Part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7
Busy alley full of cafes and bars close to Jaffa Gate.
Sometimes you often see graffiti, most of it is in Hebrew, some of it looks quite interesting, sometimes its done legally.
These pomegranate fruits are put in the corners of the tops of the walls, just like King Solomon did.
Opticians shop has an modern but characteristically Jerusalem look to it.
The antisemitism watching blog ‘Seismic Shock’ (front page here) has come up with good stuff again. http://seismicshock.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/the-small-print/
I was particularly interested about the boycott Israel meeting that happened in my home city of Portsmouth.
I was hugely relieved that there are no names of churches from my city involved, but usual attacks from various characters mentioned by Seismic and general political blogs like Harry’s place (not specifically pro-Israel, but have very good expose of unpleasant extremism stuff regularly)
The focus on the blog talked about the get together from various Methodist churches, it is sad when antisemitism comes from not just from stereotypical skin heads but from within churches, and this creates division and gives a poor impression to non Christians in my community.
For me this is not a representation of Jesus, but slander aimed at a nation that is not perfect but we are biblically obliged to pray for. Its important we reject the common error of replacement theology (that is that Israel of the bible was permanently rejected by the new covenant of the church which Paul says is false in Romans)
In addition to this, modern day BNP-style political thugs the EDL, were on the news for protesting and intimidating Muslims also in Portsmouth outside the Jami Mosque.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11752757
Some people maybe scared to visit Israel because of fears of terrorism, but in reality, I feel safer on the streets at night in Jerusalem than Portsmouth. As the recent above story and immense dislike of the neighbouring city of Southampton, there is a fair amount of political craziness from Pompey.
Someone else I know did this kind of comparison of two cities they have lived in and showing the nicest parts of each.
There is some similarities here, both cities once had the same football club owner at the same time. Both have a lot of history, although Portsmouth is 800+ years old, Jerusalem is about 4 times older and has about 700,000 people compared to Portsmouth’s 200,000 odd.
Both places you walk somewhere and bump into someone you know in the street.
Some of these comparisons are often more to do with the relative (Israel = 7 million, UK = 65 million) size of the country, thus the logistics of supplying things into this place as opposed to any political reasons. Some things come out in the shops much later here in Israel (like the iPhone that wasn’t officially on sale until Autumn 2009) also because of reasons like the unique nature of the Hebrew language which I guess was only probably implemented recently.
I have not mentioned things like terrorism threats as actual attacks are these days a rarity and certainly less deaths than an average robbery or domestic murder in a western city.
There is a wide range of different ethnic groups here, people are free to practice their own religion without much interference.
Of course both places share some bad things like lack of parking too.
Excellent family life, most children have two parents, divorce/separation rate seems low
Not much crime or drugs
Not much issue with drunks/alcoholism
Vast range of places to eat out
Vast range of coffee shops and easy to get wireless internet
Fruit and vegetables are plentiful locally and cheap
Old city markets are great to get beautiful carpets, ornaments, spices, ceramics
People like to socialise a lot, but not always around alcohol, so going out is safe and fun for everyone in almost all cases.
Warm Mediterranean climate, its been often over 30 degrees in November.
Attractive design of buildings with consistent white stone facade on the outside gives this city a unique character
Most houses have their hot water heated using solar panels on the roof
Police and soldiers in the street all around give a sense of security and safety
Mobile phone usage seems quite cheap and there’s no problem with signal (despite this city is on several mountains) 120% (ie: lots of people have two) of Israelis have mobile phones.
Bus service is cheap and quite easy to get anywhere – just remember to hold on tight once you get on as they don’t wait for you sit down…
Immigration unlike many other countries is actively encouraged (if you are Jewish) A blessing to Jews who have previously lived in nations that were hostile or dangerous to them.
Food (tinned/packaged) is much cheaper
You are never more than 1/2 a mile from a curry restaurant
You are never more than 100 yards from a pub
Road safety is above average, and most people’s cars have to be in safe and good order
Electrical fittings, switches, etc in shops and houses are not often wobbly or fall off in your hand
Health & Safety is strict, so you won’t walk past building sites where workman work around the public without fencing etc.
Bus drivers are mostly polite and don’t drive off until you have sat down
Relatively good amount of political stability
Going to bordering countries (France, Spain, Channel Islands) requires simple security clearance without being asked lots of questions
Its easy to buy spare parts for your car, IT hardware, other specialised things without having to have them imported from somewhere else
Very little risk of drought, and water infrastructure works well
Note: I don’t really like political debates and so I am quite fussy about whats allowed in comments below. Sensitive subjects are welcome in a private message.
This last few months has been quite a varied collection of events.
September my good friend John came down from Portsmouth, originally from Malta, John is of Armenian Jewish decent and I do admire his huge amount of energy and enthusiasm for Jesus, and Israel and the Jewish people, he stayed a few days with me and got to visit a few places and walk along the city walls amongst other things.
I also got an extra person for my department at work which means I am no longer having to look after the computer network on my own. I also made the decision to extend my time for the second time, and I will be volunteering right into the spring of 2011 when my visa runs out.
In October I had a strange stabbing pain my chest. I originally attributed this to a strange cold I have had for about two weeks which could of spread somehow. This was really painful so I decided to stay home from work the next day. I booked an appointment with the doctors which I got with 4 hours notice, which was good. As I did mention I bruised my hands from falling off my bike, they wanted to xray me in case I had cracked a rib, although I never got any bruising or injuries to my chest. This results of this ancient xray machine, who the lady technician told me is probably the oldest in the country proved negative.
The next day after forgetting to take my pills for this condition, I found the pain to be completely gone! Whatever it was, its no longer there and I am really thankful to the Lord for this.
Had a sad farewell to my friend Matthew from Switzerland as he goes back to Basel, actually twice as did one party at mine and one at his, and also to Taylor, volunteer journalist from the ICEJ as she come to the end of her time here.
Have had some really nice surprises with opportunities God has opened up for me with several Jewish friends and acquaintances who are planning to make Aliyah (immigrate to Israel) one is a friend from my home city. It will a real honour to put them in touch with people I know that will help them get settled here. I also have been asked to help with technical set up for a colleague’s son’s Bar Mitzvah early next yet. All of this is confirmation that I am not meant to get back into regular secular work back in the UK just yet.
I got to go with Christopher my work colleague and a couple from Canada to see some live blues guitar music (a few articles below) and also quick visit to the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem’s biblical zoo, I will cover the zoo visit soon.
This Wednesday I am going up to our food bank warehouse in Karmiel. This requires a stay with one of the volunteer staff up there, as its 170km bus ride. Actually I have to get up to Tiberias and get picked up by a van driver and brought up to Karmiel. The Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning me and my co-worker at there there I hope to do a full back up the server and put on Windows patches, set up wireless routers and sort out a few other things. Once I get a ride back to Tiberias, I will probably find somewhere to get dinner there before heading home. I would dearly love to properly explore Tiberias for a few days, being the largest city in the Galilee but this will have to be another time, I only have a few weeks left here.
Work projects at the moment, include a fairly big redesign of our network to sort out the weird kinks that happen sometime, writing up documentation, replace a UPS system, source more memory for servers and a special presentation laser mouse and virtualise a few more PCs that are only used for remote VPN access.
I will probably skip going to the young adults worship event at church as I need pack for a camping trip at the weekend, not sure where it is, but staying somewhere on a beach and going to do some caving. Looking forward to this.
Overall things are not always easy or go as planned sometimes, but life is good.
Whats this big crowd today on this popular precinct?
Often there are musicians and entertainers of alsorts, but today this was a bit different.
This group of harpists, I think they are Christians from various different countries, were doing some playing for charity. There are about 15 of them with instruments of different sizes, there are handheld symmetrical ‘Davidic’ (ie: like the one King David owned) harps and the large floor standing ones, they have various different sized hollow bases to provide a different type of tone.
I didn’t hear them playing much as they were mainly giving a talk about their charity they were raising support for. The music was nice and very different. I had to leave to go to my church worship event. Later that day I was planning to see some Blues guitar at a club in downtown Talpiyot later that evening.
Interesting fact I read this week; the Marx brothers, the Jewish New Yorker family who did music and comedy, the most well known being Groucho Marx, one of the pioneers of modern sarcasm and grease paint moustaches, his older brother Harpo Marx left his famous harp to the State of Israel when he died in 1964, although I have not been able to find out where it is stored.
After my trip to Rachel’s tomb I took some pictures on the way back….
The white sign shows a welcome to Jerusalem
New house construction in progress. This was stopped for a while during the building freeze which was during talks with the Palestinian Authority.
Houses are far to expensive here, new builds all around the country are necessary to provide for growing Jewish and Arab families. (its common for both types of families to have 5-10 children) Other cities like Karmiel pay about 40% less rent for a similar apartment than Jerusalem residents do. I don’t think of the houses as a settlement, but as part of the regeneration of the sovereign nation of Israel. There is a new school, police station and shops in this district when I went there about 2 month ago.
I stopped outside this church on the Hevron Road. Its a Greek church, and has very pretty gardens.
Everyone had just left when I arrived, I spoke to priest who had tradition Greek Orthodox Christian garb on, asking if I could look around but he said he was just locking up.
There are Arab Christian families on the way back to their cars. I am not sure if these Arab people live the main west part of Jerusalem or if they come across the border that is about 2Km down the road where I have just come from.
Left: There is small cafe and plenty of picnic tables, and looks like a nice place to fellowship with people after the service. I need to come back here another time I think. Right: Poster for Taybeh, a Palestinian beer, on a table in the garden.
Its a while since I have done some exploring of places from the bible. As I am at the end of the my second season I thought I would make up for lost time and see some places.
The weekend before last I try to get to Rachel’s tomb which is on the Israel/Palestinian security gate that goes between southern Jerusalem and Bethlehem. This was something of a ‘ballagan’ (Hebrew for chaos, I am not sure if I wrote the Romanised spelling right 🙂 ) as I spent ages finding it, and seem to get different answers from everyone I asked. I gave up and went home, and came back the following weekend.
This time I was given a different method to get into Rachel’s tomb. At one specific gate into the border, intended for cars. I had my passport checked along with this Asian-Canadian girl who was also going this way I was chatting to.
I was asked by the guards, “are you a Jew?” in which I replied no I was a Christian. “But you don’t wear a cross?” I was asked. Maybe I should get one I guess.
I was told I could not travel by foot the 100 yards or so through the border, but he pointed to this blue Subaru driven by a religious Jew and told me to get in, I said I don’t know this guy, do you know him? “its ok, he is a Jew, just get in!” I was kind of shocked that the guards asked me to get in a stranger’s car, but I did it anyway and so do this girl. The road winds in a sort of S shape in between the tall concrete walls of the Israeli/Palestinian border. Unlike other parts of this wall as its so well guarded there is no graffiti here. After only a minute of a very short ride, the car stops right outside Rachel’s Tomb.
In the historical building itself, the building is heavily disguised in concrete being sandwiched in between the high security walls.
Once in, I don’t see much historical information in English outside the tomb itself. Inside there is a longish corridor and then a partition which guides men and women into separate parts of the room.
When I go in its full of Orthodox Jews praying reading the scriptures, one of the reminds me I should have a kippor on, so he lends me one, and I decided to sit on a chair and pray for a bit. It doesn’t seem right to take photos or explore a bit, so I leave. The room feels the same as the archway next to the Kotel.
I was a little disappointed, as there was not much to read on history. There really isn’t anything of interest to casual tourists. Nevertheless its was exciting to see another place of the bible and see religious Jews visiting who value its sacredness.
Back outside, behind this unusual looking wall is some quite pleasant public toilets and a car park.
I take a wander down a short road which goes to a dead end to another vehicle sized gate. There is construction work here, but in an empty square of land here nestled between the two security walls, so neither housing for Jews or Palestinians, more like extra offices or facilities for the border security.
On the way out of the border, I realised there was a bus service. This bus does’nt go right through the border, instead it goes just to Rachel’s Tomb, thus not requiring a lengthy security check to get back. There isn’t any kind of queueing, instead everyone just piles on, I let the women holding babies go on first. I am not allowed to use my normal (Egged) bus pass for some reason, so it just requires me to pay 4.20 Shekels for this ride. Religious women make up the majority of folks on this bus ride. I can only get off about 1km away from the border, necessitating a short walk back to collect my bicycle.
I was reading this passage in the bible which talks about this place. Genesis 35:16-21 16 – “Then they moved on from Bethel. While they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty. And as she was having great difficulty in childbirth, the midwife said to her, “Don’t despair, for you have another son.” As she breathed her l
ast—for she was dying—she named her son Ben-Oni. But his father named him Benjamin. So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s tomb. Israel moved on again and pitched his tent beyond Migdal Eder.”
This particular place is the centre point of news this month as the UN, Palestinian Authority and the Turkish Prime Minister have been saying the Rachel’s Tomb is a Mosque, see www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/136173
I saw this quote from Christians Standing for Israel blog on Rachel’s tomb:- “You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar or a learned archaeologist to recognize the long-standing and incontestably Jewish nature of Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs. Arguing otherwise is akin to asserting that the earth is flat, Elvis is still alive and the moon is made of cheese, and that is how the Palestinian claims should be viewed.”
Because of the not so conventional method of passing through security, I can’t offer any advice on how to get through the border, you will need your passport and its a simple case of heading south from Hevron Road from Jerusalem southwards. There is not a huge amount to see so I think its best left for bible history adventurers to do as something on the way to or from Bethlehem. Right: coaches arriving from the Jerusalem side.
Tip: if you want to converse with anyone, Jew or Arab to find directions to Rachel’s tomb, try pronouncing it like the French, ‘Raquel’ there is a better chance they will understand you.
first bit – second section – Third and final
…continued
Turn right from Jaffa Street…
At the top of this street is a Russian-Orthodox church dedicated in 1872 by Prince Niklai, it served a religious centre for Russian pilgrims in late 19th century.
The road turns to the left past the police station.
Here, I am looking directly behind me I can see the police station, there are lots of police officers and soldiers here, so I didn’t do any pictures of the outside as I don’t think this would be popular.
I took this pic with my phone months ago. The police station has its own outside mini archeology site, this looks like part of a plumbing system, but actually its a pillar on its side. Not sure which age this is.
This part of the police compound was also originally owned by Russians as you can see from the Cyrillic writing top right.
This is an opticians, one of the nice modern buildings I have seen. The outside stairs makes it a little bit lego like 🙂
This roundabout has a takeaway, a corner shop and a bakery that is popular with our office.
Turn left by the tree and up the drive way, and I am at work….
Found this photo I had from last year, from my old flat. I was just at home in the living room, and to start with I thought this was a joke rubber insect put there by my then housemate Joshua our radio announcer and journalist from Bridges for Peace.
I decided to put my (30gb hard disk model) iPod there to gauge its epic arachnid awesomeness.
This is here not for Halloween which I disagree with, not just for its questionable Pagan connections, but that its a dumb idea to send kids to knock on doors on total strangers, but actually I actually like spiders, they eat flies and bugs that spread germs and diseases like Malaria, build (but I think only the smaller ones) webs to make their prey in a clever structure, fabricated from a super strong material they make which is completely unmatched by anything man-made today.
I dont think this one was a tarrantula, as its black and not brown. As its about 4 inches long and its legs are so big and hairy, you can hear a tick-tick-tick noise as he walks up the door frame.
I picked him up with a newspaper and threw him the bushes outside. I get plenty of ants and bugs in my kitchen, so as far I am concerned the spiders can munch the other insects as they like, but it had to stay outside as I had people coming round later. 🙂
Brit In Jerusalem 
