JERUSALEM JOURNAL: DAYS 1 AND 2

JERUSALEM JOURNAL: DAYS 1 AND 2 - DECEMBER 27 AND 28, 2009

INTRODUCTION

This is my first opportunity to use the Internet. I am sitting in the hotel lobby at Eilat. Early in December I hurt my back, and as a result, I have been having some difficulty with respect to my activities on this trip. This morning, forty of the 42 in our group left to climb Mt. Sinai. I decided that it would not be prudent to do so, therefore, two of us have remained back at the hotel to rest up. Sinai would have been nice, but not at the expense of further injury.

Below you will find my site notes for the total time I will be here. I suspect that there are some inaccuracies, and I will correct them after I get back home and plug the pictures in. However, to do all this from a hotel lobby is very difficult. Please read, enjoy, and I will submit an update when I can. And by the way, when I log onto blogger.com from here, everything comes up in Hebrew. And the formatting doesn't seem to work well with cut and paste, either. All that will have to be corrected when I get home.

THE TRIP FROM LOS ANGELES TO JERUSALEM

We are on the first leg of our Israel trip. Professor Rigsby with his wife, Donna, and the assistant instructor Jim Covington met me at Talbot about 7:50 this morning, and we took off for the airport. We had to be there early, because the Rigsbys wanted to make sure that they were there before everybody else. They had prearranged check in with El Al at 9:45 AM, and so, we made a line of people and suitcases at the International Terminal.

Checking in to El Al Airlines was efficient, but tough. They have their own security group, and each of the forty two of us had to line up and a security person asked us a series of questions designed to insure that we did not meet the profile of somebody who might want to wish them harm.

The girl who interviewed me asked me if I knew anybody in Israel, to which I replied that I did. My friend, Dr. Bob Hoffman, a retired ophthalmologist, has a son who lives in Israel whom I have met several times. I mentioned that, and then I mentioned that Dan Hoffman had his own Klezmer band (Klezmer is, I guess for the best description that I can give, a cross between jazz and Yiddish music). Of course, her next question was what instrument that Dan played. I replied that I was not exactly sure, but I thought that it was a violin, to which she exclaimed that would be a logical instrument to find in a Klezmer band and passed me through without any further questions.

To give you an idea as to how strict the security is, several of our group had their hand carry-on luggage confiscated, searched, and then returned to them when they boarded the aircraft. One of our group loudly complained about all of the security precautions that he felt were unnecessary. And, of course, his carry-on luggage was destined for a hand inspection, after he was sternly warned that he should not complain so loudly.

Unfortunately, one of our girls was refused aircraft boarding. She answered her questions honestly. She is one of two people who will be staying in the country when our trip is finished, and she admitted that she had friends in the Palestinian territories, was planning to visit them and was taking gifts to them, as well as to people of Jordan from other people. Apparently El Al has a policy that if you have Arab friends, you are considered an unacceptable risk. The travel agency which arranged our tour was able to book her a flight on Lufthansa. However, I was told by the lady who is sitting next to me, that she should expect to have problems going through Israeli security, when she arrives, about 12 hours after we arrive.

We actually took off an hour late, because they had to go through all of baggage so that one piece could be pulled. The thought is that it was the baggage of either our student or somebody else who did not board the aircraft for one reason or another. Instead of boarding through a standard gateway, we were taken by tram to a remote terminal in the middle of the, airfield. I sat next to an Israeli couple on the airplane. I had the center seat ticket, but they let me have the aisle seat so that they could sit next to each other. They live in the Tel Aviv area and were treated special because they had frequent flier status. They were able to order meals in advance and got everything before anybody else. He seemed to choose all vegetarian dishes. She was a sales executive with a cell phone software company and seemed to travel a lot of the time. He spoke some English, but it was obvious that he was not comfortable, while her English was impeccable. She told me that she was originally born in South Africa.

I didn’t get very much sleep on the airplane, but ended up watching three movies, including Dillinger. We had three meals during the trip, which were not bad as far as airline food is concerned. For dinner, I had a spaghetti dish that was made from curly noodles. The second meal was just sandwiches, and the third meal was breakfast.

We arrived at Tel Aviv about 3PM on the 28th, having crossed, of course, the International Dateline. By the time that we arrived at our hotel, it was completely dark, and so our first view of Jerusalem was the evening. And, the view of the city, as we came up the mountain was spectacular with the lights shining against the walls of the old city, as well as the Citadel of David.

We are staying at the Gloria Hotel, which is inside the Old City, near the Jaffa Gate and across from the Citadel of David. The Citadel of David has nothing to do with King David, other than the fact that it was named after him. Most of it was built by Suleiman the Magnificent, when the Turks occupied Jerusalem during the period of the Ottoman Empire.



The hotel, itself is quite old and quaint. The inside reminds one of a cave. Everything is cobblestones and Cenomanian limestone, which is quite hard and slick. There is no space unused, and when you are traveling down the streets, of the Old City, it is almost like you are in an enclosed mall. My roommate is Jim Covington, who assists the Rigsbys with their program. Besides the Rigsbys, who have their own room and are both older than me, Jim is the oldest single person, and we decided that, because of my age, it might be appropriate to room together.


We are definitely eating differently than we would at home. Our first Dinner consisted of lamb, fish, olives, bread, including pita, with hummus. We had mushroom soup, and for desert there was fresh fruit and some chocolate doughy things which were really good. We had mushroom soup, but that turned out to be quite watery.

After dinner, we walked down to the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) with a gentleman named Gordon Franz, who is a friend of Todd Bolen, who was our IBEX (International Bible Exchange) teacher here. Gordon is an archaeologist and has come down here to look at some of the new digs that have been found. It is interesting that the women and the men who pray at the wall are separated, and I am getting used to idea that there was a great deal of separation that occurred between the sexes during worship here in this country. It is also interesting to note that, in Jewish society, the men have to cover their heads, while the women do not. The Western Wall dates back to the Temple structures that Herod the Great built. However, most of the other walls were built by Suleiman the Magnificent, and so they did not exist when Jesus lived.

Bedtime was about 10:30 PM.

Note: Gordon Franz is a noted archeologist and Bible instructor who was the team leader of a group which made one of the top three 20th Century biblical finds in the Holy Land. His group found two 7th Century BC silver amulets which contained scrolls on which were engraved the Priestly Benediction from Old Testament scripture. Gordon will be leading the Talbot Bible Lands group in a tour of Turkey, Greece, and Rome in December of 2010 through January of 2011.