Stop Being So Canadian!

We're back in the Old City, walking to the food court of the Old City. Some stayed at a café for lunch, but I had passed some interesting prints, and I want to return to them. It's an absolute maze here, but we find the shop and purchase, after ‘successfully’ bartering down, a print. (Do we ever get a fair price? Bartering, while fun, is a difficult process. I guess this is like buying a car.) The merchant wanted $35 for a print, and after a bit of back and forth, we settled for $15. 

Last time, I bought one of this painter's prints

The market as a whole is a cacophony of sights and sounds and smells. The bumps of many bodies, incense so thick it lingers on the tongue, all add to the experience. Bright colours, music, noise, the calls of store owners,  it’s a sensory overload to this country gal. 

A spice shop

It also had teas

Following our guide through the market.

An insane number of people.

We returned to the café and after everyone had eaten, we walk the short distance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Here, we experience another attack on our senses. The press of many people, the glare of bright colours, a maze of sections and the incredible lineups might scare off even the most stalwart, but we push  on. 

The entrance to the church

There were guards high up, although the one below doesn't look like a regular Israeli soldier. 

Not too sure about this guy!

The upper section where the cross had once been is closed off for a service, so our guide takes us downstairs to see the original Golgotha. It’s actually a tall outcropping of rock and accessible at two levels, but visible only through layers of glass. This lower part has a small altar in front of it. 

That tiny window shows us Golgotha

The window is so small!

Later, we walk through the church to a small, divided chapel (Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic). There is a 30 minute wait to peek inside. And all you see is what is left of Joseph of Arimethea’s tomb, the borrowed tomb of Christ which has been dismantled and a chapel built over top of it. A chapel within a church.

The front of the chapel

The back of the chapel.

Yossi takes us to another room. In order to prove Jesus was buried here, one must assume that this area was a cemetery, as the Jews did not bury their dead alone, and therefore there must be other tombs here. Archeologists found another tomb, a double one. But this section of the church belongs to the Syrian Church, and it's losing its battle with time. The Syrians have no money to fix their altar and the Catholics want it, because it’s of historical value, but the Syrians won’t sell it. Our guide says that as a result, it is often the target of vandalism by Catholics. 

The battered Syrian altar in the other tomb found there.

The Double tomb.

We try to leave but the press of bodies stops us. Our guide scolds us. “Stop being so Canadian!” I thrust out my elbows and wobble through the thick crowd, none of them offended as a Canadian might be. Hey, I have visited The Terracotta Warriors. I know how to squeeze through a crowd.

At the entrance, we are greeted by a line of Franciscan monks, young men lining up in their rough brown robes and rope belts to corral their pilgrims in for a service inside. One of our group asked to have her photo taken with one, and since she's young and pretty, the young monk obliges. 

Corralling their pilgrims.

We thread our way through the crowd and return to the Jaffa Gate. It’s getting close to sundown and the wind has turned chilly now that we're no longer sheltered by high walls and the press of warm bodies. The Sabbath is starting and we have to hurry to the bus. 

Hurrying out the Jaffa Gate. It's getting cool out.

I know it’s been tiring for some of our group, but I’m pleased our guide had insisted we do these things. One of our group commented on our guide’s measured pace, but when necessary, he could really move quickly.

Back at the hotel, we prepare for the Shabbat meal, and learn that not just elevators can be programmed for the Shabbat, but also lights, and even key cards are surrendered in favour of mechanical keys so that no work can be done on the Sabbath. I’m reminded that the laws of the OT were impossible to follow, so we needed to rely on God, and not ourselves. 

After the meal, we are politely asked to leave as there are a lot of guests tonight. So we retire to the lobby where I notice armed soldiers around us. Since Trump announced the US would set up an embassy in Jerusalem, Palestinians have called Fridays a Day of Rage; hence the armed presence. 

Where we are going tomorrow morning, there is unlikely to be any guards. 

We're going deep underground.

 

Salt and mountains and the lowest point on earth

The Wilderness Tabernacle, a full sized model! Wow! For those whose Old Testament is a bit rusty, it's the place Moses had built in which the ancient Israelite people could worship God.

A full-sized replica of the Tabernacle

We learn how it represents Christ in many ways, and I wish I had written all of them down. Our Tabernacle guide says it had three parts, like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But as I am writing, I’m trying to take it all in. 

Inside the Ark

It's hard. I feel alien as I stand in the Holy of Holies, beside the Ark of Covenant, and our team leader says that I'm supposed to feel this way. It proves that nothing I do can bring me to God. Only Christ can.

After leaving, and after a short lunch, we find ourselves traveling beside  factories that extract minerals from the Dead Sea evaporation ponds. On the left are the Sodom Mountains. It’s an odd juxtaposition of modern industry and stark Biblical landscape, for ahead of us is the pillar of salt called Lot's Wife.

The Pillar known as Lot's Wife

A piece of the Sodom Mountains. Salt rock

We pull into a small lay-by. The air smells minerally, like the seashore. Yossi says it’s the bromide, which has a sedative effect. He warns us of the staff at hotels and their apathy as a result of inhaling it. 

We stand in the shadow of a huge salt mount and our guide points out that the lowest point on earth had the lowest morals, and yet, God provides for His people. At the Wilderness Tabernacle, I felt alien, intrusive and unworthy, yet here, I see how God provided for our sin through Jesus Christ. Mankind had tried to fix his own sin, as Adam and Eve had made clothing from fig leaves, but God corrected that, sacrificing an animal to fashion clothes from its skin. Much later, my husband and I discuss how sewing fig leaves together doesn't work. That there needs to be a death of something in order to have rebirth. Plucking fig leaves hardly kills the tree, but the sacrificial lamb died for the sake of sin. 
Even our guide hints at that, when he says his profession as an archeologist is a destructive one, destroying layers of mankind's lives in order to get to the truth.

Incredible depth. We leave this sombre landscape and travel to the Daniel Hotel on the edge of the Dead Sea, one of many hotels in this urban oasis. 

At the shore of the Dead Sea, the hotels behind me

Inside this imposing hotel is a tall atrium with two banks of elevators as its spine. It’s almost the Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, and the sun is already dipping below the range of mountains behind the hotel. 
Why does the Jewish Sabbath start at sundown? In the desert, it’s cooler at night, and much can be done then, so the day always starts at sundown. It's the same reason the crescent moon represents the Muslim faith. Nomadic people travel at night here in the desert, as it’s too hot to move during the day in the heat of summer. 

Our meal this evening is alfresco and sumptuous and the Orthodox Jews that spend the Sabbath here are in full party mode. It's a festive atmosphere. Why can't start our Sabbath with a party, I wonder?

 

Desserts in the Desert

It doesn't matter, though. Tomorrow will bring its own delight.