Jun 17 2011

Tiberias city centre and Muriels and Maimonidies

Some of the hotel complexes and apartment blocks in Tiberias look concrete and utilitarian, but this one is a bit more interesting; on each floor are circular logos of different species of crops that is popular in Jewish culture.

This painting on the wall is pretty nice too:

It combines a faux set of railings and balconies to match the rest of the block but also images of what the city overlooking the water in ancient times.

Founded in 20AD and named after a Roman emperor of almost exactly the same name, today Tiberias is just a Jewish city but has Arab Israelis living in the outskirts of town and many neighbouring Arab towns close by.

This iron structure doesn’t look like a normal religious shrine, but its a significant place for Orthodox Jews as the grave site of famous Jewish philosopher Maimonides.

Like the Kotel in Jerusalem and Rachel’s Tomb close to Bethlehem, praying is done in separate for men and women.

Lots of Judiaca items in neighbouring gift shop, not just souvenirs for Christians!

This is part of an ancient wall around the city which was destroyed, not by conflict but by an earthquake in the 11th century.

There has been no less than 16 earthquakes affecting the greater Galilee area, including a big one killing 600 in 1837, and also a big flood in 1934.

This mosque is empty and abandoned. Many Islamic countries where Jews once live, including Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Morocco etc have destroyed old synagogues as after people started to move to Israel in large numbers, here buildings of all types of faiths that are not used are always kept as part of history, as it seems there is a great deal of respect put on history of all (Roman, Byzantine, Persian, Islamic, Crusader Ottoman and Jewish) eras of people dwelling here.

A day in my work in the Galilee – The Jesus boat in Ginosar – The Kinneret Lake – Tiberias evening light show – Preaching and miracles of Jesus in Capernaum – Tiberias city centre and Muriels and Maimonidies

Jun 14 2011

British blogger in Israel appeals for sightings of lost bike….

Came back from a nice day out in the old city with friends from work, only to go back to Zion Square in Jerusalem to find the tree where my bike was locked up was empty.

Its been stolen 😦 Was locked onto this tree in between these phoneboxes. Actually I would of thought it would be easier to saw through the tree than the chain myself.

This is most annoying as I need to it to get to and fro work. I work in three buildings, normally one in central Jerusalem 4 or 5 days a week, one in Talpiyot 1 day a week, and on rare occasions up in Karmiel (I go up there in a bus to this one) I usually do an 8 mile/12 km round trip each day to work.

If anyone spots it, its a ‘Vision’- don’t know much about the model number, frame size etc, its just a gents mountain bike that looks like this, blue, with white and red stripes with plenty of scrapes and rust. The police were not that helpful but I am sure they have plenty of more important things on, and the officer on duty didn’t speak English when I filled in the forms there.

A lot of businesses in Israel have a security camera system linked up to a small computer which records video footage onto a hard drive, I asked a few businesses around if they have any recordings, one of them told me yes, but these only are kept for 24 hours. There must be loads of security cameras around Zion Square, Jaffa Street and Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.

As a Christian doing voluntary role in IT system administration and technical support, its essential tool for me to get around, buses are much better and cheaper than in the UK but still eat into budget.

I would be prepared to give a reward to anyone who can help, just would like any info, or anyone seen anyone acting suspicious (with boltcutters!) as it was taken outside the Leumi bank at the corner of Ben Yehuda Street and Jaffa Street, between 11.30-16.00 on sunday 14th June. This is a very busy part of town, it would hard to commit any kind of theft without getting seen in day time.

You can email me on jp.hayward@gmail.com or call or text 052 789 7520.

toda raba.

Jun 12 2011

Capernaum – preaching and miracles of Jesus

Off the side of the main road, onto a short drive down into a big car park is Capernaum

Sign shows there is a dress code here, just as well I forgot to bring my shorts, but wearing trousers in the heat on this day was pretty uncomfortable to say the least.

Gardens inside the gate looks very pretty.

Here are the ruins of the synagogue, as you can see some parts are more complete than others.

My friend Arnold stands by the pillars.

There is one interesting twist with Capernaum, there is a new building built on stilts on top of some of the ruins! Here you can see these steps go up to the elevated new church.

I really like the design of the new building, its spacious up here!

Capernaum of course was home to Jesus after he left Nazareth.

A centurian asked Jesus to heal his servant who was back home in Cana. Matthew 8.

In Mark 1 Jesus lived here after leaving Nazareth and preached at the Synagogue and casted out unclean spirits from people. Mark 2, explains a disabled man is brought in through the roof, by digging into the roof;

Hold on – digging in a roof? When I went to Iceland people (this country was founded in about 900AD) had roofs made of soil with grass growing out, to help keep the house warm, surely this would not happen in biblical houses at the time of Jesus?

I had a look at a web site containing the original Greek NT. Its not readable with Google translator but the English text on the left says they uncovered the roof (covered with felt maybe?) and broken it (the roof up) to get the man in.

Today of course modern regulations means disabled people need ramps or maybe lifts to get into public places, however awkward and destructive it was, it was nice that people took the time to get this fellow in front of Jesus when he was preaching there.

If anyone else is also curious about how the disabled man was brought by his friends into the synagogue I would be interested to know what you think.

Jun 10 2011

Tiberias evening light show

As it started to get dark, the coastline started to look interesting with the cloud formations..

Restaurants have usual fare of middle eastern food but also specialise in fish aimed at Christian visitors to the Galilee.

A couple of years ago, a strange looking beacon was installed along the side of the Galilee, its unlikely ships would get lost, instead this is a project that display colour patterns onto fountains of water…

It pretty and entertaining too, and free.

There is plenty of bars and restaurants here, its a pretty lively city. With the bars that open onto the beach, they remind me a bit of Eilat, albeit with the Galilee and not the Red Sea though. 🙂

I got to go for a beer with my friend Arnold who was already good friends with the youth hostel owner, and he came out and brought along his daughter.

This bar has a tree growing out of the inside of it…

Jun 7 2011

The Kinneret lake

The Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, or even Lake Tiberias are the names of the body of water where Jesus spent probably the majority of his ministry.

Its 214 metres below sea level, not as low of course as the Dead Sea, and has a radius of 53km or 33 miles.

Either name, its a peaceful and relaxing place to spend a few days off work. When I came here last year in a rented car its actually very pleasant to drive around the bendy road that heads along the west edge of the sea.

I went into the Jesus boat museum previously whilst waiting to get a boat ride. This pleasant path with trees and iron modern art is a path that heads towards the jetty onto the Kinneret.

Like the previous times I have been here, the sea seems like a peaceful and great place to relax, by the side or in a boat.

However the bible tells us of great storms that happened here, and of course Jesus commanded a storm to stop in Matthew 8 : 23-27

It would be interesting to witness a storm here I think, thunderstorms are good fun as long as you are safe indoors 🙂

There is a lot of gadgetry on this boat. There are 3 cellphones, an iPod nano with Christian worship music playing during the trip, a Motorola CB radio and a music mixing desk and tannoy system, oh and a rudder for steering, a throttle and other typical nautical controls.

The Arab chap who was the man in charge of tour boats who came onboard has an iPad as well which contains the schedules of the boats, I thought maybe there could be some kind of nautical navigation and weather conditions apps as well, but I can’t really see anyone getting lost!

There is a party of Christian visitors from Bratislava, Slovak republic but as they booked the trip themselves and there isn’t a tour guide with them they were happy for me and my friend Arnold to share with them 🙂

Next: I investigate this mysterious beacon that shines over the Galilee…

Jun 4 2011

The Jesus boat in Ginosar

My two days of work projects were done, and it was nice to take off a friday from work and relax and see some places. I booked into a youth hostel in Tiberias and made friends with a South Africa pastor and got to see a lot special places.

The community of Ginosar is a Kibbutz on the banks of the Kinneret, this concrete exhibition hall has this wonderful piece of history.

In my home city of Portsmouth, a historic ship from the time of Henry the Eighth was pulled out of the harbour in 1982, at the time craning an ancient ship out of the sea without it breaking up, a not so conventional bit of archeology probably not been done before, and I remember as I child watching it at school on live television as it was shown all over the world.

Just a few years later, this ancient boat found in the Galilee in unusually high tide conditions in 1986, archeologists sprayed it in foam and carefully lifted it out.

Mounted in a metal cradle you can see the boat, it has been treated in wax to stop it rotting.

Its dated from the first century AD, so its quite possible it was owned by someone who may have known Jesus maybe.

There is some nice drawings on the wall of this museum, although it is very small, as well as the video showing how it was carefully excavated and cleaned up, you can see the whole exhibition in less than 10 minutes.

Interestingly enough, the boat is fabricated from 12 different types of wood as the colour coding here shows.

Left: photos of the boat being winched out after being covered in foam, and a model shown. Right: a model of what the model looked like in its day.

Ginosar also has these nice new bungalows which look very new which look out onto the sea.

There was also a folk music event happening, there were people camped out and bands playing close to the sea. I asked the man at the car park who was checking tickets where the Jesus boat was, after he spoke to his colleague, I heard him say the word ‘Yeshu’ rather the ‘Yeshua’ this was sad, as the Yeshua is Hebrew for Jesus but Yeshu, spelt similar is a insult sometimes used by critics of Christianity and Messianic Judaism in Israel.

This chap who worked in the gift shop had an interesting tatoo from the Psalms. He told me he is a Jewish believer in Jesus, so I shook his hand 🙂

Next a ferry around the Kinneret…

Check out the official site of the Jesus boat here:

http://www.thegalileeboat.com

Jun 3 2011

A day in Christian IT work in the Galilee

As I have mentioned before, my job as a volunteer IT support and system administrator for the charity Bridges for Peace means I am normally based in one of two offices in Jerusalem, and on odd occasions I work up in Karmiel, which is a city in the centre of the Galilee.

This means a 180km visit by car or bus when I have to do work up there. The food bank I work does a huge amount of service in helping the poorest people in this area especially new immigrants to Israel mostly from Russia or some of the other ex-Soviet Union nations. Every so many months I need to do a trip probably not that different from journeys Jesus did himself.

I have learned since being here this site requires careful planning as its an awful long way if something breaks unexpectedly.

This empty room in the middle of the warehouse seems like a good place to put the server. This server will replaced later this year as its running Windows 2000 which is very old now and we need a new more reliable system that helps us with our day to day food bank operations up here. This room is good as it means an easier job of adding some extra wiring here as its close to the network cabinet which is in the cupboard opposite the door.

This rack full of network kit needs a good sort out. I manage to swap cables around to enable computer network use in some offices that moved around. We only have 5 staff up here and there will be at least 3 more and there is not enough ports on the 16 port switch here so I have to put in another switch. The glass door on the cabinet does not shut as the wires are in the way. I think I can rotate the brackets on the switch at the top 180 degrees so this sits flush better and should make the glass door shut properly.

There is an other switch supplied by Bezeq (Israel’s no.1 telephone company) for several VOIP phones. Not quite sure how this works as I think they maintain it.

The black things are UPS power back up units to keep equipment running in case of power failure or spikes in the electricity supply, these are a few years old, most of the equipment was set up when this building got running in 2007 and the chances are the batteries are no good as they have a 3 year or so life span. I want to get a new UPS that has network connectivity so I can see the status of it using my Spiceworks network management software. These small ‘shoebox’ type UPSes should be able to be refurbished with new batteries and they could be used on regular office PCs in another part of the building.

When I was staying at one of the staff’s place over night, looking out of the balcony, I get to see an Arab bedouin house across the road, and modern (Jewish) flats in the distance. Here in this city, these two types of communities seem to be get on well it seems. It does mean you get woken up up by roosters at 5.30am though!

I have to speak to the rest of the IT department to get some more telephones installed, test wiring for network ports and telephones, get 3 more PCs installed and test the spare server. This trip was mostly about planning to give extra capacity for this site for future expansion as I know the Lord will provide more resources so we can help the most needy people in this area. I will need to do another visit up here in July I think.

The main thing I was doing, is a careful back up of the main server and applying all the latest updates and patches. This is always a delicate thing for IT administrators to do, it puts you a big security risk if you don’t bother, and if you do it without carefully planning it can crash the server. One of the team had their monitor suddenly stop working, so a local computer store (thanks to KSP) I got a new Samsung 18″ wide screen TFT monitor.

I really like this job as I always have plenty of interesting and varied challenges so work is never boring and I get to know everyone in the organisation. It also means I can combine this with a weekend seeing some friends who moved from home city of Portsmouth UK to Karmiel Israel, and later visiting the city of Tiberias which is right on the Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, and a few significant places of the bible, I will show soon.

May 31 2011

My car accident in Jerusalem

I was with some people coming back from the Mini Israel model village, I was in the front passenger seat of a car (this Renault Clio) and dropped off some friends sat in the back, when there was a bang from another vehicle that struck our driver’s side front wing (fender to you Americans)

In turn this pushed us against this bus putting a small scrape on it.

This silver Peugeot that hit us must of been going some speed as it rolled on its side facing towards us and slid along for some distance.

Fearing the worst we got to the car and remarkably the woman inside got out of the seat on her own, but it took a couple of people to help hold the door open for her to get out. Its awkward opening a door when a car is on its side!

A few of us and some bystanders pushed this car back the right way up. The fire service put sand on the road to clean it up.

Our car had front bumper missing, front wings broken (they were plastic) and both tyres flat and rims bent. The Peugeot had extensive damage from being scraped along the road, and where as the Renault doesn’t look like it has serious chassis damage I expect the steering and suspension is all messed up. There was oil and petrol leaked out onto the road. Both cars were declared write offs.

After a police statement was done, and the Magon David ambulance didn’t need to treat anyone, a bit later a breakdown truck driver arrived.

The man asked me to help get the cars loaded, so got into both cars and tried to steer (not so easy with flat tyres and bent up wheels) each straight whilst he used a winch attached the front to be pulled up onto the truck.

But thank the Lord no one was hurt, AT ALL!!

I want to find somewhere locally to get some coffee after this experience, but as it was a Jewish holiday there was nowhere open, so I went to a friend’s house which was a couple of hundred yards away.

Road safety here is quite poor and the styles of driving here worries me, but I was glad God kept us and the woman in the other car safe after this unpleasant experience.

May 30 2011

Mini Israel – holyland in minature

I went with some folks from work to Mini Israel a place with lots of models of famous sites in this country.

Downtown Tel Aviv. Here there is a street with moving Scaletrix style cars and trucks that go up and down. A lot of the trucks having recognisable brands such as the blue, green and red one being Tvuna, Israel’s largest dairy.

You do actually feel a bit like the oversized main character of a B movie walking along very detailed places here!

This tourist place is a kind of Israel’s “greatest hits album” as its a way seeing a hundred odd places in one location, and a good way of seeing a glimpse of places you have yet to visit, everywhere from Mount Hermon to Eilat. 🙂

Capernhuam next to the Galilee, one of the places Jesus preached. I also went to the real one in May. Will write on this soon.

Here is the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem.

More sights of Jerusalem’s old city.

Tel Aviv water front. Looks great but is there a model of the Zohan? 🙂

Here is Jaffa too. 🙂

The attention to detail on the models is excellent. There are small background noises put in, such as traffic, crowds etc. Only trouble is maintaining this stuff must be a full type job as the hot temperatures and dust has caused some of the models to crack in places, so regular repair is often needed. There are a lot of places miniaturized, not just religious sites but even Coca Cola factory and people working a Kibbutz.

http://www.minisrael.co.il/

This was a nice day out, although some scary experiences on the way home…..

May 29 2011

Nazareth – 13. Easter service at the Basilica

I didn’t find anyone from the youth hostel who wanted to head into town that evening, so after an afternoon of looking around shops and reading a book in the lobby, I headed out and saw lots of people flocking towards the Basilica church.

This was the service for Easter Friday.

The outside of church seems very busy…

Inside, the place was packed! all of the seats were taken, and people were in all of the aisles and blocking the door.
The surprising thing is the vast majority of people appeared to be young Arab Christians under 30 for the service, no foreigners as far as I could see. I have no idea what was spoken in the service as it was all in Arabic.

A statue of Jesus was brought out of the service at the end.

Outside there were lots of people who couldn’t get in the service, they seem very friendly and most spoke English, a lot of the Arab Christians had non-Arabic sounding names, ie: Simon.Musicians where getting together for a parade outside.. Hang on surely, these aren’t bagpipes??

Whats this? Its the flag of Christian Arab scouts of Nazareth.

The scouts are getting ready to do their bagpipe playing at the end of the Easter service! Actually an Arab friend of mine told me that bagpipes are not that uncommon in the Middle East, there are bagpipe players in Jordan who play for the King there. Maybe the Arabs are wannabe Scots or perhaps during the British Mandate of Palestine period, Scotland influenced people then? 🙂

The statue is taken on a tour around the city.

So was the Easter service a nice yearly social knees-up or the were the mostly young Arab Christians there praising the Lord on the weekend of his resurrection in the very town where Jesus spent his youth? I am not sure but this was an enjoyable end to my trip to Nazareth, and despite only 15% of the town being Christian it was good that Easter was celebrated (actually there were no chocolate eggs for sale anywhere) and this didn’t seem like a big show for tourists as there simply weren’t any around the town.

Seems like the modern day people of Nazareth are proud of their city.

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica

Brit In Jerusalem

A Christian discovering the roots in the holy land….

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