Tag Archives: Israel

Jul 4 2011

Mount of Beatitudes

Towards the end of my trip a quarter of the way around the Galilee, me and my friend stopped at the Beatitudes.

There is a small gift shop and a few picnic tables, visitors seem to come mostly in coaches, there isn’t too many people in terms of individuals here.

There are plenty of these strict looking signs, some of the gardens with the best view of the water front seem to be off limits it seems, not just here but in other places where I wanted to sit to down and admire the water.   Signs suggest these are saved for special occasions it seems.

This is the church itself and very nice it is too.

It was built upon the site where Jesus was teaching as in Matthew 5 : 3-12

Conference room and hotel closeby.

The church is small and very square in its shape, there is no real place for a congregation to sit down, its more of a shrine I suppose with a the outside arched walk way around it, although the Pope visited here in 2000, it is still manned by nuns in their traditional garb.

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 – Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Apostles – Mount of Beatitudes

Jul 2 2011

disposing of electronics scrap in Israel

In my job doing IT system administration and technical support for a Christian organisation called Bridges for Peace here in Israel, I am installing new equipment, mostly PCs and servers.

Back in April, we has an unfortunate week where three different network switches in two buildings fail suddenly, this paralysed our network access for about 25 staff, one of these switches broke the same time we had a power outage in the building I was in and the emergency power back up systems did not do the job of protecting the equipment.

What I want to know is, where is the correct place to take scrap IT equipment here in Israel?

It appears in most neighbourhoods, like mine, there are these big skips shared by three or four apartment blocks for putting in domestic rubbish in.  People also put broken furniture and electrical items in.   Some dead computers were left out in the hallway of my block, so I took the Pentium chips and memory out, and put them in the bin as well.

In my work, I have a pile of dead batteries from laptops, large brick batteries from UPS systems, several whole ‘shoebox’ sized UPS devices that were defective, two dead LCD panels from laptops,

All types of batteries contain highly toxic materials and LCD monitors contain small amounts of mercury.  How can IT people here in Israel dispose of stuff safely, legally and responsibly here?

Jul 1 2011

Shabbat party dream team

Some people keep fantasy football leagues and some people have imaginary dinner parties of interesting or influential people.

Here in Israel, I may sometimes go and attend a Shabbat dinner round friends houses, both Jewish or Christian, mainly because its nice to mark the end of the week and relax with friends and food.

So… I want to put together a list of people I would invite who are Jewish that would make interesting guests.

The purpose of this isn’t so much to change or influence anyone’s religious background, nor would I want to talk politics, more of a way of who would be fun to have at a party, plus I actually haven’t thought about food as I need to get more familiar with cooking good stuff that is kosher, especially I had made a lasagne on early friday afternoon and realised once it has milk in it….

Yeshua Ha Moshiach (Jesus Christ)

‘Well Jon would say that as hes a Christian?’, you are thinking.  Yes and you would be right.   Being here in Israel and learning Jewish culture whilst being immersed here has made me think more about Jesus’s character and Jewishness.   As well as being being the Messiah and a great preacher, teacher, Rabbi, outdoor chap (40 days in the desert) carpenter, (early career) caterer (wine at weddings, fish and bread by the sea) healer, hiker, (180 kms from Nazareth to Jerusalem) story teller and friend to many especially the social outcasts.

Today if people fiddled with their phones during meal or teaching I think he would probably be quite blunt that they were being rude, the same with bad language or slander.  Plus with the many parables he spoke he would have some pretty amazing stories that would keep everyone amused.  Think I would like to ask him a lot of things, I always get stuck on the parable about new wine in old wine skins, mainly as I think people switched to using glass vessels for liquids which I think the Romans introduced just after Jesus’s time.   I can get 30 Agorot for old bottles, I wonder if wine skins were costly and needed a return deposit if you bought wine?

Groucho Marx

Would have to have him for his wit and sarcasm.  Would love to know about his early days as part of a poor Jewish family growing up in New York, especially as him and his brothers (Harpo, Chico, etc) often featured in movies together, but were also successful in their own individual careers.

Gene Symmonds

Born Chaim Weitz in Haifa, Israel and as well as front man for 70s glam rock band KISS, he has only done one gig in Israel recently this year, challenged other bands who bend under the strains of the bigoted BDS movement and other critics of Israel, I also saw a sad story in the news how he regretted not seeing his estranged father who he visited his grave this week.

Slash from Guns N Roses and Lenny Kravitz

A few more rock stars are always be good.  Both are a mixture of Jewish and African parents.

Peter Falk

Sadly passed away this week, but the actor behind Columbo which had two runs, in the 60s & 70 and in the early 90s, was also a talented painter as well as an actor and voice artist for some Disney movies.   Although his screen character is Italian, never gives his first name or ever shows his wife, Falk is of Hungarian Jewish decent.  The famous TV series often had the same ‘guest killers’ several times over, including Star Trek crew members William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy also Jewish, and famous folks like Robert Vaugn, I am sure Peter has had all kinds of interesting friends hes met on set.

Zacheius

I could of chosen any of the apostles and Jesus’s acquaintances from the bible, but instead I thought I would invite the not so popular short bloke who climbed the tree to see Jesus who worked for the tax company.   I would like to ask him if has any ideas to improve PR relations with regular people in first century or today’s Israel, and how today’s Israeli government could get maximum value for money from tax income to improve public services, ie: safer roads and helping new immigrants.

Please note, normally these kind of lists allow for people no longer living and from different eras.  I would pleased to hear from other bloggers with their own choices, wether they be actors, musicians, politicians or other people from history.  

Jun 29 2011

New bike!!

Last week I got another bike.  It used to belong to another volunteer up in Karmiel at the food bank facility I work in every so many months.  This chap has left now, but the bike was abandoned after something broke on it and he couldn’t afford to fix it.

After it was brought down in a van, I got the local bike store to take a look at it, the gear controls on the right hand side don’t work and the chain had come off.   After some components in the gears were replaced and this slightly odd bodge, as the man in the shop said the original twist operated gear parts would be much more expensive, hence I have a thumb operated control ontop instead.

On thursday I managed to get a puncture, so back to the shop again, there is a Jewish owner of the shop and young Arab chap in the workshop and he is super quick and efficient in changing over the inner tube and has me up and running in 3 minutes.  I asked him to remove and discard the kickstand which doesn’t work properly and is more of a nuisance as a sharp bit of metal that could cause an injury.

This writing suggests the bike may actually be made by a company in Israel.  Interesting as cycling is not that popular here.

Its heavier than my old one so its a little tricky carrying down from my 2nd floor flat steps, but it was free and a huge blessing to not have to just rely on buses.

I also got asked to fix a Toshiba laptop with a dead screen from a friend of a friend, so after procuring a new 13″ LCD panel off ebay for UK£67.50, a financial gift for the repair work I did in form of the exact fee it took to get my new bike servicable.

Jun 25 2011

Palestinian archeologist at Hezekiah’s tunnel

I will add a few more articles on my trip around the Galilee very soon.

I went with some friends to Hezekiah’s tunnel in the City of David museum in Silwan, a volatile Arab neighbourhood close to the Dung Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem.

There is over a mile of tunnels you have to walk through in darkness and in water upto your knees.

I have been here before actually, you can see my original article here.

This plastic pipe seems to be a temporary replacement for the modern drainage system which was removed with this area was dug up.

At the back of the museum is this place, dug up not so long ago.

This places was once a source of water, from the museum web site:-

In June of 2004, municipal workers who were repairing a sewage drain in the City of David were shocked to discover a staircase deep underneath the ground.  Salvage excavations done at the site revealed that the stairs are part of an ancient thoroughfare, leading from the Shiloach Pool – the major water drawing source in Jerusalem from Biblical times, to the Temple Mount over 2300 feet to the north. Excavations conducted by Eli Shukron are discovering the original stones walked upon by the Jewish people as they made their pilgrimage to the Jewish temple most notably on the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Succoth.

In places, the pavement was broken, revealing an underground drainage channel filled with whole pottery vessels and coins. Josephus Flavius, a famous historian of that period, describes this very place as one where the Jews unsuccessfully attempted to hide during the Roman Revolt in 70 CE.  For over 2,000 years this road has secretly laid, hidden from the world. Today, in the center of Jerusalem, in the historic City of David, we have the unique opportunity to once again reveal this road before the eyes of the world.


Sign here say that this ground on the surface is a cemetery for Arab children.

What surprised me was there was a Palestinian man working in the museum who had a love of history.  Silwan is quite a troubled neighbourhood and often Palestinian groups and their supporters around the world, try to show this part of the world as stolen land, despite the wealth of historical information that shows its been occupied by many different groups of people; Roman, Byzantine, Jewish, Arab, Crusader, Ottoman, British Mandate etc, that have lived here.

This man showed some coins he personally found himself, this coin to the left can be clearly seen as being Roman, the one to the bottom right has a Christian cross on it.

He told us he had his car set on fire by other people in his neighbourhood for working with Jews.   He told us he was not religious and not interested in politics, only liked working at the museum and finding discoveries from past.

  

With the large numbers of Christian visitors that come to this site every day, I am hoping the most of them will be praying for this man, for his safety and for him to find his Lord and saviour.

One we were out the rear entrance of the museum, I found myself in a Palestinian community.

Next to this simple sandwich shop is this fruit tree which I think has plums on it, far from ripe of course.  House opposite has a Palestinian flag on it.   We got a ride back to the main high street in this blue VW taxi van.

Web site of City of David museum and Hezekiah’s tunnel

Jun 24 2011

Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Apostles

On the road by the side of Galilee, after visiting Capernaum, we travelled a bit further north to see this eye catching Greek pink domed church over looking the Kinerret.

There are some chickens in the garden by the Greek church, I spotted some more exotic pets too…

At the end of this beautiful walkway there are some picnic tables with Arab families having lunch.

Perfect for barbeque next to the Kinerret.   The symbols on the metal gates is for the Greek church.

The pink domes are eye catching, and the church design looks really attractive on the banks of the Kinerret.

I am not able find much about the history of it, but I understand its meant to be on the site where Jesus recruited his followers.

The interior of this church is beautifully decorated.  Better than anywhere else I have seen I think.

 

Left; pictures of the saints on the ceiling, Right: there are angels and demons on one side, winged horses and other strange creatures depicted.

 

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 – Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Apostles – Mount of Beatitudes

Mount of Beatitudes

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.

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 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

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 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.

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

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.