Oct 6 2012

Ships on the Galilee coast

I am on the edge of the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee)  in the city of Tiberias, on the coast of the lake its easy to see how fishing his been part of the economy for years.

Sadly this fish processing plant looks kind of derelict, although when I walked back to the hostel when it was darker, the lights were on.

A lot of the fish I see in Jerusalem supermarkets comes from Norway.   There is however plenty of small restaurants serving fish caught in the lake to Christians who want an authentic biblical meal.

This boat looks like a lot of the vessels for taking Christian pilgrims around the lake, but its up on blocks for service.    I remember my grandad telling me its important to paint the bottom of your boat each year (or at least for a small sailing dingy with a wooden hull)

Wonder what conversations went on during Jesus’s time during the times when boats were being repaired and maintained around here.

This is an odd looking machine, some kind of drill or milling machine I guess.

One of the unique things about the middle east with scarce rain, is most of the year your yard can easily become an outdoor lounge, workshop or kitchen, with appliances and furniture (that aren’t worth stealing)  not in danger of getting wet, only by sand from the dusty atmosphere.

I did spot some people fishing after all, in a more casual non business fashion, an Arab father and son here.

Its kind of funny that these cats sit her awaiting, it seems they are used to getting the fisherman throw them the small ones not worth taking home, but there was some discarded pizza, so I think they get fed quite well!! 🙂

Sep 28 2012

Sweet New Year

There been quite a few Jewish holidays happen in the last few weeks, one of them is new year.

We are now in the year 5773.   At my work, the food bank was working hard with not only regular food deliveries but also to provide apples and honey which is popular during Jewish new year to some of Israel’s most disadvantaged families here.   I got a jar of honey and some apples which I tend to stick on my cereal in the mornings.

Whilst I was staying the Galilee city of Tiberias which is on the coast of the Kinneret, the famous lake where Jesus did many of his ministry, I tried doing some walking around the edge of the lake.   Not that close to the lake mind you, only small part of it has beaches open for public use.

But, this path on the side of the road I thought was public, but led to a dead end:

I came across this, no less than 40 hives on this hill next to the main road, I didn’t get too close there are actual bees here.

The Galilee area is quite famous for its vibrant active agricultural industry here.   On the direct opposite part of the lake I see many banana plantations there.   Close to here there were many orchards of oranges here too.    I am not quite sure what flowers the bees get to pollinate though.

 

 

Sep 21 2012

Galilee Arab children to learn Jesus’s language of Aramaic

Saw this today which seemed interesting in Israel Today magazine:-

Jish, an Arab town in the Galilee only 2 miles away from the Lebanese border has got the go ahead from the Israeli government to teach children the ancient obscure Aramaic language that was used during the time of Jesus.

The only Aramaic words I know is Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?  (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) as spoken by Jesus in Matthew 27:46

The first three words are almost the same as their Hebrew counterpart, but the last word sounds quite a lot different and not like Hebrew at all.

Only a few communities in Syria speak Aramaic as far as I know, I did see sometime ago amongst Lebanese Christians there was a Facebook group campaign to teach children there Aramaic.

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/tabid/178/nid/23382/language/en-US/Default.aspx?ref=newsletter-20120910

Fascinating stuff, but I take joy that our loving saviour speaks the language of anyone from any country that calls on him.

 

Sep 19 2012

Megiddo – The end of the world welcomes careful drivers

After traveling this part of northern Israel before in the Jezreel Valley, famous for where the end of the world will happen, I got a chance after I finished working for a few days in nearby Karmiel to actually have a proper visit of this historical site.

I came not to speculate at the very place the book of revelation says the last battle will happen, but to make sense of a particular scripture I have read that I have been trying to make sense of:

Zechariah 12:10-12

10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. 11 On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be as great as the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land will mourn, each clan by itself, with their wives by themselves: the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives

Question; this future prophesied repentance and revival is parallel with a place and/or event in history of the “Hadad Rimmon”, I am curious what this is, and why it is after some searching, no one knows what it is.

My primitive knowledge of Hebrew tells me that Rimmon is a pomegranate, but thats all I know.  By going to the Megiddo historical centre I thought maybe I could shed light on this.

I had to ask the manager of my youth hostel how to get to Megiddo,which advised getting the bus to Tel Aviv.   Megiddo is not mentioned on the bus stop schedules, I had to ask the bus driver to let me off at the right time.    Actually I had to get off at a bus stop at the side of the highway and walk for a mile, along this junction to the visitor centre.

By the main road is a large prison.   There has been some talk of tearing it down and rebuilding elsewhere as more significant archeological discoveries were found not long ago – possibly the oldest Christian church ever found.

 
The end of the world welcomes careful drivers….

I had my iPod with me and I was in the mood for some 80s rock, so I had this apt track from Def Leppard’s ‘Armageddon it’   its funny that Armageddon which is derived from Ha Megiddo, has become quite common in language as a modern phrase for any big impending war.

Anyway, once at the outside of the visitor centre I just paid 28 shekels to go in.

I found out that Megiddo became an Israelite city sometime between the 10th and 9th centuries BC and functioned as an administrator centre for the fertile Jezreel Valley, many parts were added later.

 

These drawings on the walls I think are from Canaanite period.   The drawing of a giraffe is quite interesting, didn’t think there was those here in Israel, but then again there were lions in the bible which aren’t there now, there are a small number of wild cats, leopards in Negev but they are very rare.   On the right is a picture of the Pope which someone has scratched on graffiti in Hebrew.

From the top of the site you can see all across the Jezreel valley, the plain of Megiddo, a wide open space with a busy main road that goes to Afula.   There is two petrol stations and a McDonalds along the fields of Megiddo!!

There were mostly people in one big group here, so I was a bit cheeky and stood close to the historian who was speaking, as I think it costs extra to hire him to guide you.

Like a lot of other ancient parts of Israel like Masada, there is a complex underground system built to provide fresh water.   I went down the steps to see the tunnels.

>>> More on Megiddo on the next chapter…..

Sep 17 2012

Mount Tabor quick glance

Took a picture of this on the way on a bus road to my next destination;

This hill is Mount Tabor, also written as Mount Tavor, as the letters B and V are similar and both written as ב in Hebrew.   The glimpse I got was just limited to passing in a bus.

I’m in a road just coming out of the northern city of Afula, and the quite exciting thing about this place, is it considered to be the most likely place where Jesus went to the Mount of Transfiguration.

There is an Arab town at the foot of the hill, but from this road, I can’t see an obvious way up.   I definitely need to come here and see this properly next time I am working up this way.

Sep 14 2012

Karmiel September visit

Although it may seem summer has finished in UK, its still extremely hot in Israel and this time of the year.

I have a list of about 9-10 IT related jobs in our large warehouse at the north of the country in Karmiel again.

Therefore I schedule a time to do some preventative maintenance up there, and get all the small jobs fixed.   I had to set up PCs for a two new members of staff, one of the PCs has the VNC remote software not working so it required a site visit.    In the picture I am changing out defective cooling fans in PCs as the heat and dust puts extra strain on our PCs here used for keeping inventory of our food distribution, databases of families we help and donations amongst other things.

Lunch time.   For me, I stretch lunch break very slightly to do some procurement of parts.   I got 3 new cooling fans for the PCs here, two I ended up using straight away, also a hardware store just by this nice junction meant I could get some insulation tape some electrical plugs also.

I needed to set up and test Skype with the other two buildings, also install Dropbox and few other apps, test and inspect two small UPS systems which are defective and need to scrapped.   I have two more UPS units I can send up from another building.

This is outside our Karmiel warehouse, it doesn’t look that big, but it contains a lot of space on the inside.

Later, I went and stayed with one of the volunteer staff from this site:

Outside the place I stayed.   All these flats look brand new.   Karmiel is a fast expanding city.   this balloon thing in the distance is a fancy sign post advertising flats for sale.

Unlike what you see in the news, this part of town has Arab Bedouin families but they seem to live side by side without any troubles.

Getting up in the morning I can hear people using power tools and roosters crowing.

The outskirts of the town, more construction going on.  This is a Jewish neighborhood with most of the people working in construction are Arab.

Arab towns (several less than a couple of miles away) are expanding too of course.

Karmiel isn’t particularly religious city, but religious Jews and religious Arabs with often 5-10 children mean rapid expansion of housing is necessary.

Beautiful rolling hills in the distance from this junction by the industrial estate.

Well got most of the work done, making some adjustments to the wireless routers will be another day as well being able to monitor the VOIP telephone system switch and get a better UPS back up power system.

Time for some much needed couple of days off while I am working away to see a few places….

Off to Tiberias again next……

Aug 18 2012

Brussels Belgium visit

A few weeks ago, I decided to fly home and see family.

I wrote earlier this year about new cheaper flights between Belgium and Israel.   So I did exactly this route, planning to spend just 1 1/2 days in Brussels.

The flight was reasonably pleasant, apart from the troubles booking.   I remembered some former colleagues originally from Antwerp told me there is quite a large Jewish population in Belgium, mostly in Antwerp.   Getting off the plane I could here some of the Orthodox Jews speaking in Flemish.

Getting off the plane in Liege, meant to I realised I was at a fairly remote industrial estate as the airport is quite small, after waiting for a bus, the drive didn’t speak any English so I just followed the journey where was going to.

This is the weirdest railway station I have seen, in the main part of the town of Liege.   About 30 minutes later I was in Brussels.

 

This pleasant street with a Citroen 2CV car seems to be a good representation of the Franco- influence of Belgium.  But actually there is more to Brussels than just being France’s neighbour.

 

Cartoons are very popular here.   The locally produced books in stores are alongside Japanese Manga, and of course, Herge’s adventures of Tin Tin which is painted on a few walls as it was penned from here, and Tin Tin is something of an icon here.

Restaurants here are great!  There is a small alleyway I found with plenty of nice places with fantastic value for money.   Me and my Australian room mate I met went to this place and got a nice steak and frites with red wine for 10 Euros!   The next day I went to the place two doors away, and has Paella with white wine for 12 euros.

 

As far as food, everyone has to experience a proper Belgian waffle.   This isn’t a lame supermarket sourced frozen thing, but comes out of one of these purpose designed metal grilling appliances.   There is a load of different places to chose from to grab one to take away or sit down, this place had a 5 kilo jar of Nutella chocolate spread in the kitchen.   1 Euro for a plain one, 2 Euros with strawberries and ice cream.

One thing I wasn’t prepared for was the large number of Arab people in Brussels.

Brussels has a lot of immigrants, mostly from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, all countries that speak a mixture of Arabic and French.

 

On the left is an Arabic bank which provides Shariah compliant services.   On the right, this very long boulevard is nice and has a lot of computer and technology shops (like London’s Tottenham Court Road?) Arabic restaurants and it seems most of the businesses here are owned by Arab people.

How long did it take for me to see in an Islamic community promoting dislike of Israel and the Jewish people?    Sadly, not very long.   This Islamic book shop on the right had plenty of that in the window.   Ok, Israel is far from perfect.   Maybe this shop could have books warning youth against Hamas, Hezbullah and getting into extremism?   Or, show the mass slaughter of Muslim people in Syria.   No such chance.

There is a lot of people begging out of the streets, and the majority of them seem to be Arab.   I was saddened to see an Arab woman looking forlorn at the pavement so I went into a bakery and bought a sandwich and gave it to her, she looked at it, so not sure if she was surprised or if not really hungry.    I know domestic violence amongst Arab people is common in the middle east and I am sure it must happen here as well.    Distressingly, I don’t know of any Christian organisations that could help with women in this situation, although it would need some very specially trained people to deal with this.

The Mannkin Pis.   The iconic statue of a young boy urinating in a fountain which has been copied many times.   Although it is quite small but has a large crowd of people getting their pictures in front of it.

Some of the huge office buildings in the east part of the city that part of the EU.   Another place that can bring out strong negative emotions.

Oddly, Brussels seems quite prosperous apart from the beggars I saw, no closed down shops, I think there were plenty more tall offices being constructed in progress.This sign looks like it could have some funny slogan, but couldn’t think of anything at the time.

 

This is the Arc de Triumph.    No not the same one as in France.

I went in here to the Brussels car museum, in one of the corners of this majestic place.

Brussels is a pretty huge place.   I think a lot of people from other EU countries can easily come and work here, and to be honest its a wonderful place.

Here, in the town square, something important was happening, not sure what, but there were several big cars with people getting out that I am guess are government officials.  There was a stage and some live music, I left as I wanted to get some lunch.

On the right here, part of the old buildings in the square are being repaired, so a fabric cover over the scaffolding has an exact copy of the buildings whilst the work is being done.  Quite clever.

The red flowers in the window boxes and canopies in front of the cafes here reminds me of the ones in the 1990s Stella Artois TV ads where the man selling flowers trades his stock in for a beer.

I got chatting to a girl in a restaurant who was from Slovakia who just been accepted after a job interview.  It seems theres a lot of people from other parts of Europe and Africa here.   I can see why.    Its a beautiful city and I think an appealing place to come and live and work.

I didn’t get any pictures later, but here I got on the Eurostar which took me to London in 2 hours, although the train didn’t feel like it was going that quick, surprisingly enough the bit under the tunnel is actually only 20 minutes!

 

Aug 12 2012

Riding on a Colt

Zechariah 9:9 from the OT talks about a prophecy of a future Messiah of Israel:-

9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

In my neighbourhood I noticed this:-

This banner on the car says “Baruch ha ba melech moshiach”   in English:  Welcome to king of the messiah.

My thinking is the Ukrainian Rabbi fella (actually he died in about 1994) which some religious Jews think is the Moshiach and maybe someone’s interpretation of the scriptures here was the Moshiach would come on this Mitsubishi Colt!! *

Actually I do get Arab children coming up my street on a donkey sometimes.

The New Testament explains the fulfillment of this:-

Matthew 21

21 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

5 “Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”

11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Talking of the Mount of Olives, further up this street is a park you can stand and see across Jerusalem.   This Google Streetmap below shows the Mount of Olives, you can see by the ‘whiter’ area of the hill, as it contains thousands of graves.

* My mistake, this is actually a Mitsubishi Lancer.

Aug 11 2012

Making Tekhelet

This is seems to be an unlikely creature significant in Jewish culture, its a type of crustacean from the Mediterranean which of course all shellfish are unkosher.   Actually I don’t think anyone eats this.

Part of social trip I did with my work is to visit this centre by the shore of the Mediterranean that show tourists these creatures.   The reason why these things are prized as if you gather them up and dissolve their insides in a jar, you get a blue dye once mixed with some chemicals.

The Tzitzit, the four strings that dangle from under a religious Jew’s shirt have this blue dye.  You can see blue stripes similar to this on a prayer shawl too.

Well, me and my fellow volunteers got about 30 of them I think.

Blue and purple dyes during the bible were expensive, so this was probably quite a profitable industry to get into.

The man who was giving the talk at the Tekhelet tour reminded us of this passage in the bible.

Zechariah 8:23
This is what the LORD Almighty says: “In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.’”

Interesting as me and my colleagues who tried holding the man’s garment from US, Canada, South Africa, Japan, Holland, Paraquay, Korea, New Zealand, and Israel and UK – yep, at least 10!

You can see about this interesting educational visit here:- http://www.tekhelet.com/TekheletMarineTour.htm

Aug 10 2012

I tell you the truth

Early this year I went to see my Dad at a prayer conference at a hotel by Mount Scopus.

As I was cycling back, I went through the Ultra Orthodox area of Meir Shereem, which looks a bit like this, except it was about 11pm:

Without asking for a directions, an older Hassidic gent with usual black hat, garb and bushy grey beard came up to me and asked me something, when I asked him if he spoke English, he asked me if I was lost, I said I was just looking to get back to the town centre and despite riding through this street a couple of times before I had lost my bearings.

The man was helpful and also seemed kind as I didn’t ask for assistance he approached me.   He wasn’t a native Sabra Israeli, he had a strong Eastern European accent, perhaps Hungarian.

It was only as he gave me the last part of the route he said I needed, he exclaimed “I tell you the truth….”

This shocked me quite a bit.   Probably I know its maybe the most common phrase spoken by Jesus.  Its in Matthew 18:3,  24:40, 25:45, Luke 9:27, 12:44,  21:3, John 6:26, 32, 45, 53.  13:21. 16: 7,  20, 23. 21:18.

Not sure how you would say this in Hebrew, but anyway its just very interesting to see some of the things I imagined from Jesus’ time would be said today.   Actually if you are curious you can try this Google search:

This is in all through the first bits of Gospels but I don’t see it in Mark.   I guess as Matthew, Mark and Luke report on parallel parts of Jesus’s life, but from different viewpoints from the perspective of three men who observed Jesus’s life, a taxman, a teacher and a doctor, maybe explains it.