Israel day 2

Our blogs are in danger of getting behind because this tour is proceeding at a ridiculously packed pace.  Lots of doing and no time allocated to just being allowed to be, even over a cup of coffee somewhere.  Is this the Jewish way?

Anyway, on to what we did on day 2 in this very beautiful part of Israel.  We headed out for a morning tour to a lookout to see the old city and its surroundings, and the many hills around it, such as the Mount of Olives.  We were asked to imagine what it looked like in the olden

days with just the city and its impressive walls.
Then a stroll around the hill where the lookout was, including playing a game of Jewish history by being given names on cards, eg Joseph; death of Rabin, and being asked to place them in chronological order.  Then back to the bus via the Monument to Tolerance, which was flanked by massive amounts of barbed wire around the UN building.  There was no sign denoting this wire as the Monument to Intolerance.

The bus then took us east into the hills of the Judean desert where we rode camels down to meet Abraham in his massive tent and to experience his legendary hospitality.  It was even better when Abraham in between telling us all about his travels from Ur of the Chaldees to Egypt to finally settle in Judea, announced he was a Demons supporter and his membership of the MCG had recently come up.  Mind you, his Aussie accent had given him away as soon as he spoke……

 

Tasty food and drink over, we hopped back on to the camels for the ride back enjoying the views over the hills to the Jordan valley and to the mountains of Moab over in Jordan.  This was pretty special.

 

Back into Jerusalem and a visit to the Elijah interfaith Institute, a multinational organisation dedicated to fostering peace between all the faiths.  We were taken on a tour by a Catholic nun who showed us all the ancient architecture down below, and then said that the building probably stands within about 10 or so metres of where Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate. (We subsequently found out this is station 2 of the Via Dolorosa, but the Jewish people running this tour don’t really care about such things apparently, so don’t think to mention things like this which are of great interest to the Christians in the tour.)  The sister said that the Good Friday services in this place are pretty moving which we can well understand.

Then up to a classroom for the beginning of the extensive personal development part of the tour. We heard from a Muslim woman who talked about the main aspects of her faith, which we all agreed were no different from the main aspects of any religious faith.  We were then introduced to Bibliodrama, where parts of scripture are read out and then individuals act out how they would see the characters reacting to the parts of the story.  For example, we acted out parts of the Genesis story of Joseph and his multi-coloured coat and his relationship to his brothers and father.  This was interesting, especially seeing how diverse the reactions were.  At the end, the part of the Koran which tells the same story was handed out, to compare the different emphases.

                                          View from the interfaith institute

By now it was 7.10pm, and people were starting to flag.  But the day is not yet over, because it is back to the hotel for a meal and a lecture from a professor about the geopolitical status of Israel, and the two state solution, and etc etc and blah blah it is all a blur because it is now nearly 10pm and we all just want to go to bed.  Nobody has had any time to do emails, washing etc and the bus is leaving at 8am the next morning.  Not for us, because we wagged the morning, but that is talked about in the next blog.