Wrapping Up Israel One

Last night we spent the night in a hotel in Tel Aviv. The hotel was across from the beach, so we went out to the beach, sat in soft sand and watched the sunset in the West. Beautiful! Then we slept well in our air-conditioned hotel room until 4 am when the alarm went off. This is our armadillo friend in the Tel Aviv Airport. We name him/her on Tuesday!

Today is a travel day Israel to Cypress to Athens to Rome. All day… Oh well, I think I will get a lot of reading done.

Here are some last thoughts about Bethlehem before I switch to writing about Rome.

Hebron-This is an important place for Christians, Muslims and Jews because it is traditional site of the burial place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca. Abraham is remembered as the father of all three religions. There are important stories about them in the Old Testament, Koran and the Hebrew Scriptures. Hebron is listed as the place that Abraham buried his wife Sarah. It was a Jewish sacred site and then in the Middle Ages Christians built a church there. Saladin, an Arabian ruler, conquered the area and the church was turned into a mosque. Right now it is still a mosque, but there is an area for Jewish worshippers.

Church of the Nativity-In Bethlehem the site that most of the tourists come to see is the Church of the Nativity. It is built over a cave, which is the traditional site for the birth of Jesus. Three Christian groups share the building; Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Armenian Orthodox. The entry is really small and brings you into a large Orthodox church. You can tell it is orthodox because of the front of the church where there is an iconostasis (altar area specific to the Orthodox). Then you go down some stairs to the nativity cave. From there you can go out another way to the Armenian church and that connects to the Catholic Church. Lots of busses come with tourists who go to the church and many have worship services in the cave before they go on to the next place.

Children in Park-On Saturday before we left we went with all of the Wi’am kids (their summer program) to a park. This week was Danish week and there were Danish Lutherans who prepared some music for the kids. This is the one place that I saw grass and swings and shade trees. It is a really nice park. The kids seemed to have lots of fun running around. The group gathered for a performance of the Danish group. There were lots of drums and rhythm instruments and movement so that all of the kids could participate. The leaders brought falafal sandwiches and bottled water for everyone. Falafal are delicious balls made with ground chickpeas and spices and then deep-fried. They look sort of like meatballs, but they have no meat. A sandwich is actually pita bread with falafal, humus and some chopped tomatos and cucumber. I think they are delicious.