Byzantine Tour 2011 Day Ten: Masada & The Dead Sea

Today is our second day waking up on the Mediterranean coast of Israel.  And our last day here.  We spent Day One walking the Old City of Jerusalem, and in the interest of variety Day Two will be spent on an excursion to Masada and the Dead Sea.  Nice balance, no?  One day in the city, another day in the country.

I thought it was about time that I showed you the delights of the buffet itself, and not just the results once they are on the table.

Like so.  See that big plate of fruit?  I was thinking that starting every day with a ton of fruit would make my entire body feel better.  You know what?  Not really.

We loaded onto a bus and headed straight to Masada.

That would be the view we saw from our bus for the first part of our ride.  Now the bad news.  Barbie feels truly sick.  And it smells like someone on this bus, perhaps the cruise ship employee sitting in front of me, has on that perfume which makes Barbie sicker.

Around halfway to Masada we stopped at a gas station cafe for restrooms and beverages.  I ordered a mint tea.

This is an Israeli mint tea.  Hot water thick with mint leaves.  It was actually quite good, and made me feel better because I too am feeling sick from all the perfume floating up from the ships carpets and now filling the bus air.

See those trees?  Those really are the actual trees in Israel that were bought by parents in the USA for their kids, as a sort of gift to the kid that he would never see and not really appreciate.  But the hope was, of course, to instill a feeling of connection to the newly re-established Jewish homeland.

It took me many tries, but I got a sign that indicates where we are headed.

The drive through the mountains toward the Dead Sea and Masada looks not unlike the drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Does this not look like the desert mountains on the way to Vegas?

Wait... you do not see signs like that on the way to Vegas.  Are you like me and wondering what the odds are of seeing a camel?

Camels!  Apparently wild camels cruising along the mountain ridges is common.

Cropped.  Can you believe that the above picture was taking with an iPhone from a great distance on a moving bus through that bus's window?  I cropped this while sitting on the bus and I honestly cannot believe it.

There it is, the Dead Sea.  In Israel they call it the Salt Sea, but everywhere it is spelled in English they call it Dead.  I am sure that everyone knows this is Earth's lowest point of elevation on land at 1,338 feet below sea level.  At over 1,200 feet deep it is also the deepest hypersaline lake in the world, and has a salinity of 33.7%.  (There are other lakes with a higher concentration of salt, but most are in Antarctica where you are not likely to visit.)  The math says that the bottom of the Dead Sea is 2,500 feet below sea level, almost a half-mile.  Madness.

Cruising along the banks of the Dead Sea.

I did my best to get you a Masada sign, but it did not work out as well as I would have hoped.  And check out the bus stop.  Can you imagine sitting there?  This is one hot desert to sit at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere.

Looking at Masada, which means fortress, you can see why King Herod chose this place to turn into his fortified refuge.  King Herod was born in 74 BC in Jericho and he was well-connected and savvy enough to manipulate his way into a throne as the client king for Rome.  In other words, this thing the West has done where we invade a country and install a puppet dictator is nothing new.

Herod was brutal and cruel and corrupt, and he knew a fortified refuge outside Jerusalem would be a good idea for a guy like him.  A fortress with royal palace was built atop this mountain between 37 and 31 BC, and sure enough the war that Herod predicted came to be 70 years after he passed away.  At the opening of the First Jewish-Roman War in 66 AD, sometimes called The Great Revolt, the Jewish rebels overran the Roman garrison of Judea and the Romans had to retreat and regroup, bringing in troops from surrounding areas.

During this early period of Jewish success, a group of extremist Jews from Jerusalem known as the Sicarii took Masada in 66, overcoming the Roman garrison stationed there.  Unfortunately, when you win a battle against Rome, you are very likely to lose that war.  More on the Sciarri next.

A look at Masada taking the cable car up.

The Sicarii were Jewish zealots named after the Latin word for dagger-men, because they were known to hide small daggers (or sicae) under their clothes.  The Sicarii would go to large public gatherings and sneak up behind Roman soldiers and wealthy Jews and stab them, and then blend back into the crowd.  The Sicarii are reported by the historian Josephus to have staged destructive acts to force the Jewish people toward war, including destroying food supplies so that the Judeans would be attack in reprisals.  They were true zealots.  And, yes, I find it chilling to think how easily a small minority can bring about full-scale war with these tactics.  It happens today and it happened two thousand years ago.  More to come.

I was not the only one taking pictures on the ride up.  In fact, the earlier picture was taken with me holding my arms at full-length above my head for a clear shot above all the outstretched cameras.

Back to the story.  The Sicarii took Masada early in the conflict.  The Romans gathered troops from surrounding territories and re-invaded Judea in the year 70 AD.  Negotiations occurred, with the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus mediating, but peace could not be negotiated.  Shockingly there are differing accounts of who sabotaged the peace process.

The Roman army destroyed the Second Temple and this defeat sent the remaining Sicarii to Masada to join their compatriots.  At this point the Jewish people were essentially massacred and banished from Jerusalem, only allowed to enter the city once per year on Tisha B'Av to commemorate the destruction of the two Temples.  The Jewish people at this point became stateless and scattered throughout the Roman empire, mainly as slaves.  From the first century AD on, more Jews have lived outside Judea than inside, even today.  This is what people mean when they refer to the diaspora.  It means exile.

Now comes the part of the Masada story I am sure most of us know.

The walking path up Masada is not what you would call an  easy stroll.

Jordan is THERE.

Jordan the country, not a guy I met on the bus.  As someone who lives in the USA, I always find it novel to look across a body of water and see another nation.

This is the view of the top of Masada.  You would have to imagine it quite differently when people lived here, with wooden structures and even gardens.  Back to the history.

By the year 72 the Romans had taken back control of all Judea except Masada.  When it came to taking Masada, they were not exactly in a hurry.  They knew how well fortified Masada was, and they wanted to do it right.  And it is not like the Sicarii could run raids from Masada or have any influence on the area, since the remaining Jewish people were all enslaved or fled into hiding.

The Romans set up camps, took their time, and built a ramp up to the top.  It made the most sense to do this, so that they would have a true advantage when battle began.

Members of our group looking down at the ramp that the romans built, stone by stone, to reach the top of Masada.

A panorama that shows the Roman ramp to the left and our group to the right.

See it?  This 1,939 year old earthen ramp is still recognizable today.  This is what the Romans built to capture the last of the Jewish rebels.  If you look in the upper right hand corner, you can even see the remains of the Roman camp.

See the square?  That is what remains of the camp of Roman soldiers who came here to finish off the Jewish rebellion.

This model recreates what Masada looked like at the time it was built, with Herod's palace running down the hill.  It was as luxurious as any Roman palace, with hot and cold baths, servants quarters and anything else a king would need.

The man near the doorway was our guide for the day.  As he told the story, he said that when the ramp was completed and the Jews of Masada knew that they were finished, they had a, "genius idea."  That idea was choosing suicide over slavery and rape.

I have a problem with this.  I understand this desire to have this heroic imagery that their suicide represented the ultimate rebellion against Rome.  But I have to think about it this way.  Had every Jew in Roman occupied Judea chosen suicide over imprisonment, slavery, rape, and banishment, would there even be 15 million Jews today?  No.  The only reason the Jewish people are not forgotten to all but historians, the reason that they exist, is because people chose to survive no matter how difficult or degrading their life was going to be.  The only reason this mass suicide can be romanticized is because the contemporaries of the Jews of Masada chose a more difficult path.

And my criticism of the Sicarii goes further.  The people of Judea who chose the arduous route of survival endured centuries of diaspora, forced migrations, inquisitions and a Holocaust, but somehow manage to claim back this land over which they fought three rebellions against the Roman Empire at the Roman Empire's peak of power.  From the year 63 AD until 1948 AD, this land was controlled by others and through a series of both awful and amazing events, the Jewish people claimed back this land.

So... screw this guide calling their mass suicide genius.  He should call it what it was, cowardice.

One more opinion to make some people angry.  The Jewish zealots who fought against Roman occupation?  Had they accepted Roman occupation and simply waited for Rome to weaken and fall from the inside, what would have happened?  They would have lived under the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and a British Mandate... until they ended up with their own nation again.  In this alternate history there is also quite likely no Christianity with its followers pointing the finger at the Jews for killing their savior.  In this alternate universe there are also no Arab Israeli wars, because the Jewish people would have never left Judea would have been the majority there for the last two thousand years.  The Jewish/Palestinian problem that makes Jerusalem a nasty little piece of humanity would not exist.

Look at the history of people who lived under Rome and ask yourself what would have been better for Judea and its people?  Fighting Rome or waiting it out?

Okay.  Time to leave Masada and head to the Dead Sea.

That sea is dead, my friends.

Another Leonardo Hotel lunch buffet in Israel that is edible.  Actually, the best dish was the spaghetti and meat sauce.

We did not come to a hotel on the shore of the Dead Sea to eat.  I am proud to say that out of a hundred people or so, several busloads in fact, Barbie and I were the first to head to the locker rooms.  The locker rooms felt dirty like a junior high school, but I suppose you do not put much into locker rooms when their sole purpose is to get people near massive amount of salty water.

There it is, the Dead Sea up close.

There I am, floating.  It was pretty cool.  Based on pictures I saw as a kid, I expected to be higher above the surface level.  Ah, expectations.  It was still pretty cool.  The niftiest effect was to jump up and then feel myself get pushed back up much higher and faster than normal, but there is no way to share that in a picture.

Barbie and one of the ship's crew enjoying the buoyancy.

A close-up!  The good news is that this very nice woman from the ship identified for us today that the Israeli tour buses have air fresheners that blow a horrible perfume into the air.  Other passengers were covering their noses with their shirts.  We asked to have it turned off and the driver complied.  Barbie still feels very sick and I am taking massive amounts of Dayquil to appear close to healthy, but at least we are no longer being assaulted by perfumed air on the bus like we are on the cruise ship.

On the shore you see salt crystals everywhere.

Hopefully this picture demonstrates buoyancy.  Hands and feet in the air, but head still above water.  Try that at home.

Soon enough we were back on the bus and headed to the port of Ashdod.

Not a bad sunset.

The bus ride home was very long, and Barbie and I both sat and listened to music.  And then the following song came up in my iPhone's shuffle.

Yes!  The song Israel was played for me, and I got to look over the Israeli countryside while listening to Ween repeat, "Israel, Isreal, is real."

Then it got interesting.

The bus took us by large walls with barbed wire and security towers.  It was very dark outside, but I tried to get you a picture of it.  After all, not many people see this side of Israel.  I had hoped to see the wall that Israel has put up between their territory and the West Bank, and I used to iPhone's GPS to learn more.

According to Google maps I was adjacent to the Shuafat refugee camp.  I now regret not being smart enough to make the iPhone snap a picture of the map screen.  Boy, a Palestinian refugee camp.  That introduces a whole new topic that requires an even more focused two thousand year history lesson to clear up the last century of confusion and bias.  I did get pretty involved earlier in the whole the Jewish people got this land back deal.  Perhaps I should anger all my Jewish friends by discussing the people who watched an unprecedented influx of immigration into their land and the soon lost their home deal.  Nah.  I think that one statement was enough for me to kick up the blood pressure of some friends.

We returned home to our floating hotel, parked at Ashdod.  Guess what?  The map of Israel that they gave us on the bus shows me that Ashdod is just 8 miles from the Gaza Strip border.  Another ugly topic to avoid!

Barbie feels very sick but joins me atop the ship to dine by the pool.

Barbie got the escargot starter.

I started with a soup of some sort.

Barbie got the lamb chops.

I got a salmon of some sort.

See.  Food descriptions are much better when I take a picture of the menu.

Barbie is sick.  I am sick, but at least we are finished with Israel before we get even sicker.

Until tomorrow.

Byzantine Tour 2011 Day Nine: Jerusalem

Today is very big day.  Today marks my first ever vist to Israel.  And our second visit this year to Asia. Yes, you read that correctly.  Israel is in Asia.  You can look it up if you like.  Then again, the concept that Europe and Asia are different continents is antiquated in its own right.  Look it up.  They are really areas of the same land mass.  But I am clearly starting too slowly.  This morning I woke up off the coast of Israel, a land considered Holy with a capital-H by more than half of the people on this planet.

After waking up, it is time to look at Israel with my own eyes.

Hello Israel.  As you can see, the port of Ashdod is a commercial port.  We are an hour West of Jerusalem, where goods from Europe and even Africa come in container ships to be loaded onto trucks and taken South to Eliat where they can be loaded onto container ships again and taken to East Asia.  It amazes me that this saves money, but apparently the fees that they charge container ships to go through the Suez Canal is just high enough to encourage many companies to ship their goods across Israel.

Breaking the fast.  Eggs and fresh fruit.  Greatest way in the world to start the day.

As you can see, there are many busses awaiting the guests of the Crystal Serenity.  Actually, on a normal Ashdod visit there would be twice as many.  Not sure if I have mentioned it yet but the ship is at half capacity.  It often feels like a ghost town, which is good.  Anyway... as you can see, when a cruise ship pulls into a container port, every single person has to hop on a bus or into a car.  The stroll around the port and into town options are nil.

We presented our passports and faces to the Israeli border agents who set up shop on the stage where the faux-Vegas shows take place,

We climbed into our bus for our Jerusalem By Foot excursion.  Our first stop was a halfway point between Ashdod port and Jerusalem, where there sits a military museum where they park decommissioned tanks.  As you likely know, Israel has been at war for the majority of its existence, and until more recent times it was an actual war of state against state with tanks.  Tanks are as important to Israel as horses were to USA's old west.

This stop is technically a bathroom break.  Our young Israeli guide is semi-obsessed with bathroom visits.  He announces them as if they are more important than history or sights.  I suspect he has had a few elderly tourists literally freak out on him with bathroom desperation.

There was a long line for the bathroom and I opted to wait.  On my way back to the bus, I took pictures of my surroundings.

My surroundings included this religious Jewish man pissing on a wall.  I am truly in the Holy Land.  The men in the USA who wear Yarmulkes do not piss in public, because they want to represent a higher standard.  In Israel, the religious feel normal and act accordingly.

Do not worry.  I also took pictures of tanks!

Barbie demonstrates the features on this more recent model tank.

While yours truly poses with a vintage model tank.   (Guest photographer Barbara E. Howard.)

I know I have some friends who want to see every tank, but you get just two.  Back on the bus!

It took many tries, but I got me a shot that says we are headed to Jerusalem.

This picture was taken just for my brother.  An Israeli Mustang.  Enjoy.

It did not take long to get to the old city of Jerusalem.  Soon enough we were winding through the dry, ugly suburbs and then we hit the old city.

Herod's Gate to the Old City which leads directly into the Muslim Quarter.  Now, some of you might be used to my discussing history on the Waste. Fair enough.  But Jerusalem... well, its history is ancient, modern, and mythical.  And the ancient, modern and mythical all effect each other in every way, on every aspect of Jerusalem's history.

Allegedly Jerusalem was home to the Jebusite people before 1100 BCE, or 3,100 years ago.  According to the Old Testament it was the city of Jebus for a few centuries before the Jews conquered it under King David's leadership.  Today I think that we all know that Jerusalem is the most contested city on Earth, with people of varied religions and ethnicities staking a claim to Jerusalem and specifically the Old City.

Do you want a quick glimpse into why this city is the most contested spot on Earth?  Here is the quickest version of the history of who controlled Jerusalem that I can manage.  I added some tid-bits now and then if Jerusalem's rulers did anything particularly nasty.

Pre 1100 BC - Jebusites
1100 BC (approx.) - 600 BC (approx.) - Kingdom of Judea (Jewish)
600 BC (approx.) - 538 BC - Babylonians ("Pagan")
538 BC - 325 BC (approx.) - Persia ("Pagan")
325 BC - 152 BC - Macedonia (Greeks)
152 BC - 63 BC - Hasmonean Kingdom (Jewish) (after the Maccabean victory)
63 BC - 614 AD - Roman & Byzantine Empires (not Christian, then Christian) (Judaism often illegal)
614 AD - 629 AD - Persian Sassanid Empire (Muslim)
629 AD - 638 AD - Byzantine Empire (Christian)
638 AD - 1099 AD - Series of Caliphates (Muslim)
1099 AD - 1187 AD - Crusaders (Christian) (murdered Jews & Muslims)
1187 AD - 1244 AD - Caliphates (Muslim) (allowed Muslims & Jews to return)
1244 AD - 1247 AD - Persian Tartars (Muslim) (murdered Christians & expelled Jews)
1247 AD - 1517 AD - Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt (Muslim)
1517 AD - 1920 AD - Ottoman Empire (Muslim) (much of the Old City was rebuilt)
1920 AD - 1948 AD - United Kingdom (the British, after the Ottoman defeat in WW I)
1948 AD - 1967 AD - international / joint custody between Israel (Jewish) and Jordan (Muslim)
1967 AD to today - Israel (Jewish) (after Israel's big win in the Six-Day War)

This is not a history paper, and most of the dates can be debated, but that is a basic list of who has controlled the city of Jerusalem.  Please join me in assuming that Jerusalem has been under the control of more powers than any other city in history.  That list would be longer if I broke up empires and dynasties of similar origins.  Sheesh!  Is it even a surprise that Jerusalem's Old City is home to four quarters divided among different ethnicities and religions?

Jerusalem's BYU campus is right THERE.  I toss this in for my in-laws.

The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, East of the Old City.

The building with arches to the left is the Basilica of the Agony, or the Church of All Nations.  Built on the remains of a Crusades era chapel, it is called the Church of All Nations because any Christian denomination can use the altar in its garden.  Yes, All Nations means All Christians.  Here.  In Jerusalem.

The gold domed spire you see just above the center of this picture is the Russian Orthodox Church of Maria Magdalene.

Mary's Tomb is hidden in the trees.

Turning back to the old city, there sits the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.  To be clear about the politics here, Temple Mount refers to where the Jewish temples of the Kingdom of Judea once sat.  You know, were Jesus got mad about the money changers and such.  The Muslim claim to this spot is that they believe Muhammad was transported from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to Al-Aqsa while on his deathbed.  Before dying, he was transported during the Night Journey and then he ascended to heaven.

I have interpretations of all of this, but I am staying pretty quiet here and trying to be factual.  This is what people believe.

The City of David, just South of the Temple Mount, which archeologists have agreed is likely to be where King David established his capital and palace.  The Old City of Jerusalem was the area West of the Temple Mount which sat unwalled until Hezekiah, the 14th King of Judah, extended walls around the Old City (again, then it was not the Old City, it was just a suburb) around 700 BC.  

In other words, if you want to imagine what Jerusalem looked like during King David's reign, imagine a temple on the Temple Mount with no permanent structures around it until you came to the walled city a short distance South.

Accidental self-portrait along the walls of the Old City.

The Zion Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem.  We are going to go South first, to visit some other sites.  Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent built this gate in 1540.  I know that I am being redundant, but I have been around too many people who believed that they were gazing upon ancient Jewish Jerusalem.  What you see today is most accurately called a walled Ottoman city.

Just South of the Zion Gate on Mount Zion you find the Hagia Maria Sion Abbey, formerly called the Abbey of the Dormition.  This Protestant Church was built on land that tradition says is the site where the the Virgin Mary died.  This land was purchased by German Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898 so that a Protestant church could be built.  In 1899, when the architects were surveying the site and preparing for construction, they discovered the remains of the Byzantine church Hagia Sion.

In other words, when they were preparing to build this 110 year old church they discovered a 1500 to 1800 year old church beneath the dirt and connected the two.

The main chapel of the Protestant church.

The Zodiac signs were on the floor, even though I think we all know that these signs are pre-Christian. That is, of course, my sign.

You then get to walk down a narrow circular stair to the underground portion of the church.

In this Byzantine chapel they have erected an altar of sorts for the Virgin Mary.

A belfry of the Hagia Maria Sion Abbey, shot just the way that I like it.

We then headed over to the Cenacle, but first...

A stature of King David.  Look closely and you will see his nose has been broken off.  This act of vandalism was actually performed by Orthodox Jews who believe that a representation of King David is a graven image and people could be tempted to worship at it.  If you break off his nose then apparently nobody would every be tempted to pray to it.  But this is the kind of thinking you get around here.

This room is the Cenacle, the "upper room" where Christian tradition dictates the Last Supper took place.  It is built upon the site that 12th century Crusaders identified as the Tomb of King David.  Two things.  One, it is wisely understood that King David was buried in the City of David we saw earlier, not here.  Two, this building was torn down and rebuilt several times, and even if the Last Supper did occur here or near here, this actual building dates from after 1000 AD.

There is also a Muslim tradition to this site which I do not remember.

You can be sure of one thing; when a sentence begins with, "tradition dictates," you know that what you are about to hear is false.  If it were a true statement, you would not have to begin with, "tradition dictates."

For example...

Tradition dictates that both King David of Judea and Jesus of Nazareth played the electric guitar right THERE.

Time to stroll into the Old City.

In front of the Zion Gate is a Bar Mitzvah.  In Israel Thursday is Bar Mitzvah day, a fact which might have blown some American Jewish minds.

A bullet hole in the Cold City wall, next to the Zion Gate.

Dig below street level in the Old City and you find Roman ruins.

We were strolling through the Jewish Quarter when I saw this woman pulling an olive from this tree.  After taking a picture of this stranger, I walked around her to catch up with the group.  And it was Didi.  I KNEW HER!  Barbie and I traveled in a group with Didi through South Africa in 2006.  Do you get that?  We spent two weeks with nine other people in South Africa five years ago, and today in Jerusalem I take a picture of a random woman reaching up into a tree and it is one of those people!  Amazing!  What did I do?  I shouted, "Barbie!  Barbie!"  She turned as if something was very wrong, but as soon as she saw Didi she smiled.

Barbie and Didi reunited.

I snapped this picture as we walked out of the Jewish Quarter and into the Armenian Quarter.  I thought that Guns & Moses was clever enough to include here.

We exited through the Jaffa Gate on the West side of the Old City, and headed to the bus for lunch.  I also took an opportunity to snap a candid of a pretty local.

Lunch was a buffet at a local Leonardo Hotel.  It was not great, but what can you do?  One does not hit Jerusalem for the hotel lunch buffets.

So... you do see a lot of unmitigated hate in Jerusalem.  Signs, graffiti and such.  The sign above to the left struck me as particularly funny, as it expresses both unmitigated hate and a complete misunderstanding of US history.  It features what we might refer to as an insultingly drawn cartoon Native American with the slogan, "Ask ME about land for peace."  Ah, Jerusalem.  There is no pretending here.

After lunch we are first headed to the Mount of Olives for a look at the Temple Mount from above.

Barbie and Herod's Gate, which opens into the Muslim Quarter.  .

Muslim girls on their way home after school.

There it is.  The Temple Mount.  One great shot, no?  (This was shot with HDR.)  In the foreground are Jewish cemeteries.  The Jews like to be buried here and pay dearly for it because they believe that the Messiah will come from the Mount of Olives from the East toward the Temple Mount to the West, and that by being buried here they will be among the first to be resurrected.

The Messiah is also expected to enter the Old City through the Golden Gate, which is the city gate that you cannot see in the center of this picture because the Muslim Ottomans chose to seal it shut early in their 400 year reign here, in 1541.  They then placed a Muslim cemetery directly in front of the gate, on that narrow patch you see between those two walls, under the believe that Elijah, who comes before the Messiah, would not be able to pass over the Muslim cemetery and through the Golden Gate.  This happens to not follow Jewish law, as they misunderstood that, yes, a Jewish priest such as Elijah is not permitted in a Jewish cemetery, but he would be able to enter a non-Jewish cemetery.

We live in a world where a great world power has sealed up gates that did not exist when the Old Testament was written and planted a cemetery solely in an effort to prevent another faith's savior from entering a city which, oddly, laid in ruins until they, the Ottomans, rebuilt it.

I do like the idea that a Messiah, anointed by God, would arrive in Jerusalem and say, "Rats, I cannot go in.  Turns out they closed the gate and I cannot use one of the seven open gates.  Shucks.  It would have been nice to bring about an era of peace, happiness and joy for all humankind, but, hey, the gate is closed."

Sitting upon the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock is probably the most controversial building on the planet.  Why?  Because around 2.1 billion Christians believe that it has to be torn down and a temple built in its place for Jesus to return, while 1.6 billion Muslims believe that it marks the holy spot where Muhammad ascended to heaven.  I do not believe that all 3.6 billion people, more than half the Earth's population, are ready to fight it out over this building or are even that aware of it.  But when you have more than half of the world theoretically at odds over one building, things can get dicey.  

Oh!  I left out the Jews, right?  There are less than 15 million Jews on Earth, but they are pretty unhappy about this building, too.  And they happen to have the Israeli army in the neighborhood, which makes it all the more interesting.

We could literally talk about the Dome of the Rock for hours.  Like many things in Jerusalem, there is a lot of emotion around it and very little historical perspective.  I just deleted three paragraphs about it, because I decided there is just too much to go into for.  Suffice to say that what I was taught growing as a kid ranged from badly biased to patently false, but, hey, in the 1970's the Jews were literally adjusting to the idea of Jewish control of Jerusalem for the first time in nearly 2,000 years.  Which is why the idea of partitioning this city is, shall we say, controversial. 

I suppose I will say a little more about this later.

Atop the Mount of Olives you can pay for a picture atop a camel.  The thing about camels is that they always have a look on their face that says, "Seriously?  You're serious?  You can't be serious?"

There was also a gift shop atop the Mount of Olives.  I kind of wanted to buy the color-shifting clear plastic crucifix.

This is the Southwest corner of the Temple Mount., with the dome of the al-Aqsa Mosque behind it.

This area was the Moroccan Quarter until after the Six Day War in 1967, when the Israeli government gave everyone living there a few hours to leave and then demolished it to allow easier access to the Western Wall.  But that is what happened in 1967.  In 1948, when Jordan took Jerusalem in the Arab Israeli War, they banned Jews from the Western Wall.  The 1967 victory and demolishing of the Moroccan neighborhood was a reaction to being banned from the Western Wall for 19 years.  Like everything in Jerusalem, you can trace every action and reaction back five hundred years or longer.

Something to note about the Temple Mount is that it was originally a small peak near Jerusalem, and over millennia it has been added to and added to, wall placed around wall, manmade structure built upon manmade structure.  All the significant and powerful monarchs from nearly every kingdom and empire added to The Temple Mount's foundation, so that building atop it could be expanded.  These walls represent the foundation on which the Jewish Temples once stood.  The First Temple was built by King Solomon in 957 BC and destroyed by the Babylonians 371 years later in 586 BC.  The Second Temple was actually built by Zerubbabel, governor of the Persian Province of Judah, in 516 BC and destroyed by the Romans in 586 years later in 70 AD.

I have to be honest.  In all my years being force-fed Jewish history not once was I ever taught that the Second Temple was built under the control of and with cooperation from the Persian Empire.  Interesting.

But I want to add this.  Wow.  I never thought about it before, but if the whole Jesus thing had caught on earlier, then the Romans would have never destroyed the Second Temple.  Far from it.  They might have even turned it into a Catholic basilica like they did with the Pantheon of Rome, keeping it in perfect condition to this day.  But no.  The teachings of Jesus did not catch on until he had been dead for around 300 years, and around 40 years after his death the Romans destroyed the Second Temple.  This history stays interesting, because the Romans destroyed the Second Temple to teach a lesson to the Jews like Jesus of Nazareth who wanted to bring an end to the Roman occupation of Judea, and a few hundred years later they were praying to Jesus with great fervor.

Oh.  And in the pic above, way above, you can see the Western and Southern foundation walls of the Temple Mount.  Ring a bell?  The Western Wall.  The Wailing Wall.  But that is not that part used for prayer.

This is the part of the Western Wall used for prayer.  Note that this is not a wall of the First or Second Temple, it is the wall of the foundation of the Temple Mount upon which those two temples were built.

It was very chilly in Jerusalem the moment the sun went down, and Barbie borrowed this teddy bear blanket from our bus driver.

Israeli Defense Forces.  Among the cooler things about the IDF is that, besides being Co-Ed, they have allowed homosexuals to serve openly since 1983.  When your army is really needed, you do not care who fights for you.  In the USA, where our Army is treated like a political pawn, it is not the same.

The Western Wall is the most photographed foundation wall in the world.

Western Wall panorama.

We walked away from the Western Wall and through corridors into the Muslim Quarter.  Why?  Time for Via Dolorossa.  We chose a walking tour of the Old City that would be a mix of different religions ond cultures.  Which means that we now get to walk the path that tradition states was the route taken by Jesus while he carried his cross to his crucifixion.  We did not hit every Station of the Cross.  

This is the Fourth Station of the Cross, where tradition states that Jesus encountered his mother.

Next to station four is a t-shirt vendor who has shirts that promote both peace and hate.  Business requires objectivity.  The most clever hate shirt is the Google one, that shows the word, "Israel," typed into the Google search field with the result, "Did you mean Palestine?"

Here is the Fifth Station of the cross, where tradition states that Simon of Cyrene carried the cross for Jesus.

Tradition states that Jesus rested his hand on that wall and touching it will bring some kind of wonderful, magical outcome.

Time to skip to Station Nine, the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  A sepulchre is a tomb or burial chamber.  This is where my cynicism grows even greater, because this church was not built until three hundred years after Jesus's death.

To give you an idea of how uncomfortable the Old City can be, I was tempted but unwilling to pick up that cross there for a picture.  Even though I am sure that it sits there for just that purpose, I somehow became sensitive to the 2.6 billion Christians on Earth, even if they are all certain that I am condemned to hell.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which tradition states is built upon Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified.  I have been lax on my explanations.  Allow me to explain why Via Dolorossa and this church often get a tradition states before them.  When the Roman Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity, he did so as a political move based on the growing popularity of the religion.  In 326, he gave his mother Helena, later Saint Helen, unlimited access to the imperial treasury to go on an expedition to the Holy Land in search of Christian relics.

In other words, the Emperor's mother came to Roman controlled Judea three hundred years after Jesus had lived to create a bunch of myths.  Yes, myths.  People need myths.  Not only had Jesus died three hundred years earlier, but his followers had fled North to modern-day Turkey and Christianity sprang from there.  Now, after years of Christians being banished and hunted, the Emperor of the most powerful empire on Earth sent a woman of faith in her late 60's to walk around Jerusalem and its outlying areas and decide where all the stories in the New Testament took place.  Because the myths needed a home.

Today archeologists and researchers argue with these traditions, giving their well-studied explanations for where all of these things more likely took place.  But the lost the battle before they even started.  Everything is this city is based on tradition, not fact, and is therefore completely unaffected by the presentation of anything contradictory.

Nun Candid in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Altar of the Crucifixion inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  This might be one of the most meaningful rooms on planet Earth, considering that tradition states that this marks the point where the Son of God died for the sins of mankind.

Tradition states that this is the Stone of Anointing, where Jesus was laid and prepared for burial.  I honestly cannot imagine what the people who come here feel.  Not only am I not Christian, but I am filled with the knowledge that Constantine I's mother came here three hundred years after the time of Jesus and established these traditions without facts or research.  But if I believed that the Son of God, the Messiah, had come to Earth and been murdered by men and then laid on this stone?  My reaction rhymes with Foley Duckling Spit.

A mosaic on the wall behind the Rock of Cavalry, depicting the events.  

This is where I cannot maintain my respect for tradition.  Tradition states that the site where Jesus was crucified was directly above where the Adam's skull was buried.  Adam, from the Old Testament.

Let me be clear.  Yes, it is nonsense.  But it demonstrates how every tradition does its best to identify itself with and merge with previous traditions.  The early Christians wanted to associate Jesus not just with God or King David, but with the man that the Old Testament identified as the first human being ever created by God.  

This is why Jerusalem is what it is today.  The followers of Christ had a natural and logical need to have their tradition be built upon the Jewish traditions that existed before.  And the followers of Muhammad had a similar need to build theirs upon Jewish and Christian traditions, and that is why all three monotheisms kick and scratch at each other today over this city.  

It was very dark in here, but this is the Rotunda, where in the center you see The Edicule which contains the Holy Sepulchre, or tomb of Jesus where his body was placed and then later discovered empty.

Looks like a debate, no?

Exiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre into twilight.

Ah, Jerusalem.  I finally found some scratched graffiti that captures your essence.

Time to head out of the Old City and toward the bus.

Some more t-shirts and posters on our way out.

As always, some funny, some hateful, some both.

We exited the Jaffa Gate and I snapped a shot in twilight of this citadel.

Those Ottomans built walls to last, no?

A shot of Barbie boarding our bus.

So... Jerusalem.  I cannot say that it is a place I enjoyed, but it was an important place to visit.  In fact, Jerusalem might be the most unpleasant place I have ever been.  I do not doubt that seeing with my own eyes the degree of discord, conflict, and fundamentalism that exists there has some value.

And, honestly, you have no idea the self-restraint I imposed upon myself typing up this Waste.  My thoughts about what we did and saw in Jerusalem could fill a book.

After a very long day, we returned home.

And Barbie felt very sick.  From the perfumed carpet cleaner on the ship to the perfume on the bus, she has a headache and sinus trouble and things are not looking good.

She goes to sleep, I go to dinner.  And since I will be dining alone...

I decided to have dinner on the top deck by the Neptune Pool.

Black bean soup.

Fillet mignon with mushroom sauce and a baked potato.

Until tomorrow...