Shabbat and Sabbath

5/3/22

After one day off, it was back to the culture today! We went to the Israeli Museum (since its one of the only things open on Shabbat), which was filled with many things. Before we started, we grabbed coffee and I got a delicious white choc and raspberry muffin. Then we hit the museum hard – there was an exhibition about Mexico with a skull decorated with gem stones, an exhibition on Jewish life over time and across the world – they’d even recreated a synagogue that was in India, which was very beautiful!

There was also some 20th century art including lots of big names including Picasso, Miro, Bacon, Andy Warhol and many others I’ve already forgotten!

I particularly liked some modern art showing the struggle between Israel and Palestine, which is still a huge issue and is present in daily life here. It showed a lion slowly devouring a gazelle until they became one, which was open to interpretation. There were also the Dead Sea scrolls which are meant to be original script from Jesus’ time, but I was so engrossed in my 20th century art, that I didn’t have time to see them – guess there’s always next time, right?! Joey, my roomie and a history buff said the full original wasn’t displayed anyway, just a page or two!!

Afterwards, we headed back through a beaut park (almost as good as Cannon Hill, lol) and towards the old town in search of food. Since it was Saturday and therefore Shabat, pretty much everything is closed until the stars come out and the Jews start a new day. We were pleased to stumble across a couple of very busy cafe bars along the way, although, they were pretty pricey!! As we hit the old town and dusk was also arriving, the town came alive. We stopped in the Muslim quarter for some great and pretty cheap food. I had chicken shwarmer and then we continued on to try and see a cave under a Armenian Church near the Mount of Olives. When we got the, having walked across the city, there was a cleaner sweeping the floor. There were also three Alsatians patrolling the gardens next to the church. After around 29 minutes of waiting for the cleaner and trying not to attract the attention of the guard dogs, we crept down the stairs into the church yard and snuck into the Cave. Miraculously, three fifths of us had head torches (thanks dad!), so we were well equipped for seeing in the cave! It was narrow and went back 29 metres or so with a large water flow at the end. I didn’t go too close! Afterwards, we walked back through the old town, via a gate which ses to be closed to non Muslims on Fridays because of the rush to lunchtime prayer. We had a sahlab on the way back, which Lena recommended and was a mixture of nuts, coconut, raisins in a sweet rice pudding mixture. We had a few drinks at the hostel since it was Stella’s last night and then went to bed pre midnight!!

6/3/22

Sundays are significantly less sleepy than Saturdays since Christianity is a minority religion here – in fact many towns have their weekends as Friday/Saturday instead of Saturday/Sunday. Agreed with the boys to leave at 9am for Bethlehem and were a tad late due to the excitement of having free breakfast! Ooops! Got the bus for around an hour to a surprisingly big and non-dusty Bethlehem – little town no more!! We walked around and saw all the sites – first we saw the wall dividing Israel and Palestine, which had been built over the line that had been agreed so it already claimed more of Palestine’s land as Israel than was right. The wall was incredibly tall and solid concrete, but had impressive political street art on it. There was a Banksy original on it and opposite was a hotel which was set up by Banksy and a Palestinian friend of his.

Inside the hotel, as well as a very nice bar with political art, there was also a museum with pretty neutral information about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Sadly for me, an idiotic Brit, had started the whole thing by not asking 600,000 ‘Arabs’ who lived on the land their opinion before they were donating half of the land to Israelis. That seemed wild and entirely disrespectful to a group of people thats homes were in jeopardy.

After the Banksy Hotel, we walked through an established refugee town for Palestinians that had to leave their original homes which were now on the Israeli side of the wall. We then headed to the old town and found a great local spot for a big mezze lunch, before going to the Church of the Nativity and the Milk Grotto. The milk grotto is a place where Mary is believed to have breastfed Jesus and a small drop of milk fell in the floor. This action is believed to make women more fertile if they come to the grotto and pray. After that, we split from the boys and went for a roof top pano over Bethlehem followed by a tea stop with a guy that was very keen for us to return to his shop.

The guy was friendly but also told us about the struggles of being Palestinian – all healthcare is private and expensive, and yet the hospitals are limited with what they can do. He worried about being able to look after his wife, who was only 36, had type 2 diabetes, and was reliant on insulin injections. He said that some pharmacies mis-sold some medications too. He also told us that sometimes he wished he was Israeli – a sad but honest line, since from his perspective Israeli government looks after its people whereas Palestinian government such as it is does not have that power.

We wandered through a market and I bought some local sweet delicacy, which I’ve forgotten the name for and then we walked across the border through security and showed our passports before getting the bus back to Jerusalem from the Israeli side. Walking through from one side to the other very much felt like being on no-man’s land – there were lots of locked gates and we were buzzed throughany after having property scanned and ID and religion checked. Being ‘Christian’ has never been so useful – it essentially gives you a free pass to all Jewish and Muslim sites.

On returning to Jerusalem, we shock off the information of the day and had some drinks with very experimental jazz (too much for me) in the background. As it was Jack’s birthday, the boys had also bought cake and a kippah!