sept 23
We got to Jerusalem to hotel Moriah Classic shortly after dark last night. We grabbed an evening snack in the hotel lounge. When we got back to the room about 9:30 we noticed a lots of sirens police ambulances going passed our hotel on the main street. The sirens kept up for several hours. In the morning we found out that there was a terrorist that drove into a group Israeli soldiers. He was eventually captured it was apparently quite a mess 17 soldiers injured and several seriously injured. Note that in Isreal all 18 year olds serve in the army for three years if boys and two years if girls. There seems to be no excitement about the incident, just routine, and we keep going.

First on the agenda was the Museum of the Book which has the original scrolls found at Qumran at the Dead Sea which we went by the day before. There was also a really nice model of Jerusalem. It is a recreation of the city sort of first century.

Next we went to a synagogue with stained glass windows by Marc Chagall depicting the twelve tribes of Israel. The synagogue was at a hospital complex. Unfortunately we were not able to take any pictures of the stained glass windows, so the best I can do is to give a website.
www.biblio.com/isbn/0807608076.html


Next we went to the holocaust museum this was a huge display depicting the suffering and execution of 6,000,000 Jews throughout Europe. Very graphic and sad information but again no photographs inside the museum.

We then headed for Bethlehem which is in Palestinian territory so we had to go through a check point and change buses, driver and guide since our original driver and guide are Jewish and are not allowed in the area. We were warned repeatedly not to stop walking to stay in a group. Getting into the "birth place" of Jesus was difficult because it was deep inside of a Greek Orthodox church that had been built over "the site" it in 325 AD, so it was old crowded and hot. The opening into the area was like a small single door and there were probably 500 people waiting to go to the front of the church and down several steps into the area where the stable was "supposed" to be. It seems that all of these "holy sites" are pretty much destroyed by the people who were trying to show them homage. the place where Jesus is supposed to have been born is commemorated by a silver sunburst. the area, originally a cave was covered with marble slabs. The site of the manger was protected by a wire mesh screen, the manger was constructed of marble as well. On the way back to Jerusalem I got a shot of the surrounding terrain and could imagine a place where the shephard could have been tending sheep on a nearby hillside.

In the evening we went out on a driving tour of the city stopping a key locations to get some good views of the old city.