Another chapter in the Israel trip.
We left Jerusalem on the morning of Good Friday. We were there 5 days. It was such an interesting time to be there. Ramadan, Passover, and Easter all fell at the same time, which is very rare. The streets were filled with pilgrims of all stripes. The Christians were headed to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Jews were headed to the Western Wall, and the Muslims to the Dome of the Rock. I was not aware that the old city is filled with all kinds of houses of worship for the various denominations of all 3 religions but there are one or more on every street. There are 4 unequally sized quarters. The Armenian is the smallest, Jewish and Christian in the middle, and Muslim is the largest. That surprised me. We happened to be in the Christian quarter where the Jaffa gate is. To me, that area seems like the living room of the Old City.
On Holy Thursday, we walked out of our hotel and to our astonishment there was a march of 50 or more priests in long black robes walking briskly up the street to the Latin Patriarchate (established in 1099). This church is the center of this group for Israel, Palastine, Jordon, and Cyprus so I assume those were priests from all those countries. On Holy Thursday, they wash the feet of the poor. On Holy Thursday, many tour buses rolled into town. Our hotel was filled with several church organized groups lead by pastors and priests. On the main streets, a few people were walking around with a cross on their shoulder.
The week before there had been a shooting in Tel Aviv in a nightclub on a very trendy street by a person from the West Bank. Three died and 10 were injured. It was about a mile from our Tel Aviv hotel. At first we were nervous, but finally decided New York and Chicago are worse. The incident, on top of other recent terrorism, resulted in a major mobilization of the military on the streets in Jerusalem. There were groups of 4 soldiers on almost every corner, typically 2 men and 2 women. They had baby faces and were all had menancing looking machine guns over their shoulders and they stood around looking at their phones.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was the major destination for many Christian tourists. My favorite fact about the Old City is how the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was established. The Old City had been fought over sixteen times, totally destroyed and rebuilt twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. After all that, it is pretty had to know what happened where. When the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in about 300 AD, he sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem to identify where important events in Christ's life occurred, in order to put Churches there. She found relics believed to be the true cross of Jesus and the place Jesus was believed to be crucified, so that is how the Church was located. The last few stations of the cross are inside the church, so the locations are VERY specific. A bunch of denominations have shared control of the church for 160 years. It was a big problem to decide who got the keys, so it was decided two Muslim families would control the keys. One family keeps the keys overnight and the other picks up the keys in the morning and unlocks the Church.
The place i liked the best was the Temple Mount. I liked it best because I figured it was probably in the same place it was during Christ's time cause it is too big to be moved. Also it is open and has trees and grass, while most of the Old City is narrow, sort of claustrophobic, and all rock. The Temple Mount is an elevated area that I would guess is 4 stories high and larger than a football field. During all those times the city was damaged or destroyed, the victors build a place of worship on it for their religion so it has been pagan, Christian, and Muslim. Herod's temple was there and is where Jesus threw out the money changers. One of the enormous retaining walls of the base is the Western Wall of the old temple. It is the holiest site in Judaism because the final temple will be build there when the Messiah comes. On the top are two Mosques--the big one is the Dome of the Rock. Only Muslims can go in the mosques but people of all faiths can walk around the grounds on top which are beautiful and peaceful. There is a specfic path to the top that non-Muslims must take. One of the outside gates into the Old City is how Muslims get there. 80,000 Muslims were expected to come to pray at the Dome of the Rock for the first Friday of Ramadan which also happened to be Good Friday.
We had made our plans to leave Jerusalem on Friday without any awareness of the religious holidays. We had a reservation to rent a car and I was totally freaked about the expected in flux of 80,000 people. I wanted to be on the road by 8 am before all 80,000 would clog the roads. We woke up about 5 am hearing sounds that sounded like either fireworks or gunshots. The sounds were tear gas bombs being detonated at the gate where the Muslims were gathered, but the problem was caused by members of some sect of Judaism trying to enter that gate with lambs to sacrifice. The government warned them in advance, don't do this, but they didn't listen. I really don't understand the dynamics of it all. The side of the Temple Mount I was on was supposed to be safe, so I hot-footed it to the Western wall and put my little prayers on a very little piece of paper into one of the cracks in the wall. I had been taking requests from friends so I had prayer requests from 5 people on my paper. The Christian side of the city was really quiet and empty and seemed sort of mystical in the early morning. It was just me, a few Jewish men, and lots of military drinking coffee.
Traffic was not bad at all getting out of town. We hired a taxi driver to lead us from the rental car place to the highway toward the Dead Sea, since we can't read most of the road signs as they are in 3 languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and English that is pretty useless as it doesn't tell you what you need to know. We were glad to be out of town. There was a rock throwing conflict between the Palestinians and the military after we left, but I don't really know the details of it. If there is anything we learned from talking with a lot of people while we were there is there are two sides to everything.
Here is a picture of the Western Wall at dusk. Men pray on the left and women pray on the right behind the white dividers. My prayer is in a crack at the extreme right of the wall. Jewish people back away from the wall when they leave so that they don't turn their back on the wall. The horizontal brown thing on the right that has lights on it is the ramp that is the only path that non Muslims can take up to the top of the Mount. You can see the dome of one of the mosques on the upper right. The other picture is pocket garden we passed on our walk back.
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But, the recent gold bag hunt showed me the thrill of hunting, plotting and talking about bags really isn’t what it used to be. I’m just enjoying other things more. 
Thank you for sharing.
