Israel - Jerusalem's Lot

On our second day in Israel, we spent most of the day walking around the old city of Jerusalem. This was my favorite part of the Israeli leg of the trip.

We began the day by going to the Mount of Olives to get a birds-eye view of the city of Jerusalem and the Jewish cemetery. From there, we saw where we were headed for the rest of the day. Our first stop after the Mount of Olives was to go the Garden of something-or-other. (Again, and I can’t stress this enough, I am not a biblical scholar.) Traditionally (it’s almost always “traditionally”), this garden was the site in which Judas fingered Jesus for the Romans. The highlight of the garden is the six olive trees that are supposed to have been around since the time of Jesus. They, in fact, appear to be young olive trees growing out of old olive tree bark, and it’s hard to believe that the old olive tree bark is 2,000 years old, but who am I to argue?

From there we went into the old city to follow the steps of Jesus from condemnation to crucifixion to resurrection. Again, this path is “traditional” and it is (from my understanding) unlikely that he used this actual path, but the path is interesting nonetheless. Along the way are several stations commemorating various moments in Jesus’ walk with his cross to his crucifixion (he fell here, saw Mary there, things like that). At the end, of course, is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This Church traditionally contains the site of both the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus. It is a church that was built on the site of other churches that came before it and commemorated the same spots. The church, from the outside, wasn’t as spectacular as I was expecting, but then I’m not really sure what I was expecting. Inside the church, we followed the last stations on the path of Jesus.

After leaving the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we went to visit the Western Wall. After a full day of some of the most holy places in Christendom, it seemed out of place to go to one of the holiest places in Judaism (since we had plenty of time to do so over the next few days), but I guess in a way it makes sense to visit Jerusalem in this manner since it holds such an important place in many religions and cultures and is difficult to separate along strict categorical lines (though many have tried). Of all of the places we visited in Israel, I found the Western (Wailing) Wall to be the most solemn and the most moving. I don’t know the whole story behind it as I’ve never researched it independently and our guide was much more knowledgeable with respect to Christian history than he was with Jewish history. Perhaps additional knowledge about the history would have made it even more moving; though, perhaps not since I find that in Israel, the history of certain sites sometimes detract from the meaning of the site in the context of faith. (For instance, if a person bursts into tears upon approaching a particular site, it really matters little whether or not any particular event actually took place there. At that point, it’s about faith, not about history.)

That was the end of our first full-day in Israel. That was also the high point of our trip to Israel. We visited other cities and other sites, and some were very impressive, but everything else sort of paled in comparison to Jerusalem. How could it not, though, seeing as Jerusalem is, by far, the most historic city on the planet.

I think I have one more Israel post in me after this one. Coming up in the next episode: Bethlehem, Sea (Lake) of Galilee and the Jordan River.