Nazareth and Jerusalem

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

Nazareth, the town where the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was to give birth to a baby, is called the Arab capital of Israel with a majority of Arab Israelis living there.  The Old City is worth a visit to wander the alleyways of its bazaar and enjoy some good Arab food.  Obviously, the city is a beacon for Christians anxious to visit the various churches dedicated to Mary and the Annunciation.  One small excavation shows the kind of stone houses that were common 2000 years ago, at the time Mary, Joseph and Jesus lived.

doorway in Nazareth

Continuing on to Jerusalem, we wanted to visit Yad Vashem again, the incredible museum devoted to the Holocaust and the remembrance of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.  We had a private guided tour, so learned much more than we had during our first visit. 

Nazareth houses from the time of Jesus

Importantly, non-Jews who helped Jews escape the Nazis, called the Righteous of the Nations, are honored here also, with trees planted in their names.  Originally, the planners thought there would be several hundred of these women and men, but there have been 27,000 identified so far.  Their stories testify to individual and communal courage and action to do what is right in a time of terror and hate and total brutality.  There was one town in southern France, with 5000 inhabitants, in which many families hid Jews escaping the Nazis.  Everyone in town knew this and not one person ever betrayed them.  The town and all its people are honored.

Our guide was a settler from New Jersey with 7 children.  She and her family moved to Israel 13 years ago to be part of building a Jewish homeland.  They are Orthodox Jews who believe, as our guide at the kibbutz did, that God gave the Jews this promised land and they must love it and care for it.  Her desire is to live in harmony with the Palestinians, which, she said, is what most Jews and Palestinians.  What she did not say was that a Palestinian state would be part of this peaceful coexistence.  She has a Ph.D in English Literature and teaches in Israel’s equivalent of the community college system which gives her time for her passion—learning the stories of the survivors of the Holocaust.

Yad Vashem, an arrow through the heart of Mt. Herzl

She was exceptional.  She knows the names of each survivor and their stories, and still she is learning more.  The stories are horrific.  Watching the survivors tell their stories on video is wrenching as they struggle 70 years later to recount something so horrible that it defies words. 

sculpture outside Children's Memorial

Early in the War, before the Nazi death camps were built, the Nazis had squads of soldiers whose job was to murder all the Jews the army found as they conquered across Europe.  Initially, this was done by having the Jews dig pits, lining them up along the edges and shooting them so they would fall into the pit.  Wave after wave of men, women and children were murdered this way.  One survivor, in a video, told of being in the line about to be shot.  Just before the shooting began, his grandfather pushed him into the pit on top of all the bodies already lying there so that he would have a chance to live.  After all the killing was done and it was dark, this 16-year-old tried to move.  He felt a hand grab his leg.  There was one other boy who had also survived the slaughter unhurt.  Somehow the 2 of them managed to free themselves from the mass of corpses and escape into the forest.  I do not know the courage it takes to survive such horror and still be able to build a life for yourself, creating a new family when all your original family is dead.

arched passageway, Jerusalem

The Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem is a quiet place for contemplation.  The architect designed a building that is dark inside except for 5 candles that are always burning, reflected in thousands of mirrors so that it looks like there are thousands of candles honoring the 1.5 million children who were murdered in the Holocaust.  Their photos, or as many as have been found, line the walls while their names, ages and birthplaces are continuously read.  It is a place of such sadness, but also with so much love for the lost children.  Israel is determined that they will be remembered.

Jerusalem is a limestone city, with new buildings required to be built of or faced with limestone.  So, it shimmers, even in the rain, and blends ancient and modern structures.  The Old City has 4 quarters, Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian.  The Western Wall is in the Jewish Quarter, with security checks required to get in.  Above the Wall on the Temple Mount are sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, with access carefully guarded.  Both Jewish and Muslim quarters have busy bazaars full of souvenir shops and stalls selling produce, meat, and spices.  The city’s layers of history play out even today in religion, politics and, too often, enmity.  But, in the bazaar, everyone mixes, selling, shopping, talking.

Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem

Around the Sea of Galilee

Beit She'an zebra mosaic

Israel is experiencing an unusual amount of rain this season, so the hills and fields around the Sea of Galilee are covered with wildflowers, white and yellow daisies and brilliant red poppies.  The grass is tall and bright green, especially on the Golan Heights which rise above the Sea on its east side.  I wish I could have photographed these hills, but it was raining pretty constantly while we were in the Galilee area.

Sea of  Galilee

Beit She'an temple columns

We stayed in Tiberias, the largest city in the area, overlooking the Sea of Galilee (which is only 1/3 the size of Lake Tahoe).  This is an area rich in Biblical history and also in kibbutzim, the collective farms that were a key part of building Israeli culture and society.  I did a blog yesterday on the kibbutz we visited.

There is also Israel's best Roman ruin, Beit She'an, just south of the Sea.  It is worth a visit, mostly for its beautiful mosaics.  As in Caesarea, these mosaics need to be protected.  There is some restoration work going on at Beit She'an, but it needs a lot more resources to protect it.  The stones in the mosaics are quite large, which means they are Roman rather than Byzantine.  

Beit She'an's central road

The site is a tell, a large mound or hill created from the construction of cities on top of older cities.  The Beit She'an tell excavations show at least 20 cities built one on top of the other, starting in the Late Neolithic period.  Archaeologists believe the site has been occupied for about 8000 years.  Nearby is another large tell which has yet to be excavated.

beautiful mosaic floor like a carpet

The Sea of Galilee is a major source of water for agriculture and domestic use in Israel.  It rises and falls with the rains and some snow from Mt. Hebron, to its northeast, so Israelis watch it closely.  The two days we were there, it rained pretty constantly, so good for the water supply.  The Sea was too choppy for tourist boats.  The shores of the Sea are mostly swampy, though our hotel had created a small beach for guests to use in warmer weather.

Below are some of my favorite mosaics.

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fish mosaic

lion mosaic

Visiting a fascinating "religious" kibbutz in the Jordan Valley

housing at Sde Eliyahu

Yesterday, we visited a "religious" kibbutz, Sde Eliyahu, just south of the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan Valley, and spent a fascinating 3 hours there with Benny, an "observant" Jew from New Jersey who has lived on the kibbutz for 40 years, since he was 25.  He explained his own life and the workings of the kibbutz, both politically and economically.  There are kibbutzim that are religious or "observant" (we would call Orthodox, but Benny doesn't like that term) and others that are much more casual about religious practices.

date palm orchard

Sde Eliyahu was started by a group of teenagers from Europe in 1937 who had managed to get by the British blockade of Jewish immigrants.  In order to start their own religious community as a kibbutz, they had to build a stockade and a tower--sufficient to qualify the land as theirs and to keep the British from kicking them out.  They claimed the Bedouin were not there, and they probably weren't right then since they moved around with their flocks.  But, the Bedouin returned to find a small Jewish establishment on lands they had always used.

kindergarten play yard

There was already one small "religious" kibbutz in the area; soon there were three.  All started the same way, with a couple of teenagers milking a cow and raising some chickens and probably planting a little wheat along with some vegetables.  Soon, someone started making cheese and butter with the milk, bread from the wheat, and so on, until they had established a modicum of self-sufficiency.  Meanwhile, they built rudimentary housing for themselves and began to plan a future with families, homes, schools, a clinic and a multi-faceted agricultural complex of fields and orchards.

dining hall and "commons"

Sde Eliyahu now has 700 residents, 280 of whom are "members" who can vote and make all the decisions for the entire community.  For example, there was only 1 phone for many years and the members decided no one should have a private phone.  Same with televisions.  But, of course, mobile phones and the internet came along and now everyone has a cell phone, a computer and a TV.  The members decided that no one would have a car; residents can rent one from the kibbutz' pool of cars.  Houses are all 1100 square feet.  Within those external walls, a family can do whatever it wants in terms of interior design and furnishings.  It is a bit less regimented now, but the kids still find it too restrictive and most are moving away when they reach 18.  This is a big problem for the future of the kibbutz, but, so far, the members have held to their structure despite the desire of young people for more individual choice.

harvesting carrots

We visited the primary school which has a schoolyard literally full of discarded stuff.  As a former school board member, I looked at it and saw enraged parents and lawsuits resulting from kids getting hurt on all the junk.  But, the kibbutz thinks the mass of stuff encourages the children to be creative, trying out all kinds of inventions and stories supported by the old chairs, wastebaskets, mattresses, etc. that fill the schoolyard.  They are probably right.  And parents probably can't successfully sue the kibbutz members if their child gets hurt.
This kibbutz is partly organic.  They ship produce to Europe, which has much stricter rules about what can be used on fruits, vegetables and animals than the US does.  They have fought insect pests by finding and now raising the predators who destroy the pests that destroy the crops.  One key "good" insect is the red spider mite, which they grow in large greenhouses.  Once the "bad" pests have all been destroyed, the spider mite starves to death, so does not become a nuisance itself.  To keep the population available for killing the harmful insects, the kibbutz also raises some of the damaging bugs to feed to the spider mites and other predators so they can maintain a population of them.

greenhouses (hundreds of them) for growing insects and crops

They also raise bumblebees.  These bees are good pollinators and don't suffer from hive collapse.  They don't make honey, so have to be fed, but they pollinate 30% more flowers than a human pollinator (which the kibbutz used in the past) in the same amount of time.  The bumblebees are raised in the now unused bomb shelters on the kibbutz which provide an even temperature and clean environment.
The kibbutz has a dairy, olive and date palm orchards, fields of wheat, greenhouses of herbs and vegetables, feed corn for the dairy cows, reservoirs full of tilapia and carp, fruit trees, and so much more.  They make their own herbs and spices to sell to tourists right on the kibbutz, in large, long warehouses with cleaners, driers and packagers.  The olives go to a central processing plant owned by all the kibbutzim in the area.
Everyone who wants to live on the kibbutz and eventually become a member (a 3 year wait) has the opportunity to work in all the many units of the operation.  The members vote on whether to invite someone to join them.

fish farm

Everything is run by committees, with all decisions eventually coming back to the members.  It sounds like these weekly meetings can go on a long time as everyone, including non-members, has the opportunity to voice an opinion, without time limits.
Benny talked to us about his love for this land, how he gets a thrill every time he drives down off the hills above the Jordan Valley and sees his kibbutz with its fields and orchards.  He believes God gave Jews this land and that it is their responsibility to use it well and to take care of it.  He raised his 6 children on this kibbutz (none will remain there) and has held most of the leadership posts in the community, currently being the Fire Chief.

bumblebees in hive

No one earns a salary, but everyone gets a monthly stipend of about $900 (for people without kids at home--families with young children get more) per month.  Bennie saves his money for his twice a year visit to his elderly father in New Jersey.  Housing, food in the dining room (a huge cafeteria), health care, education and all basic needs are met by the kibbutz.  Only about 2% of Israelis now live on kibbutzim.  For our host, this is the life he chose and the life he cherishes.

Israel's Mediterranean coast

mosaic from Roman villa at Caesarea

Saturday morning, we left our hotel in Amman at the awful hour of 3:30 a.m. because the airlines require you to be at the airport 3 hours before flight departure times.  Which is quite ridiculous since you spend 2 1/2 of those 3 hours sitting around wishing you were still asleep. 

Caesarea amphitheater

We arrived in Tel Aviv at 7:30 a.m., picked up our rental car and headed north.  Our first stop was at Caesarea, a Roman ruin right on the Mediterranean.  King Herod decided to build a port here in the first century BC to encourage trade throughout the Roman Empire.  He had 2 large breakwaters built to enclose a harbor and added a typical Roman city, complete with a hippodrome for chariot races and a theater.  A prosperous city grew up around the port, but suffered many wars and, ultimately, collapse from war and earthquake.

view of Haifa from Mt. Carmel

I first visited Caesarea more than 3 decades ago, with my kids, and loved it for its history, beautiful mosaics, fallen columns and spectacular setting, so I was looking forward to a new look.  There has been a lot of restoration over the last 30 years, not much of it well done.  The worst part is that the area has become almost a low-end theme park, with shops and cafes filling up a big part of the ruins and extending out onto the old Roman breakwater.  The reconstruction of the hippodrome and theater make them look like like faux ruins, with too much bright limestone rock used to fill in the holes left by cannon balls, fire and earthquake.  The mosaics are still beautiful, but in grave need of protection.  The movie that is supposed to give you a bit of the history of the site is pretty bad, with too much noise and zinging objects to be of much interest, though it does give you a small idea of the history.  I don't think I can recommend a visit to Caesarea when there are better options in Israel (more on that in another blog).

Bahai shrine and garden, Haifa

olives in the Acre bazaar

Onward to Haifa, a major Israeli port on the Mediterranean.  It has been a port and fishing village (no longer a village, but Israel's third largest city) for more than 3000 years.  The big attraction is the Bahai Shrine and gardens on the slopes of Mt. Carmel.  We stopped to visit and to climb Mt. Carmel, which is actually a long walk up a steep hill on a sidewalk that has increasingly impressive views of the harbor the higher you climb.  If you love gardens or are a Bahai, this is worth a visit.  But, I wouldn't go out of my way to see it otherwise.

old city wall, Acre

Acre was our last stop before driving east across Israel to the Sea of Galilee, our base for the next 2 days.  The Old City is right on the Mediterranean and has a busy Arab bazaar full of shops plus a huge Crusader Castle from the 11th century.  We enjoyed our stroll through the alleyways of the Arab quarter until a heavy rainstorm drove us off.  Some of the old castle walls are in the middle of the bay, bashed on our visit by waves and foam.  Fishing boats fill the harbor, so clearly this is still an important part of the economy.  We watched a tourist boat circling around inside the breakwater with partiers on board.  It was too rough to go out of this small area in a little boat. 

fragment of castle in the midst of waves

Ancient Petra--a city carved in stone

A wall of tombs in the middle of Petra

Looking at Petra from the road above, you wouldn't know it was any different from other rugged valleys and mountains of southern Jordan.  But, when you actually walk into this ancient city, mostly abandoned after a big earthquake in the 4th century AD, you look in awe at what the Nabataeans created.  Petra is a city carved from the rose-colored cliffs, originally a burial site and later occupied by Nabataens, Romans and Bedouin. 

valley of Petra from the road above the city

the Treasury

The tombs were carved from the top down.  They are beautifully decorated with columns, capitals, and statues.  Some carvings show the trading life of the city before the Romans took over in the 2nd century AD (having first arrived in Petra in the first century BC).  Nabataeans eventually moved into the valley of their tombs and developed an active market center.  Under Roman rule, Petra declined and lost its trading status to other cities under Roman domination.

Nabataean water channel cut into cliff

The Nabataeans knew how to live in this desert environment, capturing rain water behind small dams and carving water channels for both irrigation and domestic use in the sandstone cliffs.  Jordan is still very careful about water today, saving rain water and using roof-top water tanks that get filled weekly to limit water use.

tomb where my kids joined a soccer game years ago

When my kids were young, we took them on a trip to Egypt, Jordan and Israel, stopping in Petra overnight to explore the then-quiet ruins.  There were so few tourists that local boys were playing soccer in one of the largest tombs cut into the cliff.  Our kids joined them for a soccer game. 
None of that now as thousands of tourists visit Petra every day and souvenir vendors line the main thoroughfare and all the pathways to the tombs and temples.  When cruise ships dock in Aqaba, Jordan's port on the Red Sea 2 hours away, busloads of cruisers come to Petra.  It's a wonderful excursion, but the ship's time restraints limit their visit to the Siq and the Treasury, missing the next 3 miles of wonderful structures that make up Petra.

entrance to the Siq

You enter Petra through the Siq, a winding, narrow gorge that runs for 3/4 mile to the opening of the valley.  The first thing you see is the Treasury, the iconic symbol of Petra.  It is beautifully carved, with several small rooms behind the facade.  But, there is so much more.  Continue down the Roman road, much of it paved in the original limestone blocks, and you pass cliffs completely lined with tombs, until




















you come to the widest part of the valley where the Romans built a large temple and marketplace and, later, Christians built churches.  Some areas have gorgeously colored rock on the cliffs, the ceilings and the walls of the tombs.

the Monastery

For those who want a little more exercise, you can climb up 1000 steps through a gorge to a temple or tomb called the Monastery.  You share the steps with hundreds of fellow tourists, donkeys carrying the faint of heart who fear climbing the steps (not that riding a donkey up 1000 steps is any lark),  goats who take shortcuts down the cliffs, and several dozen Bedouin tents all with identical merchandise.  It's all worth the effort because the Monastery is beautiful, standing alone at the top of the mountain.  On the way to the Monastery, we passed the modern use for some of the cave tombs--parking for trucks.

local parking

In order to employ more people at Petra, the government requires you to buy a horseback ride from the Visitor's Center to the opening of the Siq--but most people walk anyway.  There are lots of transportation options--horse-drawn carts, camels, donkeys and horses.  But, your own feet are the best since they give you time to stop wherever you want for as long as you want and to climb to whatever tombs or temples you want to see.  Meanwhile, the owners of these various means of transport continue to ask if you'd like a ride and, when you say "no, thank you", they say kindly, "OK, you think about it.  Take your time.  Maybe on the way back."

gorgeous ceiling and walls of tomb, all natural rock

Jordan's magnificent desert--Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum vista

Years ago, Don and I camped for a night in Wadi Rum, the magnificent desert in southern Jordan that runs to the Saudi Arabia border and beyond.  That night, we slept in sleeping bags under the stars at a very basic camp, one of the few available at the time.

enjoying our jeeps

Today, there are large camps with traditional (sort of) Bedouin tents, complete with en suite bathrooms, and ugly domed rooms that reportedly have retractable roofs allowing the occupants to enjoy the clear, starry night.  These big camps don't appeal to me--so-called camping in the desert with 50 or 60 tents/domes and a large, echo-y dining hall are not what I'm looking for in a desert experience.  But, Wadi Rum is huge and has some small camps that give you at least some idea of a desert overnight, which is wonderful.

adorable baby and mom

After a not-so-great lunch in one of the impersonal and completely non-traditional, echo-y dining halls, we loaded ourselves into 3 open jeeps and drove off to tour the dunes, buttes and rocky canyons of this incredible place.  In fact, it is so stunning that many movies have been made here and, of course, we saw some of those highlights.  I can certainly understand why a filmmaker would want to use this landscape as the backdrop for a movie.

"dripping candle" cliff

Our driver sashayed up one of the dunes at full blast, but couldn't quite make it to the top of the butte, so roared around the side until he found slightly more solid ground.  I would find this tearing up of the dunes alarming except that the wind-blown sand quickly covers over most of the tracks.  The sand is golden and smooth against the dark cliffs, creating a very dramatic sight.
One cliff, behind a Bedouin tent where we had tea, looks like dripping candle wax.  Water, sand and wind have molded this cliff face, unlike anything else we saw in Wadi Rum.  Camels are everywhere, ready for a tourist to take a ride.  They are such stately animals, marching slowly and elegantly across the desert.
This large valley was a caravan route for traders across the centuries.  Several thousand years ago, some travelers left stories of their journeys on the cliffs.  Most of these have weathered away, but a few remain from so long ago.

ancient rock art

Wadi Rum is very worth a visit if you're traveling in Jordan, a chance to see one of the more spectacular areas of this desert country.  It is home to wolves, foxes, hyenas (that surprised me), oryx, rodents and birds in addition to the herds of goats and sheep owned by the Bedouin, who still move with their animals in search of grass and water.  Right now, there has been a lot of rain, so there are patches of green on the rocks and dunes.  The animals look well cared-for amidst this time of plenty.  But, this way of life won't last indefinitely as mining, tourism, new roads for the growing truck traffic bringing goods from the Gulf of Aqaba to Amman and beyond, and other industries impinge on the traditional way of life. 

A day in Amman and the ancient Roman city of Jerash

Temple of Hercules at the Citadel, Amman

Amman is the "white city" because buildings are required to be built or faced with limestone or alabaster.  It is also built on thousands of years of history from the Iron Ages forward, through Ammonites to Nabataeans to Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and today's Jordanians. 

view of Amman from the Citadel

The best view of the city is from the Roman Citadel on top one of Amman's hills, with its 360 degree views of the city's hills and valleys.  There is a wonderful small museum in the Citadel that has well-designed displays of pottery, statues, jewelry and other artifacts, starting with the earliest Iron Age 10,000 years ago.

Roman amphitheater, Amman

Today was chilly, but beautiful, as the sun shone on the limestone temples of the Citadel, making them glow against the dark clouds.
About an hour north of Amman is the Greco-Roman city of Jerash which was mostly destroyed by an earthquake in the mid-8th century AD.  These are the ruins that remain, but before this time, the area was occupied by Iron Age settlements.  Alexander the Great reportedly founded the city on his way from Egypt to Mesopotamia in 331 BC.
There has been much excavation and restoration work in Jerash since the mid-1990's.  Before that, it was mostly covered with sand.  As you look out across the surrounding hills, you can see many piles of rubble, presumably Roman buildings destroyed in the 749 AD earthquake.  There is much more work to do, but resources are spread thin across all the archaeological work that needs to be done around the world.  Meanwhile, a visit to Jerash is wonderful right now.

Jerash--flowers and colonnade

This is the city of a thousand columns--or something like that.  They stand everywhere, along the long avenues that cut through the center of the ancient city, surrounding the Forum and many temples, framing the gates to the city. 

Roman capital, Jerash

Beautifully decorated capitals line the avenues and temples, ready to be reinstalled someday atop the columns they once graced. 
You enter the city through the Gate of Hadrian, the same Hadrian who built the wall across northern England.  This gate leads to a long boulevard lined by columns and on to the Forum, a large and graceful space with surrounding columns.  There are many highlights, but one is certainly the Theater, a Roman amphitheater with stone seats rising from the stage below.  Some of the world's leading singers have performed here during the summer concerts.  It must be a fabulous evening to sit in this lovely space listening to arias.

Roman theater, Jerash

We wandered on, to St. George's Church, with Byzantine mosaics on the floor.  Our guide explained that the Romans used larger stones for their mosaics while the Byzantines preferred very small stones to create their designs.

Roman Forum, Jerash

Next down the way is the Temple of Artemis with its beautiful columns.  Inside, I spent a few minutes talking to one of the many vendors, this one selling necklaces.  He is 27 years old and very anxious to visit the United States.  He has tried twice to get a visa, but been denied.  Now he is hoping to meet an American woman and marry her so he can come to the U.S.  He told me he loves Americans and America.

Hadrian's Gate, Jerash

Amman has had quite a bit of rain over the last few weeks, so the air is clear, the hills bright green, and the wildflowers lush, especially wild mustard.  This is a great time to visit when golden mustard and some brilliant red poppies highlight the limestone ruins in the sunlight.

Mosaics on the floor of St. George's church, Jerash