The Qumran Community and the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea community was a social experiment that lasted only 15 years, yet represented one distinct sect of our people that lived each day with the notion that the messiah would arrive during their lifetime. No account is certain when they existed there, but it was between two thousand and 2,230 years ago. They wrote the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, which contained both Jewish and cultic materials.



New Year’s Night – St. Sylvester’s Day

New Year’s Eve is called “Sylvester, and is becoming more popular as a time to go out to dinner, have a party, and generally to relax and bring in the New Year. At this writing we are about three hours before the start of the New Year, but restaurants are full and many Israelis are celebrating. We will throw ourselves a party in about an hour, and then it’s off for another full day of touring tomorrow.

The Dead Sea -- Muddy the Waters!

As we said earlier, the Dead Sea is ten times as salty as our oceans, so the water is not potable. However, there seems to be some medicinal benefit that one can derive from bathing in the water, rubbing mud all over one’s body, and dipping in the hot spring near to the hotel. The rocks on the shoreline are very sharp, and Jennifer left some of her DNA on the beach there. Seriously, however, some people cut themselves but the salty nature of the water helped to keep the wounds clean enough so that they can make it home to create a proper bandage. Here are some photos of our experience there.

Monday, December 31 - First Stop – The Ahavah Factory at the Dead Sea

Masada was the last fortress holdout of Jews during the first Roman revolt in the year 70 CE. One thousand Jews had taken up residency there, yet the order came down from Rome that the city must be razed in order to put down the Jewish revolt. Yet when there seemed to be no alternative, the Jewish residents of Masada committed mass suicide rather than be taken into captivity. According to Patricia Litscher, regarding her trip on the cable car up the summit: “The experience of something so spiritual is worth it, so as to conquer one’s biggest fears. (It always helps to have a Rabbi in your back pocket.)”

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

While others went to shop, others visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional location of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. Each Christian denomination has assigned a certain place within the church building to the “the” place where, accdording to their tradition, the Crucifixion took place. This church was crowded with pilgrims, local celebrants, and normal tourists like ourselves.

We then returned to the Cardo for some additional shopping for those who had not had the chance before, then came back to the hotel for rest and evening activities.

Some of us shopped in the Cardo (the ‘heart’ of the walled city), and some of us visited the Southern Wall excavations that have recently been unearthed. It was at this location that pilgrims coming to Jerusalem would stop to purchase animals for sacrifice or to exchange money to make their payments of the half-shekel head tax that was paid each year. In the Davidson Archeological Center they showed us an interactive 3-D simulation of the Old City history.

The Western Wall Tunnels

Then we walked underneath the Muslim Quarter for a walk along the newly-excavated tunnel that abuts the entire length of the Western Wall of the Temple precinct. It was a warm, narrow, confining walk along the almost 300 meter perimeter wall. Above us was the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, and below us through Plexiglas floors we could see the original street outside the Wall from more than 2,000 years ago.

The sign here reads "danger, entry forbidden."

The Kotel – The Western Wall of the Temple

We walked through a security checkpoint and arrived to the Kotel Hamaaravi, the Western Wall of the second Temple precinct. As you may know, the Western Wall is only the wall that surrounded the Temple and not the Temple itself. To the west of the Wall is a plaza where tourists, worshippers, and others gather at every moment of each day. They approach the Wall, engage in meditation and prayer, leave notes in the Wall to be read by God, and offer Tzedakah to enable the religious authority at the Wall to perpetuate its synagogue. It can be said that it is the most holy locale in the Jewish religion.

Views of the Old City from French Hill and Hebrew University, the Mount of Olives
From the Knesset we traveled to French Hill where the Hebrew University is situated. We circled the city, ending up on the Mount of Olives for a view of both the OId and the New city of Jerusalem.

Sunday, December 30 -- The Knesset

We left the hotel on a busy Sunday morning, Sunday being the first day of the week here in Israel. Through snake-like morning traffic, we arrived at the entrance of the Knesset Building, the seat of Israel’s government. We were not permitted to photograph inside the building, so we have no photos of our own. We were led into the main hall of the Knesset, that is, the chamber where 120 members of Knesset decide policy and direction for the country. We sat in the VIP section, alongside the President’s box, and where many foreign dignitaries have sat. Our Russian-born guide explained about the seating locations of the Prime Minister and his cabinet, the Coalition members and the opposition members. The president, in Israel, is only a figure-head, the Prime Minister being the leader of the country. The PM is not elected directly these days (There were experiments in the past few elections to do this, but they were not successful.) but rather is the leader of the party that gets the highest percentage of votes.
We also saw the Members’ Entrance, beautiful Chagall tapestries, and his mosaics that adorn the floor of a large ceremonial reception hall.

SHABBAT SHALOM AND SHAVUAH TOV!

We traveled to Jerusalem yesterday, and because today was Shabbat, we took the evening off. Here below are posts for yesterday and today (because today we saw wonderful things and participated in great activities), beginning with how we ended our day, at a wedding!




We went out to the veranda of our hotel and observed Havdalah in the colder temperatures that made themselves evident tonight. The veranda overlooked the south-western portion of the wall of the Old City, with its beautiful illumination and mosques with their characteristic green lights. With fondness for Shabbat, and reluctance to bid farewell to our celebration, we immediately adjourned to a . . .

Wedding Ceremony

Ken and Laura Felz wanted to renew their wedding vows, and did so here in the Holy City. With our group looking on, Rabbi Biatch helped them to renew the vows they took three years before, and everyone celebrated!

Free time to . . . walk, buy, relax, etc.

We had a fine lunch at an authentic Middle Eastern restaurant called Nafoura, just inside the Jaffa gate of the Old City. From there, some returned immediately to the hotel, some ventured down into the shuk (open air market) of the Old City. We bargained with the shop owners, sample sachlav (the thick, rose flavored beverage that is sold on the street), and saw and got jostled by every passerby in the vicinity.

Old City and David’s Tower Museum

Some slept in today and did not go to services, but we all met up at 12:30 this afternoon for a walk to the Old City of Jerusalem (the walled city), and a visit to the David’s Citadel Museum of the history of Jerusalem. From high atop the museum built into the Old City walls, we could see the quarters of the walled city (Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish), and get a sense of the enormity of the city, even though it does not encompass that much land. The Old City displayed its beauty for all to see, with its variegated colored rooftops, open air markets, satellite dishes (more viewers than cable), and the ever-present gold cupola of the Dome of the Rock.

HUC-JIR services and campus tour

Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) is originally an American institution, serving as an Israel-based anchor for American Reform Judaism in Israel. As a sponsor of archeological excavations in Aroer and Dan, HUC-JIR achieved a very high reputation for quality work, and the antiquities authority of the state of Israel has worked very closely with them since 1963. You can learn more about the work of HUC-JIR if you wish to see their website at www.huc.edu.

Shabbat morning services began at 9:30, led by the director of the Israeli cantorial program, Dr. Professor Eliyahu Schleifer, and the dean of the rabbinic program, Rabbi Na’aman Kelman. Jane Taves had one of three aliyot on the pulpit this morning.
After services and a lovely Kiddush and motzi, we briefly toured the HUC-JIR campus, seeing the library, the archeological center and the classroom building.

Shabbat at Kehilat Tzur Hadassah and home hospitality dinners

We rushed to freshen up from our long day, and then set out for Kehillat Tzur Hadassah (KTH), the small synagogue belonging to the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism with which we have established a special relationship, and with which we will be increasing the amount of contact between Israeli and American Jews.

Shabbat evening services and Kabbalat Shabbat lasted about 90 minutes, after which we divided our group into small 2’s, 3’s and a few 4’s, and were invited to dinner at homes of KTH members. It was a very enjoyable evening, as Galit, the ‘programs director’ of KTH, had asked about the professions of the group members and matched us up according to interests, professions, and other criteria. This was a two-hour experience, which made for a very late night, which is why we did not write yesterday evening.

Group members came away with a heightened understanding of the connection between American and Israeli Jews, and a great amount of enthusiasm for strengthening the connection between our two communities.

Arrival into Jerusalem

From Beit Shean, it was an easy (most of us were asleep, save for the driver, of course!) 80 minute drive to the outskirts of Jerusalem where we encountered traffic. Then within the city limits, it took us another fifteen minutes to travel the last three miles in pre-Shabbat traffic.
We assembled on the roof of the hotel for an arrival ceremony of new pilgrims to Jerusalem, and enjoyed a small ‘lechayim’ toast for our accomplishment.

Beit She'an

Founded more than five millennia ago, the city of Beit Shean has been the home for more than 28 civilizations. Most recently, and most importantly for archeologists, there is a gigantic Roman settlement that survived under dirt and rocks, and about 33% has been excavated and exposed. Beit Shean is one of the ten ‘decopolis cities’ of ancient Rome, and the only one in Israel. You can see from these photos something of the beauty of the reconstructed city, the size of the site, and the many kinds of buildings that exist there. See if you can recognize what is the market street, the bath house, and the public latrine.

Tzfat

Tzfat is a city where the Jewish tradition of mysticism began. Not the Cabbalah of Madonna, as our tour guide likes to remind us, but rather the true mystical tradition of Joseph Caro and those rabbis who chose to live there in the sixteenth century and thereafter. Today many artists have made their homes and established studios there, though some of them have decided that because of the influx of the many new religious Jews in town, it was best to move to another place (Rosh Pinah, see below).

There are two synagogues we visited, each one dating back from four hundred and more years ago. Here are some pictures of those synagogues and our group visiting and learning about the presence of the mystics there.

Hula Valley (Not a dance from Hawaii) Nature Preserve: Migration of Cranes

Our final stop of the day – for touring, that is – was at the Hula Valley Nature Preserve. This is a former-but-also-current swamp through which more than five hundred billion birds migrate each winter. We rode on a specially equipped tractor (that seated forty!) that allowed us to get a great view of about 19,000 migrating cranes.

Tzfat and Avraham Rosenthal – Kabbalah Received

We then traveled to the town of Tzfat, birthplace of Jewish mysticism, and as Daphna says, it’s not the ‘Madonna type.’ We met with Avraham Rosenthal, a Michigan native who went to Israel to study Kabbalah from the masters in Tzfat. He also has an art studio and produces art based upon kabbalistic themes.

A Walk Through the Banias

We then drove another ten minutes east and arrived to Banias, a site at one of the headwaters of the Jordan River (It is the beginning of the Dan River, but that is a later story!). Daphna reminded us that it would be a “hike” to explore this site, ending up at a waterfall. The day was clear, cool to moderate temperature, and we set off.

We first encountered a temple site dedicated to the god Pan. The site is also holy to the Aliwite Muslims who believe that Mohammed ascended to heaven from this spot. (As there is no “P” sound in Arabic, they call it Banias instead of how it may have been pronounced in the past, Panias.)

Here you can see sacrificial altars that were found on this site that is more than 2,000 years old. Most of what these folk sacrificed were small animals, human sacrificing having been abolished many years before the era of this site.