O Jerusalem, Jerusalem

When I made it back to Jerusalem I immediately set to work trying to either a. locate my phone or b. cancel my service if I couldn't get it back.  I first tried calling it from Skype and someone who didn't speak English actually picked up.  Since I was calling from Skype, though, I don't actually know if I had to right country code so I may have very well been calling a foreign number.  After that whenever I tried to call my phone it went right to voicemail.  I also tried to send a text message to the phone, but never got a response.  I finally accepted the inevitable and suspended my account.  Since I was close to the end of my contract I was fortunately eligible for an upgrade so my dad helped me out by agreeing to go to the store to get a new phone and send it to me in Israel.  There was nothing else I could do after that point, but wait.

On Sunday morning I made a last minute decision to join the group tour of the Old City that was leaving from my hostel.  We met up with a larger group at the Jaffa Gate where I started talking with another American guy, Dan, who had overheard me telling someone else that I was from Connecticut (he grew up in Guilford.)  Shortly after we got there, it started to rain, but we decided to forge on.  The tour started at the Tower of David then went past the Armenian Quarter into the Jewish Quarter then the Muslim Quarter and finally the Christian Quarter.  The guide kept trying to find covered walkways and overhangs for us to stand under as he explained the history of the city.  He showed us a replica of the Jerusalem map mosaic that is located in the Byzantine Church in Madaba, Jordan, and then brought us down one of the oldest commercial streets in the city, which is lined with the remains of a row of columns.

From there we walked to the Western Wall where Dan's friend, Justin, decided to bugger off because he could no longer stand the cold and rain.  It was too wet for us to actually go and walk up close to the wall so, after a bathroom break, we walked to the Muslim Quarter where we bought these yummy pizza pastries and sahlab, which is a hot pudding drink topped with cinnamon, coconut and chopped pistachios.  It was a nice way to warm up since we were all soaking wet and freezing.  After making our way to the Christian Quarter, we stopped at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where the guide brought us inside to explain the history.  He even took us into a chapel where they had uncovered some biblical-era tombs that proved the area had once been used as a graveyard.  The guide told us he normally didn't bring people inside the church on this tour, but he decided to make an exception because of the inclement weather.  By the time we made it back to Jaffa Gate at the end of the tour, only 12 of the original 24 of us who started out were still remaining.  I think the guide appreciated that we had seen it through, especially since he makes his living off of customer tips.

Once the tour ended Dan and I discussed heading to a museum after I stopped to get some more money.  We started walking up Jaffa Street and after getting some cash decided to go get a bagel before deciding where to go next.  While we were in the bagel shop it started to pour down rain again.  We didn't want to go back outside in a downpour so we continued to wait inside until it became too late to actually make it to a museum that day.  We decided to part ways and meet back up at my hostel later that night to grab a drink and some dinner.  When I got back it felt so nice to get into a hot shower and warm, dry clothes.  Justin ended up coming with Dan to meet up with me so we hung out at the hostel bar for a while and then ventured out to find a place to eat.  It had started to rain again by the time we had finished so I was glad once more to get back to the hostel.

On Tuesday morning, Dan met me at my hostel and we took tram out to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.  It was a very foggy day, but fortunately not rainy so we started out by walking around the grounds where there are very monuments and memorials, including the hauntingly beautiful Children's Memorial dedicated to all the young victims.  We then went into the art museum where we saw works of art created before, during and after the Holocaust by Jews of all ages, many of whom didn't survive.  One of the saddest cases was of a precocious, young 14-year-old boy who painted, wrote poems and worked on a literary magazine, but was eventually killed in one of the concentration camps.  It's hard to think of the amazing things this talented kid could have done if only he had survived to adulthood.

When we went back to the main building to stop for lunch, we ran into Justin who had spent the morning trying to sort out his visa for India.  We walked together to the actual Holocaust History Museum, which tells the comprehensive history of the various ghettos, camps and rebellions that cropped up over the course of the war.  The actual artifacts and written material were supplemented with archival newsreels and other films that gave firsthand accounts of the genocide.  I thought the museum did a good job of outlining the history of antisemitism that started growing in the 19th century and built up to the point where an event this abhorrent could actually have been allowed to happen.  The museum ends with the circular Hall of Names where thousands of books are stored containing two million "Pages" with a short biography of each Holocaust victim.  I thought the whole complex was very well done, but there was such an overwhelming amount of information that it was hard to take it all in.  Even though we had spent the whole day there, I felt like it hadn't been enough and there was still more to see.

The following morning, I met Dan outside the Zion Gate because he wanted to go around to see more of the Old City that he had missed because of the rain.  I brought him first to the Church of the Dormition where I pointed out the old cranky German man (who was still there) and demonstrated how I had been right.  From there we walked to David's Tomb to try to find the Room of the Last Supper, which Dan's guidebook said was up a flight of stairs from the courtyard (the reason I hadn't found it before.  We saw a set of stairs with an arrow that pointed upwards next to an eye.  We thought we'd try that spot, but by the time we walked all the way to the top it appeared to just be a lookout point from the roof.  On the way back down the first set of stairs, a couple pointed to a door and told us that was the right place.  We walked in, but it didn't seem to match the description in Dan's book.  We continued to wander around until someone from David's Tomb told us to go around to a staircase right outside the entrance. We walked up the stairs, through a room with a guard and then realized we'd been in the right place all along.  There was absolutely no sign anywhere so unless you had asked you would have no idea where it was.  As we looked around Dan joked that it would be a really nice place for a banquet, though clearly even if it was the actual site of the Last Supper, that original building would be long gone by now.

After coming back down the stairway, we walked over to the Dung Gate and went into the Western Wall again.  Dan hadn't had a chance to put a prayer in the wall so he went over to his spacious men's side and I went over to my cramped women's side to put add another prayer request.  In the afternoon we wanted to go into the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock is located, but non-Muslims are only allowed in between 12:30pm and 1:00pm and it was only 11:50am at that point.  We checked to see if there was already a line to get in, but since there wasn't we decided to go over to the other side o the Western Wall to get some tea and coffee.

Unfortunately, once we did get back over to the entrance right before 12:30pm, there was a line so we had to wait 15 minutes to pass through the metal detectors and finally get inside.  Non-muslims aren't allowed inside either of the two mosques in the complex: Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.  That''s a bit unfortunate since not only is the "rock" inside the Dome of the Rock the supposed location of the Prophet Muhammed's ascension into heaven in Islam, but is also considered the Foundation Stone in Judaism where God created Adam and Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac.  However, non-Muslims at one point weren't allowed into the Temple Mount area at all so I guess I couldn't really complain.  Since we didn't get inside until nearly 12:45pm we weren't sure if we would be kicked out right at 1:30pm, but unfortunately we were sort of walking near the exit at that point and a guard who saw us called to us and told us we had to leave.  Oh well.  At least we made inside at all.

Once we went out through the gate into the Muslim Quarter, Dan went off to catch a bus to Bethlehem and since I had already been I decided to spend the rest of the day at the Israeli Museum.  It took me about 25 minutes to walk there and once I arrived, I discovered it didn't open until 4:00pm that day.  I had about an hour to kill so I went over to the Parliament Building across the street and wandered around the rose garden next door where (shockingly!) there were very few roses blooming in the middle of January.  When 4:00pm finally rolled around, I went back over to the museum and spent a few hours going through the Archaeology Wing, which started with the dawn of man and all the way through to the Ottoman Empire.  I saw the world's oldest known piece of artwork--a stone figurine--and learned a lot about the settlement history of the region over time.

I spent so long in that one wing that I didn't have any time to check out any of the other galleries before it was time to leave to meet up with Dan and Justin.  I did decide, however, that I couldn't miss the Shrine of the Book, where a number of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts that were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in the 1940s and 50s are housed.  By this point, I was really late, but on my way out I stopped by the model of the Second Temple and the Old City of Jerusalem from the era of King Herod.  The Second Temple was located in what is now the Temple Mount and was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.  The only piece of the Second Temple complex that remains standing is the Western Wall, which is why that site is so sacred in Judaism.

When I got back to my hostel where Dan and Justin had already been hanging out for quite a while, they tried to convince me to go with them to the Dead Sea the following day.  Although it was a nice offer, since I had already spent nearly two weeks down there I decided to stay in Jerusalem since there was still so much for me to see.  In the end, I got kind of a late start on Wednesday so I didn't have time to do much sightseeing.  Instead I spent the day going around to a few real estate agencies to talk to them about casting opportunities for my old show.  On the way back to my hostel I did a little bit of shopping on Jaffa Street to replace some items of clothing that had been either lost or ruined somewhere along the way.  I also stopped at the Mahane Yuhuda Market, which is a popular outdoor food market.  I picked up some fruit and a glass of one of the fresh-squeezed juices that are popular in Israel.

Shortly after I got back to my hostel, Dan and Justin arrived and somehow convinced me to go on a pub crawl that the hostel was sponsoring.  Dan and Justin weren't even staying at my place, but I feel like they spent almost as much time there as I did since they didn't really have anywhere to hang out in their hotel in the Muslim Quarter.  The first two stops on the pub crawl where at bars located in the Mahane Yuhuda Market where I had just been.  At the second place, Dan and I shared a glass of what can only be described as warm sangria (though it wasn't called that), which sounds pretty disgusting, but was actually really good.  The last place we went was basically a dance club located right off of Jaffa Street.  Some of the people we were there with started to get pretty drunk and thus rather annoying, but we still had a good time.  By the time, I left to go home I was really tired.

The next morning I was scheduled to go on a tour of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which I thought was located in the City of David archaeological park.  I had planned to walk there, but since I had to finish packing and check out, I ended up running late and had to grab a cab.  The driver didn't speak any English and didn't seem to understand where I wanted to go.  I couldn't tell he didn't want to drive me, but by that point I was in such a rush I didn't have time to get out and find another cab.  It was partly my confusion because I thought the site was located in the City of David, but also remembered a reference to Hebrew University, which was apparently nowhere nearby.  The driver called someone to ask and then tried to drop me off at the Tower of David, but I since I knew vaguely were I was going I told him to keep going.  At one point he veered off the to right and I knew he was going in the wrong direction so I told him to leave me right there.  He was trying to charge me what I thought was an outrageous price and when I asked for more change we got into an argument and he threw my money back at me.  I should have just left at that point, but I felt guilty and ended up giving him back the money, though I did stoop to calling him a "f***king a**hole" as I slammed the car door shut and stomped away.

I knew the direction I had to walk, but since the main road was up a big hill, I tried to take a short cut down a dirt road that led I had no idea where.  When I got to the end of the road I realized I was not at all in the right place.  I knew that I was in the Palestinian East Jerusalem, but I had essentially ended up in the outskirts of a neighborhood.  There was a group of people working to build a staircase and luckily one of the guys spoke English.  He looked at me as if to say, "you are clearly not in the right place."  I knew he wanted to help me out so when I explained where I was trying to go, he pointed out the direction of the City of David, but then told me that the Temple Mount Sifting Project was in a completely different location.  He showed me on my map and then let me go up the stairway to get to the main road since the road I had come down was a long way around.  When I got to the street I found a cab driver who spoke English and he knew exactly where I was trying to go.  He even pointed out different sights along the way up to the Tzurim Valley National Park on the bottom of Mount Scopus.

When I finally got to the site, I was nearly 40 minutes late for my appointment.  Luckily they were still able to accommodate me and I got an explanation about the project from one of the archaeologists.  Basically what had happened was that in 1999 the Islamic Waqf who manage the Temple Mount conducted a construction project in the southwest corner of the complex that uprooted thousands of years of archaeological evidence.  Some archaeologists found out where the dirt from the construction work had been dumped and eventually got permission to sift through it in search of artifacts.  Volunteers can now come and help sift through the soil.  After learning a bit more about the history, I was put to work sifting through buckets.  In the first two buckets I found mainly pottery, pieces of glass and metal, bone and a few mosaic stones. I actually missed a piece of what was likely a ceramic weight that the archaeologist had to point out to me.  I swear it looked just like a rock.  Then in the third and final bucket I found a few larger pieces of metal and when the archaeologist came over to check on my work, he said that one of those pieces of metal was actually a Crusader arrowhead.  The Crusaders had occupied the temple area when they invaded Jerusalem in the 1100s.  Apparently it was a pretty important find so I had to fill out a piece of paper with my name and e-mail address to indicate that I was the volunteer found it.  It may not have been the Holy Grail, but I have to admit that I did feel just a little bit like Indiana Jones at that moment.
 
Even though I had arrived late, the archaeologists still allowed me to stay for the whole allotted two hours, which was nice.  When it was time to leave I decided to walk back to my hostel and along the way I made a stop at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum.  I'm not sure if it was free to go in, but no one asked me to pay so I got in for no fee.  The museum was smaller and less well-curated than the Archaeological Wing of the Israeli Museum, but it covered the same basic time periods.  I was able to get through it in a couple of hours just before they were starting to close.  It was then time for me to head to the station to catch my bus to Tel Aviv so I went back to my hostel and grabbed my bag.  I didn't remember my bags feeling so heavy when I had walked to the station last time, but this time I nearly died and should have taken the tram.  Once I got to Tel Aviv I caught another bus to Herzliya where I am now staying with family friends for a bit before making my next move, which I'll tell you about soon. 

Here is a link for more information about the Temple Mount Sifting Project.

Note: I'm really tired so I'm going to proofread this in the morning so I apologize in advance if there are any blatant errors before I get a chance to fix them. 
 

“Remember only that I was innocent
and, just like you, mortal on that day,
I, too, had had a face marked by rage, by pity and joy,
quite simply, a human face!”

Benjamin Fondane, Exodus
Murdered at Auschwitz, 1944

City of David

I arrived in Jerusalem on the bus from Ein Gedi just over a week and a half ago. When I got off the bus it was sprinkling a bit, but I decided to walk from the station to the hostel. In retrospect I probably could have taken the tram, but the directions I had received made it seem like it was walkable. It ended up taking me about 15 minutes because I was shlepping all my bags, but luckily the rain didn't get too heavy.

The following day was a Friday so I signed up for the hostel's Shabbat dinner and then set off toward the Old City. I walked from my hostel down the commercialized Jaffa Street, stopping on the way for a snack and to buy a book at a used bookstore. I entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate and walked past the Tower of David (it has nothing really to do with him) through the Armenian Quarter along the fortress wall and back out through the Zion Gate.

I had a taken free map provided by the hostel so I used that to get to the Church of the Dormition where the Virgin Mary supposedly lived and died after the resurrection. There is a tomb in the crypt with a carved statue of Mary. When I went down the spiral staircase to check it out, a tiny old German man who is apparently the "keeper of the crypt" followed after me to make sure that I behaved myself. I apparently didn't do a very good job of it because after walking up one side of an altar with a low rope across the center and out the other (unblocked) side, he came running straight over to curse me out. He pointed wildly at the rope and seemed to be asking (in some other language) why I would possibly want to violate that sacred space (I was up there for all of 10 seconds and didn't touch anything, mind you.) I tried to explain that since neither side was blocked by the rope, it wasn't at all clear that entrance was prohibited and I hadn't even seen the rope until it was too late. However, my explanations didn't seem to appease as he continued to yell at me while I protested back that it had been a mistake. I don't even know if he could understand what I was saying, but I finally exasperatedly told him to "CALM DOWN" and he eventually walked away. I have included a picture of the altar in question to prove that I was not in the wrong.

On the way out of the church, I stopped in the gift shop where I purchased a map of the Via Dolorosa from an exceedingly more friendly man. The Via Dolorosa is allegedly the path that Jesus took through Jerusalem on the way to be crucified after his arrest. I noticed on the map that every Friday at 3:00pm the Franciscan monks do a pilgrimage walk along the path so I decided I would join them. It was only about 1:00pm at that point so I still had about two hours to kill.

After leaving the church I walked to David's Tomb (where King David is almost certainly NOT buried) and looked around for the Room of the Last Supper, which my map indicated was nearby. The tomb itself was closed so I only saw the front door and had no luck located the Last Supper Room. I wandered around for at least half an hour trying to find the spot on the map, but finally had to give up and claim defeat. I decided I should probably head to the first place on my Via Dolorosa map since I had no idea how long it would take.

I thought the Franciscan pilgrimage started at the Church of All Nations since that was the landmark listed as number 1 on my map. The Church of All Nations is the spot in the Mount of Olives where Jesus allegedly prayed amongst the olive trees on the night before his arrest and was then apprehended by the Roman soldiers on the following day. On my way to the church I was walking along the outside of the Old City walls and decided to stop at the Western Wall since I had a bit of time. I put my prayer in the wall crowded amongst all the other women (the women's visiting side is about a quarter the size of the men's side even though no fewer women come) and then continued on my way. I arrived at the Church of All Nations a few minutes ahead of time and started looking for some monks to follow. There was one inside the church, but he didn't seem to be going anywhere so I decided I would just have to go it alone. On my way out of the churchyard some local guys saw my map and said I was in the wrong place. I actually needed to start at the first station, which was inside the Lion Gate. Since I was already late, I stopped along the way at Maria's Tomb where May is said to be buried.

Once I got to what I thought was the First Station of the Cross based on my map, there didn't seem to be any one still around. I hurried on the Second Station, which is in two chapels where Jesus was supposedly tried, convicted and given his crucifix to carry. From the churches, the "Way of Suffering" wides through the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of what is now the Muslim Quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Along the way, I passed the other stations where Jesus dropped his cross three times and Simon of Cyrene came to help him. At other stations, Jesus met the Virgin Mary and comforted the crying women of Jerusalem. I was doing good until I got to the Eighth Station and then I totally lost my way. I kept walking up and down this same street as people tried to give me directions. I finally gave up and decided just to try to make it to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Sadly, I couldn't even seem to find that! I couldn't find the most holy Christian site in all of Jerusalem! I ended up coming out of the maze of streets back by the Tower of David and after receiving more directions finally found my way. It was literally the most failed pilgrimage ever. But I guess, as they say, "Our lessons come from the journey, not the destination."

Once I made it into the church the monks seemed to still be going through the stations (the final four are in the church) as I could seem them moving from place to place and chanting. I first did a complete circle of the church and then walked up a set of stairs to the spots where Jesus was nailed to the cross and then crucified. I listened to the monks finish their prayers and then joined the line of people who were waiting to kiss the crucifixion rock, which I touched, but declined to touch my lips to. I then went back down the stairs to the rock where Jesus's body was anointed and then finally to the "tomb" where Jesus was resurrected. This line was even longer, but I decided I probably should check it out while I was there so I joined the rest of the masses. From time to time, they would close the tomb as monks came to pray outside, which was nice to witness, but slowed everything down. After about an hour, I finally made it inside and got about 10 seconds to look at the marble tomb that was most certainly built centuries after Jesus was ever possibly buried there before the guard started yelling at us to move it along. I'm not entirely sure it was worth it, but at least I can say I did it.

Once I got out of the tomb, I had to rush back up Jaffa Street to get back to the hostel for the Sabbat dinner. All of the guests who sign up have to help with the meal preparation so I was in charge of chopping carrots and doing dishes. Once the meal was ready, one of the hostel employees explained the Sabbat dinner traditions and led us in some Hebrew prayers. During dinner I met a German college student and a middle-aged German woman who were both volunteering at a school in an Arabic city up north. We had a really nice dinner and had a great time chatting in the common room until it was time to head to bed.

The following morning, I had planned to join the two German women on a free tour of the Old City, but I got locked out of my room while I was showering and ended up missing the group before they left. I decided instead to head to Bethlehem for the day since most shops, restaurants and museums in Jerusalem were closed on Saturday for the Sabbath. I walked toward the spot where the bus stop was marked on my map, popping in the Ethiopian Church along the way. When I got to the right area outside of the Damascus Gate, I had a hard time figuring out where I needed to be. I wandered around for a bit and finally saw a sign with a bus on it that I decided must be the right place. I started to wait there, but only saw buses with the same three or four numbers coming by. I thought that maybe buses to Bethlehem were less frequent so I decided to still wait instead of asking someone if I was in the right place.

After about half an hour, I was getting frustrated so I walked around the block and saw a bus depot around the back. I asked about the bus to Bethlehem and was directed vaguely back to the spot where I had already been. I went back to the same corner until some Arabic guys called to me from across the street and asked where I was going. When I answered them, one of the guys told me I needed to go two streets down on the right. Then he told me I should zip the small shoulder pouch that was holding my camera and cell phone. I thanked him and started to walk away until I suddenly realized that my phone actually wasn't in the bag or either one of my pockets. In a slight panic I walked back over to the guys asking if they had seen my phone and then circled around the block again several times in case it had fallen out. I asked everyone I had spoken to, including the young boy I had bought bread from, but there was absolutely no sign of it. I realized it was gone. I have no idea if I dropped it or if was stolen, but it was clearly in someone else's hands by now.

I was actually very proud of myself that I didn't panic and cause a scene. Of course I was upset, but I realized that there was nothing that could be done and I now needed to take steps to deal with the situation . I had walked past a local police precinct so I went back there to file a report in case I would be able to claim the phone on my insurance. I had to wait nearly an hour while every officer in the place apparently ate lunch or something, but finally an officer arrived and took about two minutes to fill out a piece of paper, stamp it and hand it to me. Once I had the report, I decided I could either let the theft/loss ruin my day and go directly back to the hostel to suspend my phone account or head out to Bethlehem as originally planned. I decided a few hours wouldn't make much difference so I made the decision to take the bus to Bethlehem. It turned out the bus left from a big depot I had passed on my way over earlier that I hadn't bothered to check was the right place. This of course led to a series of "should have, would have, could haves." It was a stream of "if I had made it to the group tour," "if I had checked this bus station first," "if I had asked for directions sooner," "if I had zipped my bag," "if I hadn't been so absentminded..." I would still have my phone. However, what was done was done and all I could do was learn a lesson from it for the future.

I just could a bus as it was pulling out of the station and 20 minutes later I was in the city of Jesus's birth. From all the Arabic signs and Palestinian flags flying, it was clear that we were in the West Bank, but I hadn't even noticed that we went through a checkpoint since we hadn't stopped. When I got off the bus, I had no real idea where I was going so I followed a couple wearing backpacks up a street to the left.  It turns out "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" isn't oh so little any more.  There were no signs indicating the direction of the Church of the Nativity so I just guessed that I was going the right way as I made my through the throngs of pedestrians milling around and shopping in the busy streets.  At one point the streets started to get a bit narrower so I started to be concerned I was actually going in the wrong direction. I realized I needed a map so I backtracked until I reached a hotel where I asked for directions. The receptionist let me know that I HAD been going the right way and even gave me a map in case I got lost.

About ten minutes later I was entering Manger Square (complete with ginormous Christmas Tree) and approaching the Church of the Nativity. To enter into the church you have to crawl through a tiny doorway, which apparently originally prevented the Crusaders and such from entering with their horses. I joined several busloads of African to wait on a line to get into the Grotto of the Nativity where Jesus was supposedly born. There was quite a bit of jockeying for position, especially when we finally made it into the grotto. There were about four or five Italian tourists who apparently felt that they didn't have to wait in the same line as everyone else so they found a way to push themselves ahead. I finally got my own chance to touch the star where Jesus apparently popped out, but I have no idea how anyone can prove that this was the actual spot where it happened (even though the church has been around since 327.) After emerging from the grotto I walked over to The Church of Saint Catherine and down into a larger grotto with various altars and chapels, including the chapel where Saint Jerome supposedly translated the bible into Latin. In one of the chapels, a priest was giving a sermon in English so I stood outside the door and listened for a little while. It was uplifting to hear his message in that holy place so soon after Christmas. On my way out of the church I passed a nice, but crowded nativity scene in the courtyard, still standing from the recent Christmas celebrations.

After leaving the church, I stopped for a cup of tea at a shop right in Manger Square and then walked into the lobby of the Bethlehem Peace Center were there was a large model replica of the city. On my way back through the city streets I grabbed a falafel sandwich and then veered off the main street to go down a side street back. I later learned that I was walking on Star Street along with priests from Bethlehem process on Christmas Eve. However, since I went a different way back, I got a bit lost and had to ask for directions when I stopped for a bowl of ice cream. I found the spot without any difficulties and was able to catch a bus back to Jerusalem just as the sun was starting to set. On the return trip to the city, the bus did stop at a checkpoint and everyone had to get off. I realized that was I had assumed was a toll both was actually the border crossing. The guard didn't even look at inside my passport before waving me back on the bus. I guess that's one benefit of being American!

Historical Hikes in Israel

After wrapping up my last day on the dig last week, I decided to stay in Ein Gedi for a few more days to finally go hiking in Masada and Nahal David, which is in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve not too far from the dig site.  My plan was to take the bus 17 kilometers down the main highway from Ein Gedi to Masada.  One of the park rangers gave me the bus times, but even though I get there a few minutes early I somehow had just missed the first one on her list.  A minibus taxi driver tried to convince me to get a ride with him, but he was asking way too much (though in retrospect, he might have been saying "15" as opposed to "50" shekels.)  I was resigned to waiting nearly an hour for another bus while the cab driver hung around hoping I would eventually give up and accept his offer.  Luckily I didn't even have to wait quite an hour until the next bus arrived.


It was only a 20 ride down to Masada, which is the site of an ancient fortification on top of a rock plateau in the Judean Desert.  It's possible to take a cable car up to the top of the cliffs, but I figured it was cheaper and more of an experience to hike up the aptly named "Snake Trail."  This trail winds its way back and forth along the cliff face imitating the path of a snake.  After 40 solid minutes of hiking I entered the ancient site through one of the four main gates in the casement wall.  I had been advised to purchase the audio tour so I picked up my guide at the entrance.  I then did a big circle around the whole fortress.

Masada is best known as being the site of a siege by Roman soldiers in 72 AD that led to the alleged mass suicide of the Jewish rebels holed up on top of the mountainside.  The rebels had fled Jerusalem and settled on the plateau after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple two years earlier.  According to the legend, the rebels decided to kill themselves rather than be conquered by the invaders.  However, of the 960 inhabitants said to have lived in the settlement, archaeologists have only uncovered the remains of 30 people.  The site was originally fortified between 37 and 31 BC by Herod the Great who built it in the event of a revolt.

The audio tour led me first past a large cistern that had been used for storing water and then into the commandant's house and headquarters.  The next stop was Herod's original palace that was built on three different levels sloping down the side of the cliff.  Next to the palace were the storehouses and the remains of an impressive multi-room bathhouse with beautiful wall frescoes and tiled mosaic floors.  After working on the dig in Ein Gedi where the most exciting finds were regular stone walls and coins it was funny to imagine how I would feel if I had uncovered something this note-worthy and historical.  As the tour continued, it led me past more public buildings, including a synagogue and watchtowers to the spot on the casement wall that the Romans were able to breach.  I then walked through a Byzantine Church that was obviously built hundreds of years after the siege and another large palace complex with well-preserved mosaic floors.  The final thing I saw before starting to head back down to the bottom of the Snake Trail was the barracks where people lived before the attack.  The ruins were pretty remarkable, but they had a hard time competing with the amazing views of the Dead Sea and surrounding desert far below.


After jogging down the trail and grabbing a snack at the bottom, I headed back to the bus stop to get a ride back to Ein Gedi.  As I was waiting for the bus to arrive, the same minibus cab driver showed up offering a lift to me and some other passengers for 15 shekels.  Since that was actually one shekel cheaper than the cost of the bus, I joined three other people in the back of the minivan.  I don't know whether the ride was cheaper because there were more of us or if I just misunderstood the driver's rate quote in the morning.  Either way, it was nice not to have to wait an extra 20 minutes for the bus.

When I got back to Ein Gedi, I walked up to the kibbutz to meet Nate at the bar since I needed to use the internet.  Just before 6:00pm, we headed to the room of one of the other dig participants to check out his wife's small art exhibit before going to the mini-market to pick up a few groceries.  One of the kibbutz members, Yuda, who does a lot to help with the excavation offered to drive us back down to the camp site where we cooked a pasta dinner with a portable gas burner in the small outdoor kitchen.  Nate had hurt his shoulder while doing heavy lifting on the dig site that day so he had decided to take the following day off.  That left him free to go hiking with me in Nahal David before I left in the afternoon for Jerusalem.

We got up early so we could beat the crowds only to discover that since it had rained the night before and the skies still looked ominous, the upper trails were likely to be closed due to the risk of possible flooding.  When we got to the entrance, Nate asked one of the rangers about the status and he confirmed that the dry canyon trail where Nate wanted to take me wasn't open.  We were able to go on some of the lower trails so we rushed to get ahead the large groups of school kids and Birthright tourists that were also just entering the park.  The spring-fed mountain stream we walked beside to get  to the David Waterfalls was clearly where this oasis got its name.  The lush greenery and small natural tunnels formed by overhead trees reminded me of something right out of Middle Earth.

After stopping at the waterfall, we climbed a bit higher until we arrived at the remains of a Chalcolithic Temple from the 1st century AD.  We weren't really supposed to go any farther than that, but we continued to climb up the path in search of a ranger who could confirm whether or not the dry canyon was still closed to hikers.  There was no one in sight so after stopping to rest we climbed down to the Ein Gedi Springs where a large school group was gathered to see if they had brought along a guide.  They didn't have a ranger with them, but their tour leader said he had been told that the only thing that was closed was one of the caves.  We took that as a green light to head into the dry canyon so we turned around and hiked back up the trail.

The way down into the canyon turned out to be quite steep and hairy.  Once we got into the canyon it wasn't actually so dry thanks to all the recent rain in the area.  At one point we couldn't go any farther without taking off our shoes and walking through thigh-deep freezing cold water.  Luckily I was wearing zip-off hiking pants so I was able to turn them into shorts and thus avoid a complete soaking.  Ultimately we had to leave all of our things behind in order to get to the final pool right at the end of the canyon.  By the "end of the canyon" I mean the opening that plunges straight down to the stream bed far below.  When we got there, the pool was quite full and deep, which didn't stop Nate from splashing water on the natural rock slide that led into the water and then slipping right down.  He confirmed that the water was absolutely freezing, which didn't really compel me to want to go in.  Finally I decided I would regret if I didn't do it so after much stalling I managed to make the big plunge.  Since our shoes were back up the trail and we still had to walk through some water, my feet were freezing until I was finally able to put my shoes back on.

As we were hiking back, Nate started to be concerned about the dark storm clouds overhead and was urging me to hustle since if a flash flood came through the canyon we would basically be washed off the side of a cliff.  It was hard to hurry without fear of making a misstep and falling, but we luckily made it out back out and around the other side of the canyon without a getting a single drop of rain.  When we got to the bottom of the trail we found that the gate leading in and out of the field school was locked, meaning the trail actually was most likely closed. Fortunately, we found a gap in the bottom of the chain link fence and were able to squeeze through and hike back down to the dig site.

In the afternoon, Yuda had arranged for Nate to get a reduced entry into the Ein Gedi Spa so he could get a massage to help with his shoulder pain.  Since I was standing right next to Nate when Yuda called, he got me the same deal and I decided to go over for a few hours before catching my bus to Jerusalem.  I ate lunch, packed my bags and then said goodbye to everyone who was still out working on the dig site.  As I was leaving, Esther passed along something some words of wisdom her brother had said to her before she left to travel in Romania: "Wherever you go next, that is your home."  She then said that wherever I ended up in Jerusalem, that would be my home while I was there.  I almost started to tear up since I knew she understood just what I had been going through over the holidays and wanted to help me get through the hard times with a greater sense of peace and acceptance.

Since Nate and I really had no way of getting to the spa and weren't able to walk all the way there while lugging my heavy bags, we went down to the main road and stuck out our thumbs.  Hitchhiking is pretty common in Israel and since I was with Nate, I had no real concerns about my safety.  The third or fourth car that came by actually stopped and the Israeli driver and his European girlfriend agreed to drive us the short distance to the spa.  It was my first time ever hitchhiking and it was remarkable how easy it was.  Even Nate said he was amazed how quickly we got picked up.  When we got dropped off, Nate scheduled a massage and I headed into the sulfur baths.  The temperature of the water wasn't as hot as in the natural springs so it didn't sting quite as bad, but I realized that I actually preferred floating outdoors under the sky as opposed to staring up at a white ceiling.  After soaking a while, I head outside to the mud area where I lathered myself up while a cold wind whipped around me.  I could only stand to keep the mud on for a few minutes before I had to get under the outdoor sulfur showers to wash it off and warm up.  Once I got back inside, I took one more quick dip in the baths before showering and meeting Nate following his massage.  He bought me a farewell beer at the restaurant next door and then slipped back over to the baths while I went to go catch my bus to Jerusalem.  An hour and a half later, I was rolling into the holy city to start the next phase of my journey.

Digging Down Deeper

Last Wednesday was my third day on the archaeological dig in Ein Gedi.  It went much the same as the first two days--lots of pottery, bone and some glass.  Esther, who was digging near me, found a really cool piece of a mosaic and some tiles.  It’s not clear yet whether they’re Byzantine or from some other era.  Unfortunately, for much of the day we had to deal with a wind storm that was blowing through the area and getting dust in our eyes. ears, noses and mouths (basically every exposed crevice on our bodies.)  It had been windy on Monday as well, but this was much, much worse.  The following day, which was supposed to be my last one on the dig, was much more eventful artifact-wise.  I found two bronze coins, some pottery handles and a bit of glass.  It was a good day for the “treasury” because Michelle, who was herself digging for the last day, found three coins!  By midday, I had decided that I wasn’t ready to leave yet and so I made arrangements with Gideon to stay on for an extra half a week.

That Thursday night after dinner Michelle and I walked about three kilometers down to the hot springs because we wanted to float in the Dead Sea under the stars.  The moon hadn’t come up yet so it was rather dark and hard to see the way.  When we had almost made it to the pools, Michelle accidentally stepped in some water and immediately called out, “Don’t follow me!”  It turns out she had basically walked into a sinkhole and since she was wearing heavy hiking boots she couldn’t get her left foot out.  She handed me her phone and bag and I offered to help pull her up, but we both decided that wasn’t the best idea since she would most likely pull me in instead.  By this point, I was practically hysterically laughing as I watched her struggling to free herself.  Eventually she was able to pull her foot out, but her boot remained buried deep in the mud.  She stuck her arm all the way in and was finally able to free it.  She put the boots back on, but had to squish in her shoes all the way over to the springs.

Once we got there, my hands and arms were so chapped and dry that it was absolutely excruciating to put them under the hot sulphur water.  We made our way down to the sea and I slowly made my way into the much colder water, trying to find the hot spots where the spring water mixed with the sea water.  Michelle got in much quicker than I did and watching her resting on a mud pile, I told her she looked like a mermaid.  This led us to start belting out songs from The Little Mermaid as we floated under the starry sky.  Of course I had forgotten most of the lyrics so at one point I literally sang out, “Up on the sand, they ride their bikes...”  Michelle didn’t let me live that one down because not only were those clearly the wrong words, but as anyone who has ever ridden a bike knows, it’s impossible to ride a bike on sand.  After about 15 minutes it was too cold for me to bear any more so we got out into the chilly air, dowsed ourselves with bottles of water we’d warmed in the spring and quickly put on our clothes.  Fortunately Michelle had brought an extra pair of shoes so she decided to just leave her mud-clogged boots behind.  On the way back we got a bit lost when we took the wrong fork in the road, but we quickly realized our mistake and got back to the hostel without too many more problems.

After breakfast on Friday morning, I had to check out of the hostel and bring my stuff to the dig site where I was going to spend the next few nights sleeping in the tent that Michelle was leaving behind.  I had planned to go down to Masada to hike the Snake Trail, but when I got to the site the weather looked rather threatening.  I ended up just hanging out with Nathaniel and Michelle until she left to go diving in Eilat.  Midway through the afternoon, it began to pour down rain so I hid out in the dig container working on the Korean music video until it finally let up.  Then Nathaniel came over and said we were going with the park rangers from the Wadi David field school to some of the areas up north to check out reports of possible flooding. On the way to the field school to pick up more of the rangers, we saw a beautiful rainbow arcing into the sky from the surface of the sea.  We drove about 20 minutes without seeing any problems until we got to a checkpoint that the field school Jeep wasn’t allowed to pass since it was out of its jurisdiction.  Instead of going further, we drove up to a lookout point that is apparently exactly at sea level.  It was still really windy and overcast so we didn’t last long up there before we got back into the cars, but it was definitely a pretty spot to watch the sunset.

That night Gideon had invited Nathaniel and I to join him for Shabbat dinner in the kibbutz dining room.  It was the 56th anniversary of the kibbutz so the dining hall was all decorated and there were a lot more people than usual there for dinner.  There was also a stage set up for some sort of presentation or show, but we didn’t stick around for long enough to see any of the ceremony.  Instead we went over to Gideon’s house with his wife, son and daughter and had coffee, tea, wine and cookies.  One of the other dig volunteers then drove us up the field school where we had arranged to spend the night with one of Nathaniel’s friends since it was too stormy to sleep out in the tents.  On the way up, we saw that one of the passes had flooded and there was water running over the road.  Luckily we were able to drive through it and get up to the friend’s apartment.  Right after we arrived, Nathaniel left to go check out the flooding with some of the rangers, but I was cold, wet and tired so I stayed in the apartment where I read an English translation of The Little Prince until I fell asleep.

The weather still hadn’t really cleared much by Saturday morning so Nathaniel and I spent most of the afternoon and evening up at the kibbutz hotel where I worked on the video and Nathaniel wrote post cards.  We had talked about having a campfire that night with one of his ranger friends, but by the time we got back to the site it was too late to go all the way up the field school to pick him up.  On Sunday, I had fully intended to go to Masada, but I also really had to do a bunch of laundry.  We went up to the kibbutz to get the laundry done and by the time it was finished it was too late to set off on a hike.  It ended up being another quiet day of relaxing and hanging out at the kibbutz.  That night we had the regular Sunday orientation meeting where we met all the newcomers arriving for the week.  Most of the “newcomers” were actually veterans who had been coming to dig for many years.  The average age of these volunteers was about 70 years old with the oldest two clocking in at 82.  It's amazing that veterans are in such great shape that they can still get down and work in the dirt.  After the meeting, Nathaniel and I decided to build a campfire and Suleman joined us at the campsite where he made some delicious Bedouin tea.

On Monday morning, it was back to work at the excavation site.  I had a fruitful two days working in a large room that is most likely a courtyard.  Yesterday, I found a coin that was attached to a piece of bronze, several large pieces of pottery rims and handles, the spout of a ceramic oil lamp and the rim and neck of a glass oil lamp.  In the afternoon, I went with Esther for a final dip in the hot springs and Dead Sea before the sun went down for the day.  I had a bit of a rough night’s sleep because my legs were all cramped up in the tiny tent where I was sleeping and for the third straight night I was convinced that a small animal was trying to break into my tent (it was more likely the wind brushing the rain cover against the side.)  Though I was a bit sluggish as a result today, I still had some pretty good luck digging.  I found another piece of bronze that may be a coin (though it appears to be concave so it could be something else), the top of a ceramic jug and several more large pieces of the glass oil lamp.  Some of the shards were pretty small, but we’re hoping that once all the pieces get put together we’ll have nearly a complete vessel.  By the end of the day, it also looked like we might have hit a wall in the room, which is an important component of figuring out the layout of the whole structure.  During the breakfast break, I officially “graduated” and received my highly-coveted certificate of participation.

All in all, this excavation has been a great experience.  I met some really cool people, was able to work seven hours a day next to an ancient synagogue with amazing views of the sea on one side and the mountains on the other and got up close and personal with the local desert wildlife.  At times it was hard work, but it was all worth it for the sense of accomplishment we all felt at the end of each day.  Tomorrow I hope to finally make it to Masada.

Digging in the Desert Near the Dead Sea

For the past week I have been staying in the Ein Gedi Oasis near the Dead Sea in Israel where I have been volunteering been volunteering on an archaeological dig.  This year we are continuing to excavate the patron's house next to an ancient synagogue from the Byzantine era.  They started to dig at this site last year and uncovered many of the original walls, staircases and very large pieces of intact pottery.  This year we are expanding to an area that was partially excavated in the 1970s to determine the original layout of the home.

The site is a 10-minute walk from the hostel so on Monday morning we walked over just before 6:30am to get everything set up and start digging at 7:00am.  I was placed next to Esther, my roommate from Switzerland, where we started uncovering a layer of dirt next to one of the stone structural walls.  I was definitely slower than everyone else because before I dumped the dirt into the refuse bucket I would go through everything to make sure there wasn't anything that I had missed.  At first I had a very difficult time telling the difference between smooth cut stones and pottery so after a while we started to joke that I was more cut out to be a geologist than an archaeologist.  I guess that makes sense as I was always into rocks as a kid, collecting geodes and polishing them in my rock tumbler.

After a while, I started to get the hang of it and actually be able to distinguish the pottery from the rocks based on their color and texture.  At 9:00am we broke for a delicious Mediterrean-style breakfast of toast, veggies, cheese, olives and fruit.  After breakfast it was back to work until the "orange break" (where everyone stops to eat oranges and smoke if you do that sort of thing) at noon.  We then worked until 2:30pm when we cleaned everything up and went to go eat lunch at the kibbutz cafeteria up the hill.  The first day, I mainly found pottery shards, small pieces of glass, a few animal bones and some shells that were probably just going to be thrown out.  The most exciting find of the day was dug up by an American girl named Michelle who just graduated from college with an anthropology degree.  She found a piece of plaster with a very interesting design carved into it, which was actually most likely Hellenistic or Roman rather than Byzantine.

We don't work in the afternoon so I walked down to the shore right across from the hostel with Esther to check out the water.  It was really cool to see all of the salt covering the rocks along the beach with a thin coating that looked more like frosting or a layer of ice than dried salt.  I had made the mistake of wearing flip flops for the walk so I had a bit of trouble navigating the rocks on the way down and back, but it was worth the effort.  The sun was just starting to set as we made it back to the road so it was perfect timing.  In the evening, we had dinner at the hostel dining hall and then went to bed early since we had to get up so early the next morning.

On the second day, I was digging with Esther, Michelle and some Israeli volunteers from the nearby field school in the room next to one we had been in the day before.  Once again, we found a lot of pottery shards, glass and bones.  A few people found Byzantine coins that are mainly distinguished by the coat of green corrosion that covers the metallic part.  At one point, I thought I had found a coin, but when I showed it to the dig director, Gideon, and he brushed away the corrosion it turned out it was just a piece of wire that completely dissolved in his hands.  Then in the afternoon, I was talking to Gideon with a shovel full of dirt and one of the other volunteers, Debbie, pointed to a spot and said what is that.  It turns out it actually was a green coin (which I would have found on my own when I went through the dirt before dumping it) but it did kind of steal my thunder away from the discovery of my first coin.

That afternoon after we had finished up, one of the other American volunteers, Nathaniel, brought Michelle, Esther, another Swiss Esther and I down to some nearby sulfur hot springs.  It was a bit of a hike to get down there and once we arrived the water was so hot that it burned to get in.  I could even keep my arms all the way under water because they were so chapped and chafed from digging that it hurt really badly.  After heating up in the springs, we walked down to the spot where the spring let out in the Dead Sea.  It was really nice to walk out into the water and float there where some spots were warm and other were much colder from the sea water.  I was also able to cross another item off my "List of 25 Things To Do Before I Die": Float in the Dead Sea.  We relaxed and covered ourselves in mud from the bottom until it was time to head back to the hostel once the sun got lower in the sky.  By the time we started walking it was getting quite dark so it was a bit hard to find the way, but we eventually made it back safely.

Unfortunately, I've got to log out for now so I will post about the second half of the dig a bit later.