Day Four - Jerusalem New Testament City tour

I’m still sick so this will be on the short side.

Today we spent most of the day on the Temple mount. In case you are curious what the Temple Mount is, it is the place where the temple used to be and the courtyard that surrounded it. As our teacher Todd said today, it is pretty amazing that we were even allowed onto the temple mount, it is a place with a lot of tension. The Temple mount currently has two major buildings on it, the Al-Aksa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. There is also an underground mosque called the Al-Marwani mosque there. Since it is where the Temple used to be, it is far and away the holiest place in Judaism. There are some Jewish people who will not even go up on the mount to avoid the possibility that they would desecrate the area where the holy of holies of the temple was. They believe that not only is it a the place where the temple was but also that it is the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac.

(the Dome of the Rock)

The temple mount is the third holiest place in Islam, they believe that it is the place where Mohommed ascended to heaven on a horse and spoke with Allah. There is a rock inside the dome of the Rock that they say he ascended from. It is the same rock that the Jews say that Abraham sacrificed Isaac on. It is also the same rock that was probably in the Holy of Holies and the ark of the covenant sat on.

Part of what is interesting about all of this is that the Muslims say that the temple never stood there. They don’t want to admit that the Jews might have a prior claim to the area. They won’t let anyone do any archeology inside the temple mount, you can get arrested for praying inside the temple mount, or having a Bible or a tape measure. It is definitely the most Arab feeling part of Jerusalem that I have been in so far, the dome of the rock is really pretty, but some of the other buildings are more run down, and part of the temple mount has become a trash dump. In fact most of the eastern side of the temple mount, what used to be Solomon’s colonnade, where Jesus met with his disciples and the disciples met after he died is just piles of rubble and trash.

(pile of trash in what was Solomon's Collonnade)

After we were inside the temple mount we looked at some of the archeological digs on the southern end of the outside of the mount (there is some work that is done outside of the mount.) The coolest thing that we saw there were the gates that used to be the entrance to the temple. There were three gates that were the entrance to the temple mount complex, it would take them through and underground tunnel up into the courtyard. The exited through double gates that were further west. The only exception to this is when someone was in mourning, then they came in through the western doors moved around the temple in a clockwise motion and then exited through the eastern doors.

(me standing next to what is visible of the exit gate of the old temple.)

(Apparently Tuesday's and Thursdays are big days for BarMitzpha celebrations here. Underneath the canopy a 13 year old boy is blowing a shophar. a giant horn (musical) made from a giant horn (animal). Then the guys in white start playing drums and singing (he lai, lai, lai, lai...) and march the kid (still under the canopy) up to the wailing wall to read from the Torah and pray. Down in a hidden part of the wall we saw them doing somehting similar for a girl, and she was putting on a phylactry, box on forhead, and then a thing around her arm and wrist. It is usually just resevred for men and they would have done up where they were having the drum-horn party she would have been arrested.)

After that we went and looked at the ruins of a house that is from the same time and is very similar to what the house where Jesus was interrogeted by the Jews after he was arrested (the high priests house) looked like. In fact, since the high priest would have had one of the nicest houses in the wealthiest part of Jerusalem, it could have been the actual high priests house.

After that we went to a place that is called David's tomb, but probably isn't where David is buried, then we went to the traditional site of the upper room where the last supper happened. The building is too new for it to be the actual site, but it our teacher Todd thought that it seems to be in the right area where the last supper took place.

Tonight we went to a tunnel tour of the western wall of the temple mount (the same wall where the Jews pray.) It turns out that a large portion of the Arab quarter of the city has been built on an artificial platform sometime around 1200 (maybe, it may have been the 700's, I'm not sure on that one. The tunnel was really cool, it goes along the western wall, under the Arab quarter of the city.

One more thought for the night.

We spent a lot of time around the temple today, and there was a lot of talk about the holiness of the the temple and the holy of holies. It is something that the religious jews are passionate about. And it is a place where God's presence used to dwell. But in the same way that God's presence dwelt in his temple, it dwells in those of us who are Christians. So as we walked through the temple mount today, God's presence came through with us and dwelt among us as it used to dwell in the holy of holies, and then as we left it was still with us. The access to God that used to come through the temple is available to all of today regardless of where we are.

That's it for tonight. Tommorow we are going out to see the territory of Benjamin, down to Jericho and over into Samaria. Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.

Jerusalem Day Three - Old testament tour

Jerusalem, Jerusalem. I feel like I know this city (at least the old city) and if you told me that I have only been in this city for about 54 hours I would call you a liar. If you showed me my airplane itenerary, took me back through my pictures and my blog, reminded me that it is December 30th and on December 27th I was back in LA...well I guess I'd have to believe you, but it sure feels like we've been here longer. All of the stress of flying in on El Al feels like it happened 100 years ago.

(music side note: If I asked you to guess which country I have seen the most tourirsts in Jerusalem from (other than our group), what country would you guess? Did you say Germany? If you did you are wrong, the winner is definately France, followed by Russia. This may be because there are a bunch of french people staying in our hotel. In fact they are in the lobby around the corner from me having a beer-cigarette-piano party. Whoever is playing piano is pretty good.)

Another note before I get started. I am starting to get sick, I woke up with a sore throat, and as the day went by it moved to my sinuses. I am pretty sure that if I had some airborne and about 12 hours to sleep I'd be fine in no time (about 12 hours). Unfortunately I forgot to bring my airborne (I'm pretty sure it's at home next to my watch and sunglasses), and 12 hours of sleep doesn't seem likely for a few weeks. I'm mentioning this for two reasons: 1. I'm going to keep this post kind of short and to the point so I can get some extra sleep tonight. 2. I would really appreciate it if you all would pray for me (and about five or six other people on our trip who are sick) that I would get well soon, and that the sickness wouldn't slow me down at all, physically, mentally or spiritually. Ok, now on to Day three.

We begin some days with a lecture, today was one of those lecture days. Todd (our teacher) began our lecture by saying, "You will learn more today than you ever have in your life...at least in one day." I don't know if that is true, but I took 22 pages of notes in my field notebook today. Some of them were really cool notes where I would try to make a quick sketch of the area that he was talking about (wall, tomb, city map) so that I could make my notes on top of it to help me remember better. Most of them were just writing.

Our first stop today was this old hotel that was the first hotel in the old city, they didn't really take care of it so now it's a hostel. From the roof you get a really good view of the city, the picture above is from that rooftop. You can see the dome of the Rock there and pretty much the whole mount of Olives in the Background. If you want to know what Herod's temple would have looked like in the city imagine the dome of the rock, but twice as big in every dimension and made out of polished white marble. Must have been impressive. Those clouds in the sky turned into rainclouds, it was pretty wet and cold today, a bad day to be sick.

Today was our Old Testament day so we looked at a bunch of walls, different building periods for the city, and different expansions and destructions. I thought it was awesome but the pictures are pretty dull so I won't post many. We looked at Hezekiah's broad wall which he built to protect the city from the Assyrians, and spent a lot of time talking about David's city. Isn't David's city Jerusalem you ask? That is a good question, and the answer is...kind of.

Jerusalem in David's time was small. How small was it! (sorry I'm sick, it does awful things to my sense of humor) Well let me show you how small it was.

This picture above is of what us ol' Jerusalem vets call the eastern hill, specifically the southern side of the eastern hill. See the spot where I drew on the picture with an ugly red line? that line runs along the slope of the hill, near the vally, the eastern wall to David's city would have been somewhere around where that line was.

Ok, now look at this picture, see where it overlaps with the other one? The white stone and the wooden building with the green roof? Ok, good. Now look at the flags that I circled and highlighted with ugly red and yellow? That is where the the western wall of David's city was. See I told you, small. the city was a lot longer north south than it was east west, but all in all the city was 10 acres, it got bigger with Solomon (30 acres) and with Hezekiah (150 acres).

At the end of our time in the city of David we spent a lot of time discussing and exploring the water system of David and Hezekiah's Jerusalems. Included in that was one of the coolest things I have ever done.

(Look, people doing archeology! Those rocks are something called the pool tower of the spring of Gihon. They were here in David's time but they date all the way back to 1800 B.C. That would be Abraham's time when Melchizidek was the king of Jerusalem, which was called Salem back then.)

So Hezekiah didn't think it was a good idea to have a spring outside of the city, especially when the Assyrians were coming to attack him, so he built a tunnel to bring the water from the spring that was near this tower underground into the city of Jerusalem. It was dug about 40 to 50 feet below this tower in the picture above, through the limestone bedrock. It ended up being 1750 feet long, all dug with pickaxes and shovels. Workers started at each end of the tunnel and then met in the middle. Think about that, they had work crews that started on two sides, dug a tunnel with pickaxes and shovels, and met halfway, deep underground without GPS or anything else. And the tunnel isn't straight, it is in an S shape. Did I mention that they did this in 701 BC?

Today I got to walk through this tunnel, and it was awesome. Definately one of the coolest and the most Indiana Jones things I have ever done. The tunnel has water in it, most of the time it was shin high, the for a little bit it was mid thigh. It was never wide enough for two people to walk side by side, a few times my sholders brushed the walls on both sides. Usually it was four to seven feet tall (I bumped my head a lot) but at the end it is closer to 30. It is dark, you can't see without a flashlight. Did I mention it was awesome? Imagine walking through a dark narrow tunnel with these dimensions and water levels. Imagine knowing where the tunnel ends up but not knowing what lies being the range of the flashlight. Imagine this walk taking about half an hour. Imagine it being awesome and you can get a sense of what it was like. Imagine walking through the tunnel with a beautiful Israeli archeologist behind you and racing the Nazi's to some important secret and you can imagine the Indiana Jones movie I was making up as I walked through the tunnel.

Where are my pictures of the tunnel you ask? Well...I kind of thought that the water would be deeper so I passed my camera off to someone who didn't go through the tunnel. I did get someone else to take a picture of me doing my best Indiana Jones pose in the tunnel though and I will post that as soon as I get it from them. I do have to warn you though, my best Indiana Jones pose looks a lot more like Derek Zoolander's Blue Steele than Indy.

Ok, I need to stop and go to bed (I haven't even gotten to everything we did before lunch) so here is what else we did today. Visited the pool of Siloam where Jesus told the blind guy to wash his eyes in John 9, spent a lot of time with a 1st century model of Jerusalem that was a 1:50 scale (I hope I said that right, it's fifty times smaller than actual size.)

Oh, did I mention that we saw the Dead Sea scrolls today? We did that too.

Tommorow is our last day focused on Jerusalem, we're doing a New Testament tour. As always, thanks for reading.

Israel Day Two - Overveiw of the Old city

Ok, this is a long post and I need to go to bed before the hotel lobby clerk kills me. Sorry but these first three pictures aren't in order, I'll just label them and you can read about them below. I also apologize for any spelling or grammer errors, no time to proofread tonight.

(the via dolorosa and the ecco homo this is the man arch - arch dates to 130 AD, not the time of Jesus)

(Pools of Bethesda, I think I forgot to mention this, where Jesus healed the lame man)

(The dome of the rock on the temple mount.

Jerusalem, a city full of surprises. Sometimes there are surprises like: "Remeber how we were awake all night long because of the construction working yelling and using jackhammers until 5:00am? Turns out our window wasn't closed right." Or, "You guys have been working on this preview homework for an hour and a half? What page are you on? Oh...you guys are doing the wrong stuff, you need to do this stuff, it's way shorter." (and it was) Then there are surprises like, "We are about to go into the church of the Holy Sepulcher, this is probably the place that Jesus was not only buried, but also crucified." All of those things happend today, as well as a few other surprises that I will mention later. I will try to do my best to fill in the highlights of our travels today, but it is pretty late (working on the wrong preview work threw me a little behind) and the jackhammers did keep me up most of the night (I am confident tonight will be better), so this may be a little short or incoherant or maybe both.

(Belltower and entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher)

Today started with a pretty good breakfast and a lecture on the geography of Jerusalem (you might not believe it, but it was awesome). Then we headed out to the city. Our first stop was the Chruch of the Holy Sepulcher, which is the church of the holy tomb. Back in the day, wherever Christians thought that Jesus had done something awesome in a place, the built a church over it. This changes what some of those places look like (you'll see with the pictures of the Holy Sepulcher), but it is a good thing in that the locations of a lot of these sites were preserved because they had churches sitting on them. There are six different Christian sects that control part of the church of the Holy Sepulcher (from here on I'll abbreviate it CHS). They have so much trouble getting along with each other it is a regular thing during Easter to read about fistfights between priests and monks of different sects (Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Coptic, Armenean, and Etheopian) because they were getting in the way of each others celebrations. The relationships between these Christians is so contentious that none of them actually have a key to the front door of the church. A muslim family has had the key to the door since the 12th century, and they come down and unlock it every morning and then relock it every night. Part of the sad thing about this is that this is how the Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem see Christianity. The Jewish tour guides talk about how this is the holiest site in Christianity, this is the Christians wailing wall.

The difference (in how I see it) is that the Jews see the wailing wall as all that remains of the temple where God's presence dwelt (and they stay still dwells). The site of Jesus death and ressurection is a very special place, but is not a place that we think God's presence is manifest in any way different than any other places. Jesus is God, he did amazing work at the site of CHS, but it is still not the same as the wall.

I think I am going to go back to the CHS at some point this week when I have free time. I was still in, "hold on, this is probably, the place, where Jesus died and was buried?" mode when I walked through it. I knew that it was a possible site for his tomb, but I was blown away by him being crucified there as well. I wasn't really able to process that this was the place where Jesus paid for the sins of mankind on the cross and then defeated death. I would like to go back there and spend some time reflecting on that.

(Side note, currently it is about 11:00pm in the hotel, I'm the last guy in the lobby working on his computer. Around the corner is what sounds like a guy trying to impress a girl with his Arabic guitar and singing. I don't know if she is impressed, but I thought I was listening to a cool cd until I heard them start talking to each other. Pretty awesome.)

Here are some pictures from the CHS, I guarentee that they look different that you imagine them.

(The site of Jesus Crucifixion, you can see rocks from the hill in the glass cases to the sides of the giant crucifix.)

(Inside this building is Jesus' tomb. There is not much to see there, the tomb was completely destroyed by an Egyptian kalif in 1000 AD. (or something like that, i don't have my notes with me) He was the guy who created the Druze religion.)

(Guitar side note, the guy has moved into somethink like an Arabic version of Bron ayr Stomp.)

I have more to say on the CHS, but I still need some time to process that place and go back to it again. I'll try to say more about it later.

(Guitar guy is now playing Neil Young, Heart of Gold)

After the CHS we walked through a good chunk of the Arabic Quarter of Old Jerusalem. There is something about this city. By lunchtime I was pretty sure that Jerusalem is far and away the coolest city I have ever been to. That may still be true, but as the day went on we learned and heard more about the tensions and conflicts that exist in the city (mostly Jew and Arab). Serious business, serious tension. At the same time, walking around Jerusalem it is hard to imagine that this is a city where people hate each other and kill each other. This is a special city, a special place. I have felt it walking around. This is God's holy city, the place that he chose to dwell in and the place that he will reign from, and I really felt some of that as we walked around.

( I should note here that when I say Jerusalem, I mean the old city. It is where we have spent all of our time and will spend all of our time. the new city is about 110 years old, sections of the old city and the area south of it are closer to 4000 years old.)

We left the Arab Quarter through the Damascus gate to the north and then climed up the ramparts and walked along the old north wall east, and then south along the east wall.

(View of the Arab quarter of Jerusalem from the Old wall. The gold dome in the background is the Dome of the Rock, the muslim shrine that is built on the temple mount. This (unlike the Christian and Armenean quarters is mostly residential. Jews try to buy the land from the Arabs so they can control more of the old city, they do this buy working through middle men that keep the identity of the buyer secret. If an Arab realter sells property to a Jew, on puropse or on accident, he is killed.)

Walking along the old wall, Jerusalem had two more surprises in store for me. The first I didn't get a picture of but I wish I did. I was walking up to an arrow slit on the wall (the walls are from the middle ages), looking though my camera lense when all of a sudden my right foot stepped into empty space. There was an square hole on the floor of the wall, about 18" by 18", that dropped all the way down to the next level, about 20 feet. As I stepped through the hole my right elbow caught me on the edge of the wall right in front of the arrow slit and my left foot was on solid ground, so I wasn't hurt and my camera was ok (which is what I was really worried about). All in all it was pretty funny, but I didn't get a picture of the hole. I have been very careful to look where I step since then though.

(uh, the american girl is trying to impress the arab guy by singing Alanis Morriset now but she can't remember all the words. bad move)

As we walked along the top of the eastern wall (Suprise!) we had a great view of the Mount of Olives. Mountains in Israel aren't like they are in the US, they aren't peaks like Pikes peak or Mount Shasta where you can see them and say "here it is" they are more like ranges that run for a few miles. The mount of Olives is a small range that runs for about two and half miles. We'll talk about it more when we go and visit is, but today we did read about the Day of the Lord in Zecheriah 14. I was going to copy and paste the sections from the Bible, but apparently blogger isn't too fond of copy and paste so I'll just say grab a Bible and read chapter 14. It talks about the Lord descending onto the Mount of Olives and vanquishing the enemies of Israel. I think (it's getting late and my minds getting fuzzy.) it's also the place where Jesus ascended to heaven will descend again from heaven.

(The southernmost part of the Mount of Olives. Everything that is white and looks like it could be a building is a grave. Try to look and see that there is a hill that descends from Jerusalem (where this picture is taken) then meets a valley and then the Mount of olives begins. All the little white things on the mount are Jewish graves, they believe (according to that Zechariah passage) that this is where the ressurection will take place, and if a body isn't here, then it will have to burrow underground to get to here and be ressurected. You have to be a very rich or very important Jew to be buried here, sometimes both. The white things on the Jerusalem side of things are Arab graves. Graves are a good way to hold property (it's hard to move a graveyard) and the area behind some of these graves is the golden gate, where the Messiah is supposed to enter into Jerusalem by. If he has to walk through a graveyard to get to the gate he will be ritually defiled and not be allowed to enter the city. Did I mention that there is Arab Jewish tension in this city?) The garden of Gethsemene is also in this picture, a building with a cool mosaic at the base of the mount of olives.

Whew it's getting late, the guitar folks are gone and the guy at the front desk is tapping his foot waiting for me to leave. So...after that we went to a roman fortress (name escapes me) where the Roman soldiers lived, tradition says Jesus was scourged (tradition is wrong on this one) and the via doloros began (place where Jesus walked his cross to golgotha. I'll explain another time but...Jesus probably didn't walk the via dolorosa, it was likely that Pilate wasn't staying at the fortress but at Harods Palace which is on the other side of the city. From this fortress we were able to have a good view of the temple mount and the dome of the rock and then we walked along the via dolorosa back to the CHS and then to our money changer and our hotel. all in all another good day, another long day, but I am looking forward to tommorow.

Tomorrow we will still be in Jerusalem, we will do an Old testament tour of the city. As always, thanks for reading.

Isreal Day One - LAX to Jerusalem

Wow, what a day. As some of you probably know I am taking an interterm class this January (and end of December) in Israel. Today was the first day of our trip, we left LA on El Al airlines, flew directly to Tel Aviv (in an incredibly long, 14 hour flight), and then after dinner some of us took a walk down to the wailing wall. It was a really full, really stressful day, but the ending was incredible.

This moring (techinically it was yesterday morning, but for me it was this morning, I finished packing my bags and then headed out towards LAX. We had some textbooks that we had to bring for this class, and they were kind of heavy, so I weighed my suitcase three different times and then dumped stuff out three times before I finally got it under fifty, then I left.

(What I packed into my bag before I started dumpin stuff)

I dont' know if any of you have flown El Al before, if you haven't, let me tell you about them a little bit. They are (I think) the only Israeli airline, and they have (I think) the best saftey record in the world. The reason that they are so safe is because they have the most intense security I have ever seen. I am sure that the security was increased because of the guy who tried to blow up the airplane a few days ago, it is safe to say that it was the most stressful departure I have ever had.



After I got to the airport, I began to wait in line with our group, we got there early (and it was a good thing) so that they could get us in before the rush. Most airlines have ticket agents who work up through the line and help to make sure that everyone can get through the process as effeciently as possible. El Al has security agents that work their way up through the line to see if you need to be pulled out of the line for further questioning. At first I wasn't worried about anything, the security girls seemed nice and some of them were really cute, and when one got to me it was a pretty easy exchange. When she saw the stamps for Arab countries in my passport I had to explain what countries they were and why I was there. I thought it went well, but then she left for a moment and brought a pretty large and intimidating guy, whose indimidation had nothing to do with his size. Our exchange went like this:



Him: I am head of El Al security, tell me about countries in your passport.
Me: (nervous) all of the countries? You want me to name them?
Him: Arab countries.
Me: uhh, Egypt and Dubai, the United Arab Emerites. My dad works for an oil service company and I was visiting my parents when they were there.
Him: Which company.




I named the companies that Dad had worked for and he said, "Petroleum, ok." And walked off.

Then the cute security girl was back, and she was very nice, but she did ask to take all of my carry-ons to search them before I brought them onto the plane. She told me that I could take my wallet and that I would get everything else back at the gate when I boarded. She wouldn't even let me take a camera book that I had with me in my coat. "This feels heavy for a photography book, we better check it." All in all a little scary and pretty inconvenient, but not awful, at least not until I saw the big security guy pull another one of the girls on our trip off to the side for a longer questioning session. She has lived in both Lebanon and Jordan and has a number of Palestinian friends, which it turns out is big trouble in El Al's eyes. They made all of us, even our trip leaders Dr. Rigsby and his wife Donna head through to the gate while she was still off to the side of the ticketing desk while they decided what to do with her. Half an hour before boarding word came down, El Al decided that she couldn't fly. They ended up moving her to Lufthansa, and she'll get her and meet us tomorrow, but I didn't find that out until after we landed in Jerusalem. It was pretty intense. At that point I was thankful that mom and dad were here for petroleum reasons and not other ones. Otherwise I might not have been on that plane either.


At the gate, before I got my carry-ons back they tested my shoes, boarding pass, and passport for explosives residue (that was pretty cool) then we load up on a bus that takes us to a special boarding area that is far away from everything else. Police cars escorted our bus to the special El Al boarding area and there were police at the boarding area too. My carry-on had been completely emptied out and then repacked. Anything with batteries had the batteries removed (including my noise reducing headphones) and my camera had been tested at different settings to make sure it worked.


As for the flight...well it was long and uncomfortable. We sat on the tarmac for an hour before we took off (leaving an hour late), I guess there was a bag the decided was suspicious and took out of the plane. There were lots of noisy kids, I was stuck in the middle seat, and the seats were very, very tight. The only other flight that compares to the sheer uncomfortableness was an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to LA (that then broke down and spent the night in Oslo before resuming again).


I was very, very tired when we got to immigration and met an immigration agent who must have been the sister of the scary El Al security guy. Eventually she let me through and I actually made it to Israel. The airport is pretty nice. There was set of posters on the wall that had the "first man" of a bunch of different countries. Socrates for Greece, VanGogh for Holland, Motzart for Austria. The first Isreali man? A cactus. I've been in this country for less than a day, but I get it.


Jerusalem is a realy cool city with a distinctive feel. I think it is one of those places that you would never mistake for something else. All of the buildings have to have the same limestone facade so that the city looks uniform, it gives it a really old, cool feel.

(Jerusalem from our bus as we drove in. Every building in the city has this same limestone facade.)

We are staying in a hotel right inside the walls of the old city, the gloria hotel.

(a hallway in our hotel)

After dinner about twenty of us went off to look at the western wall. I thought we were going to the western wall of the old city, near the Jaffa Gate, which is right by our hotel. Instead we walked further into the old city, through narrow, winding streets filled with shops selling identical souveniers, we walked through the Christian Quarter, the Muslim Quarter and into the Jewish quarter when we turned a corner and, wow, we were looking at the temple mount. The western wall is also called the wailing wall. It is all that is left of Harod's temple, the one that Jesus overturned the tables in. It was the outer wall of the temple, inside the wall now stands the dome of the rock. Standing there and imagining what the temple must have looked like, all I can say is that it must have been incredible. We walked down to the wall took pictures and prayed. It was pretty incredible to be there, to be at what is left of the temple. There are signs around that ask you to respect the place where God's glory dwells, which is what the Jews believe. Some Orthodox Jews walk backwards when they walk away from the wall so that they don't turn they backs on God or his glory.

You have to wear something covering your head when you go to the wall (if you're a guy, girls need to have no head coverings). They provide cardboard Yamikas for you as you go up there to pray. Praying down there at the wall was pretty amazing. Amazing enought that when I walked away I walked backwards.

(The western or wailing wall where Jews still come to pray and stuff prayers into the cracks in the wall. The men and women pray seprately, men on the left and women on the right.)

(Me in front of the wailing wall.)

A long day ended up being a long post. We are in Jerusalem all week, tommorow we officially begin our tour of the Old city of Jerusalem. As always, thanks for reading.