In my two previous posts I wrote about going down memory lane during our recent trip to Israel. I don’t want to go on and on about our holiday, so I’ll try to condense the rest of what we did during our 9 days here into one post of highlights.
While we were there, we of course visited Jerusalem. The Old City houses markets in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim quarters and above the markets/soukh there is a whole second level of the Old City where you can walk as well. We had lunch in a rooftop restaurant with view on the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock, we had coffee and home baked Käsekuchen in the courtyard of the German Lutheran church in the Christian quarter of the old city, we visited the hall where Jesus and his disciples were said to have held the last supper and we visited King David’s tomb. As a reminder that this wasn’t just another ‘regular’ beautiful historical city, we also saw evidence of more and more Jewish settlers trying to find a foothold in the Muslim quarter and more of a visible Israeli security presence as well, especially in the Muslim quarter near Damascus Gate. It was also unsettling to see Trump kippahs sold as souvenirs.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (built over the sites where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried) is always fascinating to me…
We went to the Western Wall but couldn’t get close as everything was closed off for a commemoration on Remembrance Day and for Israeli Independence Day the next day. Lots of security was around. There is always a lot of security around the Western Wall but this was really a step up.
While we as tourists can move easily and freely and I felt perfectly safe and fine, the situation still felt more tense than I ever remember before. Despite that, the Old City remains such a beautiful place.
We also met with a friend of my brother’s for dinner one evening who is a teacher and an activist. We ate at a lovely little Arab restaurant just across the border on the West Bank in Beit Jala which was deemed ‘safe’ for Israeli cars (Area C, explained via link at the end of this post)…
One of our reasons for coming was the wedding of the son of a distant cousin of ours. The bride is from Jewish Yemenite heritage and two days before the wedding there was a Yemenite celebration (with henna) that we attended near Tel Aviv. I was encouraged to also dress up for a small portion of the festivities, to dance along for the bride…
We drove down to the desert, partially along the the Dead Sea…
… and made a quick stop to briefly visit Masada again…
…and then got to the location of the desert wedding, where we also stayed the night in little huts. The wedding was awesome and fun, with beautiful views over a large desert crater…
The next day my brother took a bus to the south, we dropped Junior off at the airport where he flew to Istanbul on his own for a few days (and now he’s in Barcelona for another few days) while Mr E and I headed to the north.
After the desert, the North was more lush and green. We stayed in the Galilee and toured there and in the Golan Heights near the border with Syria. We also drove by a small portion of the ugly, depressing Berlin Wall-style wall between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. We skipped the Western coast sites of Tabgha (where Jesus multiplied loaves and fish to feed many people), the mount of the Beatitudes (from Jesus’ sermon on the mount fame) and Capernaum (where some of the apostles are said to have lived) because we’d been there several times before but we did stop in Ein Gev on the Eastern coast of the lake, which I don’t recall ever having gone to before and it turns out is ‘just’ a holiday resort.
We stopped by the south side of the Lake of Galilee where the Jordan River emerges and which is also the site where many Christians go for baptisms (like John the Baptist baptized Jesus)…
We also stopped by Tiberias and took a look at where my mother had worked for a year the year before she and my father were married. She worked in the Scots Hospice library at the time (the two smaller pictures below on the left, my parents are the couple on the left in the first picture) which is now The Scots Hotel (picture on the right).
We had dinner nearby there at the lake with this view…
We visited the city in Tzfat (or Tsefat or Safed, whichever spelling tickles your fancy) which is the highest city in Israel and also boasts a booming artists colony. And yes, we ate a very nice Pita Falafel there, which I had to include in the pictures.
Once, many years ago, my father picked out a piece of art for me when we were in Tzfat, which is now one of my most prized possessions precisely because he handpicked it for me. It is the whole Book of Esther written in tiny letters, fitting into the image of a woman with a wide dress. As Mr E and I walked through Tzfat we found that the artist and the gallery are still there and he still paints Queen Esthers. In the pictures below, the first Queen Esther is the one I own, the Queen Esther on the right is for sale in the artist’s shop.
We also drove through the Golan Heights near the border with Syria. It’s a very beautiful area, with lots of nature and cows in fields but right near all that there are also warnings of landmines which is quite shocking amongst all that beauty. We also passed by a deserted little mosque filled with bullet holes. It’s a stark reminder of the very difficult political situation in the Middle East.
Being in Israel again for the first time in nine years brought home to me how tense everything can feel there, especially in Jerusalem, with security everywhere, more military checkpoints or at least observation posts than I remember and a stronger than ever presence of Israeli flags literally everywhere. Nationalism feels stronger than ever there and the divide feels bigger than ever to me. During all our visits in earlier years we could quite easily go to Bethlehem on the West Bank and we intended on doing so again this time around but were told that Israeli cars driving in the West Bank are at risk and that they aren’t insured there. As we were using my older brother’s car (on a side note: he’s become an avid birdwatcher over the years, as evidenced by a sticker on his car), we didn’t want to risk anything happening to it, so we never went.
I never consciously remember having to worry whether we were in an A, B or C area in the West Bank and yet with this visit, it was made clear we did need to worry about that. It feels like the tensions are stronger than ever and no peace in sight. Very sobering thought. Despite all that we did have a good and very interesting time and I’m sure we’ll be back again in due course.
The Book of Esther 