Touring Israel: Part 1 of 2

It was the first week of October 2018 when my sister Vicki and I checked into our hotel at Tel Aviv, Israel. A short walk away was the popular Promenade along the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a super-wide walkway for thousands of locals and tourists. The Mediterranean sunny weather was gorgeous, not too hot, perfect promenade weather.

The next day I returned to the warm Mediterranean Sea to snorkel and swim in its gentle swells. 

The water is murky, very low visibility, but clean. Until the 1980s, swimming in the Mediterranean was banned because shockingly Tel Aviv dumped its sewage into the sea. A new sewage processing plant changed the city for the better thankfully. Many people and dogs and families visit the beach to play; one tireless dog charmed me into tossing a frisbee for an hour much to the relief of its tired owner.

Tel Aviv is a huge city with modern architecture.

There are many pockets of charming old neighborhoods and grassy playgrounds mixed with the modern skyscrapers. It was fun to walk around and get lost. It’s a young people’s town in my opinion, and it’s not unusual to see them eating and congregating at sidewalk restaurants until 4 or 5 AM. One morning about 10 AM, I passed a McDonald’s in Tel Aviv (looking for breakfast food other than hummus) but it didn’t open until 11 AM.  Hmmm . . . . not sure why the late hours. I guess that's city life.

     One day, we strolled through Old Town Jaffa (photo above) which is a pleasant walk on the Promenade from Tel Aviv. The ruins were rebuilt in pristine condition; too pristine for my taste.

     Vicki and I joined about a dozen other tourists (half from the Netherlands, half from the USA along with interpreters and local guides) at a seaside restaurant to introduce ourselves. We traveled together for two weeks in a small bus about 24 feet long. Our agenda for two weeks (photo below) took us to many of Israel’s “Holy Land” places mentioned in the Bible.

     One afternoon we visited David Gurion’s humble home in Tel Aviv; he’s considered Israel’s founding father.

He was a book collector and avid reader, too.

     After a sunset dinner one night on the wharf of Old Town Jaffa, we all walked to a nearby theater to see a very moving performance “Not by Bread Alone” by the Nalaga’at Theater Deaf-Blind Acting Ensemble. Click here for a good article about this ensemble when they performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

     The history of Jaffa by the way (click here for brief history) is similar to the rest of Israel’s old fortresses. Long story short, thousands of years before Christ, fortresses and villages are built by the Polytheistic Arabs, then conquered by the Jewish Arabs from Egypt, then by the European Romans, then conquered by the Arab Muslims, then by the new kids on the block, the Christians who held a double-aced hand (the Popes and European monarchs who financed these "holy wars", killing people “with the Pope's blessings”), then conquered by another more violent group of Arab Muslims, then taken back again by warriors sponsored by various Christian monarchies . . . meanwhile millions of civilians are either slaughtered or forced to convert and become slaves, and ancient buildings are razed and rebuilt during these war years. 

     The consequence is that generations of Arabic children in the Middle East learn hatred and resentment for each other based on a religion they are born into. A good book about these many ethnic cleansings is The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors by Dan Jones. The book’s descriptions of the killings from witnesses at the time (decapitations of families, babies, and seas turned red with blood) is horrific, more horrific than the Holocaust of the Twentieth Century and the slaughter of Native Americans and European Colonists in both North and South Americas. Despite a “Thou shalt not kill” mandate known to all religious people (Jews, Muslims and Christians) each religion justifies ethnic cleansings.

Our bus takes us to Caesarea; it was a magnificent complex (depiction above) originally built before Christ by Herod the Great; there were baths, a chariot racing arena, a theater, a palace built of coral rocks, and a floating dock. 

Like Old Town Jaffa, this complex too changes religious and political hands several times through the centuries, and is eventually abandoned. In 1952 Israel turns this complex into a national park. Below are hand-carved stones into tiles for floors.

Nearby we visit Haifa where Elijah’s Cave is supposedly located. Women must cover their heads when entering a “Holy Place” (I'm a bit miffed by it all).

Sometimes men wearing shorts must cover their legs before entering a “Holy Place”; complimentary skirts are provided. Handsome good-natured men, eh?

     I notice that these iconic Biblical places are visited equally by tourists who are Jews, Christians and Muslims. In a few places, there are separate tourist entrances for each religion. Seems ironic that we all share the same respect for these Biblical places, yet throughout the world the hatred and intolerance for each other persist.

     Near Haifa is a Twentieth Century shrine, the Bahai Gardens (click here for info, above photo) which is a shrine to a prophet named Bab who founded the Bahai Faith and died in 1892. This faith nobly celebrates a unity of all religions and all peoples, but they have prohibitions that would not sit well with a majority of our human race.

In Nazareth (where Jesus grew up), we visit places where supposedly an angel appeared before the virgin Mary . . . 

. . . lots of these biblical places such as homes, shops and farmsteads are built into rocky mountain sides with grotto-type enclosures because the desert-like terrain is too hot most of the year.

    

   We visit the Sea of Galilee and board a tourist boat on this fresh water lake (where Jesus fed the multitude with fish, also known as Lake Tiberias). In the middle of this lake we all dance in a circle to an Arabic song playing on a boombox, hands joined; it was a fun group thing. Tourism in Israel by the way is big business (3.6 million tourists in 2017 adding about $5.5 billion USD to its economy). 

Tourists can pay priests to be baptized in the Jordan River. Doesn’t seem meaningful to me . . . but money makes the world go round.

No tour of Israel is complete without a stop at Old Town Jerusalem to visit the Western Wall. On a Friday evening there were high-round-hatted Orthodox Jews at this wall; photo below was taken on a Saturday afternoon when there were mostly tourists there. The wall is segregated; one side for men, another side for women, but unlike men Jewish women at the wall are not allowed to wear a prayer shawl and recite from the Torah. And if an American voices displeasure about the right-wing Israelis politics, they're labeled anti-Semitic! Go figure . . .

 . . . and the iconic Dome of the Rock (a mosque for Muslims, photo below).

That cemetery in the foreground of photo above is the Mount of the Olives Cemetery which is over 3,000 years old and contains an unknown number of people buried there.

And for the Christians, a visit (photo below) to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

There are numerous places to visit in Jerusalem. Each place (for a fee) has a story to tell -- so-and-so was buried here, born here, lived here, preached here, and died here.  I’m a bit skeptical about the accuracy of these locations. 

Taking a snooze at the feet of one of the Apostle’s statues sounds like a good idea.

     When I could, I’d escape the tourist business to the comfort of animals . . . . they’re not religious warriors nor are they exploiting anyone for a shekel.  They deserve a head massage.

The Israeli diet centers around hummus which is simply pureed chickpea beans (lower right of photo). Mixed with seasoned veggies and pita bread, this bland chickpea puree makes a decent meal. 

Many olives too! I didn’t realize olives were a popular condiment until I visited Europe.

We spent a few days in Jerusalem visiting various places.

I celebrated by 67th birthday in this city.

The primary language of Israel is Hebrew. Didn’t realize until I looked at a restaurant bill that Hebrew is read from right to left. My old brain couldn’t do a 180-degree-turn to learn Hebrew!

There’s 22 block-looking letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Surprisingly about 30 percent of Israelis are fluent in English.

PS: I have a new appreciation for the USA's founding fathers who separated the church and the state and endorsed religious tolerance. This book is on my hold list at my e-library: American Gospel written by Jon Meacham.