The Last Post

My three months in Israel are up. I fly out of Tel Aviv this evening.

I think it's been a pretty good trip, by both the Graham Metric ("Will this make a good story?") and the Jealously Index. I've had some adventures, I've lost some weight, and I've got a sweet farmer's tan.

Obviously, my lady troubles are over.


Best parts:

Herding goats
Petra
Picking up garbage in Gehenna
Hiking in Galilee


Worst parts:

Trying to get around on the Sabbath
Trying to get around in Jordan
Bum leg


And since this turned out to be a photoblog, here are a few amusing things I saw in Israel:

They also have a great deal on indulgences.

I hear the Care Bears are big in Paris this season.

Yes, that's a South Park kippa.

Location, location, location.

I think that's a hippo in a onsie next to her machine gun.

So that's it. I'll be home in 30 hours. I'm not sure what I'm doing in the new year (any thoughts?) but I intend to be out of town again for January through April. So be sure that you seek me while I may be found.

Peace.

Galilee

Hey guys, long time no post. Ready to scroll? Ok!

I spent a couple nights at the lovely Fauzi Azar Inn in the old city of Nazareth - the largest Arab town in Israel.


Nazareth is the home of the largest church in the Middle East: the Basilica of the Annunciation. It was built in the 60s in a striking modern (or something) style and is adorned by mosaics of the Virgin Mary from around the world.


I visited Nazareth Village, a sort of Fort Edmonton for first century Israel.


And I experienced a Turkish Bath, which was relaxing and exhausting in equal measures. I spent most of the time thinking about that scene from Eastern Promises.



So. The Jesus Trail: Nazareth to Capernaum, four and a half days, 65 km through the Galilee. At some point I recalled the words of the doctor I saw - "you should be fine, unless you're doing heavy hiking" - and wondered if this hike might qualify, in his mind, as "heavy".


But the leg held up alright. It wasn't 100%, but adequate. More annoying than painful or debilitating.


I decided to go for the full follower-of-Jesus experience: “no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt." Ha, no. I'm kidding. Can you imagine? I mean obviously hospitality is not what it once was, and I'm sure that healing the sick, raising the dead, etc., would tend to endear you to the local townsfolk, but that's a pretty gutsy move. And you better be able to deliver on the healing thing. I'm not quite there.


Foxes have dens, the birds have nests, and I've got youth hostels.


Some highlights of the trail:


Zippori, which Josephus called "the ornament of all Galilee". The wealthy Romans inhabitants left behind some beautiful mosaic floors. You know what's awesome? Mosaic floors. How did they ever go out of style?


Cana, the town where Jesus performed his first miracle, which I did my best to commemorate.


The Horns of Hattin, which Age of Empires fans will recognize as the scene of a key battle between Saladin and the Crusaders. It also boasts one of the best views in Israel.


The Cliffs of Arbel, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The cliffs contain many natural caves, in which Jewish rebels hid from the Romans. They were eventually discovered and hurled down the cliffs to their death.


Capernaum - the base of Jesus' ministry. They have a fancy synagogue, an old church, and the best statue of Peter ever.



After the trail I bummed around Tiberius a bit.


Visited the Jordan river.


And took a day trip to Safed, the centre of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and home of some sweet new-school ruins.


Side note: any town of a certain age in Israel has at least two names, and there are no standardized English spellings. Which can make finding information difficult. Safed takes the prize in this category; it's official website lists eight English spellings, not counting "etc.".


I fly home in two days. Dang.

Four Nights In Dahab

I took a little trip down to Dahab, a kind of divers' resort on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Spent three days snorkeling and chilling out with a new friend from Bethlehem. I stayed in a $10 hotel room and ate $20 meals at swanky sea-side restaurants. It was quite delightful, right up until our four-hour search and interrogation at the Israeli border. Here's a tip: if you ever have to deal with Israeli Immigration officials, make sure you get your story straight.


I've got two weeks left in Israel. I'm heading up to Nazareth tomorrow, and on Thursday I'll begin hiking the Jesus Trail. Is my leg up to it? I think so.

Hell Yes

One of the highlights of my Jerusalem trip has been walking in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, aka Gehenna. The idolatrous kings of Judah sacrificed their children in this valley, and in Jesus' day it was a place where garbage and the corpses of criminals were burned. When you read in your English Bible about bodies being thrown into "hell", where "the fire never goes out", the Greek word it's translating is Gehenna.


I'm not sure what this says about me, but it gave me a thrill to see Gehenna now looking quite beautiful, and largely corpse-free. (Edenic may be an overstatement, but that's the word that first sprung to mind.) And having walked the full length of the valley, I can confirm that the fire has, in fact, gone out. Put that in your literalist pipe and smoke it.*


Curiously, I found several fire-damaged trees in Gehenna, with charred, hollowed-out trunks. Even more curiously, these trees are very much alive, lush, and bearing fruit. The allegoric significance is dizzying.


Further down, the valley becomes less picturesque. In fact, the east end really is strewn with trash (as vacant lots in Arab districts often are). This was at first deflating, then exciting. The redemption of Gehenna is a work in progress. The garbage is plentiful, but the workers are few.


So yesterday I spent the afternoon picking up trash on a little patch of ground at the bottom of the valley. I only got about half of it cleared, and more trash seemed to be arriving even as I worked, so you can chalk this one up in the "give a man a fish" column. But that's fine with me; I'm just here for the symbolism.


Redemption, I say, is a work in progress. Happy are those who pitch in.


*I'm not saying that the current state of the valley has any great theological significance. I'm just saying I love the symbolism. And yes, literalists, I'm aware that you don't smoke.

Some Things I've Done Recently

Stood in line at the Bethlehem checkpoint at 6 AM, to see what it's like for the Palestinian workers who commute to Jerusalem every day.


Saw the Mar Saba monastery, which is built on the cliffs of the Kidron Valley near Bethlehem. It was founded in the fifth century, making it one of the oldest monasteries in the world. It has survived several assaults, and in it's heyday housed four thousand Greek Orthodox monks. It is danged impressive.


Hung around the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock.


Visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum.


Saw the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the traditional site of Jesus' death and burial.


Walked through Hezekiah's Tunnel - the 500 meter, eighth century BC aquaduct that King Hezekiah dug in preparation for the Assyrian siege. Also saw some of the ruins of the City of David - the original city of Jerusalem on the hill next to the (ahem) modern old city.


Crawled around in ancient tombs under the Saint Onuphrius monastery. I've seen plenty of caves in Israel, but this was the first one that had actual bones in it. Creepy awesome.


I also took a walk around here:


Any guesses?

My leg is slowly improving. Emphasis on slowly. I've decided that farm work would probably be a bad idea at this point. I'm feeling alright about it though. I'm chilling out in Jerusalem, seeing the sights at a leisurely pace, and next week I'm going down to the Sinai to snorkel and sit on the beach. I call that "making lemonade".

The Situation

If you're going to talk about Israel, sooner or later you have to talk about politics. I've been avoiding this, mainly because the issues are impossibly complex, and bumming around Israel for two months does not make me an expert. I am certainly under-informed about the Israeli/Palestinian situation, both historically and in its current state, but I think I've seen and heard enough to form some preliminary opinions:

1. I believe that Christians bear a special responsibility toward Jews, both as our religious antecedents and kin, and as a group of people that we have historically treated horribly.

2. I also believe that Christians bear a special responsibility toward the marginalized and oppressed. In some contexts this includes the Jews and the state of Israel, but within Israel this primarily means the Palestinians, who are discriminated against, and in many cases driven from their homes, impoverished, restricted in their movement, and harassed by soldiers in the name is Israeli security.

3. It must be said, however, that the threat to Israeli security is very real. This is why I think it's misleading to condemn Israel by simply listing off the injustices suffered by Palestinians, or by analogy to other regimes such as apartheid South Africa. Israel is in a unique situation - surrounded by nations that would happily wipe it from the earth, and threatened by terrorism and rebellion from within its borders. The pressures of this situation (building on the long history of anti-Semitism) are not easy for white Canadian Christians to comprehend, but we need to try. We can argue (and I do) that Israel goes too far in its pursuit of security. We can seek (and we should) to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians through various means. We can even make high-minded observations about true freedom requiring the freedom of others, but we can't judge the actions of the state of Israel as if they exist in a vacuum.

4. I don't think that points 1 and 2 are necessarily in conflict, although in practice, they often are. Policy issues here often boil down to Israeli security versus Palestinian rights. They must be weighed against each other, and compromises must be found between them. (Of course, it's somewhat problematic that those empowered to adjudicate between the two are all Jewish Israelis.) But I think we should all be able to agree that both are important, and we must seek solutions that respect and enhance both. We cannot fully support any act or policy that benefits one at the expense of the other - one could argue, for example, that the wall is a necessary thing, but it cannot be a good thing.

5. Israel does do some things which seem to me unambiguously wrong - harmful to Jews and Arabs alike. The big one is the continuing expansion of Jewish settlements in the Arab territories. I may be missing something (remember: not an expert) but this seems like a simple land-grab. I don't see how it accomplishes anything except to increase Palestinian hardship (see e.g. Hebron), inflame hatred, endanger Israelis and hinder the peace process. And it's not a matter of a few extremists - over 500,000 Jewish Israelis live in settlements (about 10% of the population) and half of Israelis support continuing settlement, even if it means conflict with America. I'm still trying to understand this.


In non-political news, I'm now hanging out in the old city of Jerusalem. More on that soon.

Bethlehem

I've now spent a little over a week in the West Bank, in spite of an OFFICIAL WARNING from Canadian Foreign Affairs that violence has broken out here in the past, and might do so again. The danger is grave enough that the Blue Cross refuses to cover me while I'm in the Palestinian Territories.

It would be nice, in cases like this, to have a few statistics to put things in perspective. How many tourists have actually died in the West Bank? How many of those deaths were a result of Israeli/Palestinian violence, as opposed to, say, car accidents? Or weird diseases? Or any of the other stuff the Blue Cross routinely covers? Am I really in more danger in Palestine than I was in South Africa? Because I suspect they're being ridiculous.

Palestinians are lovely, by the way. Very friendly, courteous and hospitable. A bit of a shock after Israel. And Bethlehem is beautiful.

I'm not sure what to say about the children's home. The kids are adorable, and annoying. Their disabilities make me sad, but they are generally quite happy. It's an interesting experience. I feel like rubbing shoulders with mentally disabled kids is teaching me something - perhaps about faith or attitude or intelligence or humanity - but I don't know exactly what. I'm sure I'll have it figured out by the end of the week.

I've been doing a fair bit of sightseeing, including:

The eight-meter concrete wall, which Banksy called "the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers", and which the Israeli government calls a "separation fence". (Eight meters, incidentally, is twice the height of the infamous Berlin Fence.)

The Church of the Nativity, built over the traditional site of Jesus' birth. I couldn't help feeling, as I waited in line to see a stone feeding-trough swathed in gold, that all of this completely misses the point. It is pretty though.

The Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, built over the purported tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their wives. Very fancy.

And the Old City of Jerusalem, which is just a few kilometers from Bethlehem. I'll do a more thorough tour of Jerusalem after I'm done here, but I've seen some of the major sites, including the Wailing Wall. Out of all the holy places I've visited, I think this is the one I found most affecting. It was a bit of a shock, though, to see a bunch of uniformed soldiers just hanging out by the wall. But that's Israel.

I think my leg is slowly improving. I can actually walk around pretty well - it's just the hills that give me trouble. I've been using a cane, and that seems to help. I'm cautiously optimistic about hiking in Galilee. I'd still like to work on another farm too, but that may be pushing it.