Jerusalem

Here we are again! Wednesday was the big day! Lien and I had to get up very early, it was 5u30 and we were both very tired. We had breakfast and we went to the bus station. We had our bus on 6u40. Lien and I were very exciting because we had to go on our own to Jerusalem. The other girls: Ashton, Mieke and Laura were collected by Mr. Tagha. Meanwhile Lien and I were sitting on the bus for two hours. There was not enough seats to sit together. I sat next to a Jewish soldier and Lien sat next to an ‘American’. He asked Lien several things about our mission in Israël. After two hours we arrived in Jerusalem. Our first steps in the ‘Holy city’. We were early so we bought coffee and breakfast. We didn’t know where we would meet Mr. Tagha and the other girls. They told us to go to the tourist information center. So we asked everybody where we could find this place. Eventually we had to take the bus to the center. When we arrived, we waited for 30 minutes but the rest were still on the road. So Lien and I decided to visit the shops. After waiting an hour and a half, the girls and Mr. Tagha arrived.

First we went to the Soux, little streets with a lot of little shops. You could find everything in it. Some girls bought some presents for family our friends. After that, we visit the Church of Holy Sepulchre. It contain the place where Jesus was buried (the sepulcher). Today it also serves as the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, while control of the building is shared between several Christian churches and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for centuries. Today, the church is home to Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Anglican and Protestant Christians have no permanent presence in the church.

Just inside the entrance is The Stone of Anointing, also known as The Stone of Unction, which tradition claims to be the spot where Jesus' body was prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea. Each visitor kissed the stone or put assets on the stone. They believe that these assets will be holy because they were on the stone. We never seen this before and found this rather strange. The Rotunda is located in the centre of the Anastasis, beneath the larger of the church's two domes. In the centre of the Rotunda is the chapel called The Edicule, which contains the Holy Sepulchre itself. The Edicule has two rooms. The first one holds The Angel's Stone, a fragment of the stone believed to have sealed the tomb after Jesus' burial. The second one is the tomb itself.

After we had visited the Church of Holy Sepulchre, we set off to the ‘Wailing Wall’ our the Western Wall. It is located in the old city of Jerusalem at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount. Before we could visit the wall, we had to go through the security check. When we arrived, Dr. Tagha explained us about the history of this Wall and the many conflicts there are between Muslims and Jews. We went to the women side (it is much smaller than the men’s side) and we did our wishes, some of the girls putted a note into the wall. After that, we went to the mosques. There was a long line and we waited for 20 minutes before we could get in and passed the security check. Dr. Tagha couldn’t get in, he had to go through the Muslim entrance. We couldn’t get into the both mosques because we aren’t Muslims. We waited for 15 minutes and then we met Dr. Tagha again. The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in the Islam. Muslims believe that Muhammad was transported from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad led prayers towards this site until the seventeenth month after the emigration, when God directed him to turn towards the Ka’aba. We learned also that they give the wrong name to the mosques, the most beautiful mosque is not the al-Aqsa mosque but mosque e Qobbat Sakhra.

After an very interesting trip in Jerusalem, Dr. Tagha took us to Bethlegem. It is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank. The Hebrew Bible identifies Beit Lehem as the city David was from and the location where he was crowned as the king of Israel. The New Testament Gospels of Matthew and Luke identify Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. The town is inhabited by one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, though the size of the community has shrunk due to emigration. Bethlehem has a Muslim majority, but is also home to one of the largest Palestinian Christian communities. We went to the church of Nativity it is one of the oldest continuously operating churches in the world. The structure is built over the cave that tradition marks as the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. he structure is actually a combination of two churches, with a crypt beneath—the Grotto of the Nativity—where Jesus was born: he main Basilica of the Nativity and The adjoining Church of St. Catherine.

When we went back to Israel, we also saw the West Bank barrier. Most entrances and exits from the Bethlehem agglomeration to the rest of the West Bank are currently subject to Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks. We passed them and we had to give our passport. For us it was a little strange and it reminded us to the Berlin Wall. We went back to Jerusalem, Lien and I took the bus back to Haifa, the other girls went back to their village.

It was a long and an exciting day. We saw a lot and we learned a lot. We are very happy that Mr. Tagha gave us this opportunity. Every girl learned more about their subject.

Greetings Lien and Naiki