Today we took a ten-hour tour of Old Jerusalem. Up at 5:20 to shower, blog, and eat, and then on the bus before 8 am. Our guide is footnoted in one of our course readings, so that was cool.
Learned a ton, naturally. Saw pretty much all of the City of David, the many holy buildings in al-Quds (the Arabic name for Jerusalem), and plenty of maps to tie it all together.
Best moment: We went through some water tunnels underneath the city that were created to feed the pools. Dark, dank, enclosed spaces…water above my knees…tunnels two feet wide…crouching down. La vie est belle!
There was an incident in the city today: Someone blazed through a checkpoint and was shot by the soldiers. As a result, bits of the Mount of Olives were cut off. So we didn’t get to go through all of the Via Dolorosa, but we got into most of the buildings – Garden of Gethsemane, the Gorge, the church where Mary is believed by some to have ascended.
A service was going on in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; that was fun to watch. Tonight is Shabbot (Sabbath), so the kids in the dining hall were just singing and thumping the table. The elevator is on “Shabbot mode” – pushing the button uses electricity, considered to be lighting a fire, considered to be work, and thus forbidden from dinner Friday to sundown on Saturday. So the elevators just go up and down on a specific schedule. Nice to still use an elevator…annoying to wait forever for it to move.
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Interesting that you reference Jerusalem as al-Quds but never refer to it by its Hebrew name-Yerushalim. I think that is of AT LEAST equal interest. Also, the church that you refer to as "the church where Mary is believed by some to have ascended" has a name: Dormition Abbey or Dormition Church. It is said that that is the spot where Mary went into her eternal sleep and ascended to Heaven. I happen to think it is one of the most beautiful churches in/around Jerusalem. Belinda
ReplyDeleteThanks for calling me out.
ReplyDelete: )
The name Yerushalim is beautiful; unfortunately, it is used very rarely both in my classes here and in my religious studies courses at MSU.
Interestingly, official traffic signs in Israel say "Yerushalim" in Hebrew, "Jerusalem" in English, and then the transliteration of "Yerushalim" in Arabic, followed by "al-Quds" in parantheses.