To start our first full day in Jerusalem and nearby Bethlehem, we started at what our usual departure time has become, 7:30. We started our day by driving up to a viewpoint on the old city of Jerusalem from which we could see such sights at the Dome of the Rock, Temple Mount, and The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From there we departed to Bethlehem during which we passed through the wall which separated Israeli controlled Israel from Palestinian controlled Israel. There was a stark contrast between either side of the wall as it quickly went from the ancient city of David on one side to a refugee camp on the other, as well as a Banksy owned hotel accented by his own protest work on the wall across the street. We worked further into the camp and were met by simple concrete buildings, muted and inform, while still being cut through with works of Palestinian art calling for justice. After a quick stop in at a local artisans store, featuring jewelry crafted from the tear gas canisters that Israeli forces frequently litter the Palestinian area, were a nice sentiment to making the best of a very harsh situation.
From there our day kept us inside of Bethlehem, but showcased to us a very different element that the city has to offer. We first drove and embarked from our van in the garage of a mall, before walking up the Main Street to The Church of Nativity, where Jesus Christ was born. It was a very powerful experience to have heard the story of Jesus’s birth in a manger for eighteen Christmases and be able to stand in and touch the place where he was born on a fated December night. The church was fairly quiet, and all of our sights in Israel for that matter, caused by recent unrest and militancy in the country. We continued on from there back through the checkpoint separating Israel and Palestine before having lunch in an organization for the gypsy populations in Israel, whom served us a delicious spread of traditional Palestinian cuisine.
The day, to this point in the day, it had been primarily uplifting seeing how challenged people in Israel were managing to make the best of a very difficult situation, coupled with the uplifting religious experience. But from that point in the day we set off for Yad Vashem which is the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, which offered a very difficult but necessary part of the Jewish story is Israel to understand. After an hour and a half of diligent learning and trying my best to understand the situation as fully as I could, we departed for The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. We were lucky enough to go at a point in the day where we were greeted with short or no line for the rocks on which Jesus’s body was prepared to be buried and on which he was crucified. We continued on through the church to see the tomb of Jesus, and after about a fifteen minute wait outside of the tomb, we were able to make it inside.
This part of the day was exceptional, and exceptionally moving for the soul, as the Christian faith is built upon the resurrection of Jesus, and I was able to see the tomb in which this happened, in which my faith is based. It was an astonishingly powerful day spiritually, as I could experience the birth and the death of Jesus Christ within the same ancient city that he had strode thousands of years ago. After that, the rest of the day was much more mundane comparatively, as we went out for a nice calm dinner before retiring to the hotel for the night.
Alastair
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