mdonahue2007's photostream on Flickr.
Pictures from Akko and Caesarea--enjoy while I take vacation!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Stuck in the Middle: Thoughts from Armageddon
You cannot understand Israel without understanding the role of the land, and you cannot understand that land until you understand its geographical context--a context from which modern Israel has largely divorced itself or which has divorced itself from Israel (depending on your politics).
First, you have to get out of your head the very modern idea of nation states. For a good part of human history, association was based on geographic proximity: family, tribe, city, kingdom, empire. The "border" was wherever the influence of a family, tribe, king, or emperor waned and was superseded by a different family, tribe, king or emperor. These areas of influence, usually commanded from a central settlement or city state, were linked by trade. Often, as in the case of the ancient cities that survive today, they were located at the hub of a major trade route where merchants could sell, trade or purchase goods that they could carry with them to the next city. No matter how homogeneous a city's population might be, the influx of traders kept up the exchange of foreign ideas and foreign goods. Cities along these trade routes grew wealthy with such luxury goods and taxes and thus became attractive to other cities or kings looking to expand their circle of influence. This explains the city of Megiddo which we know today as Armegeddon (a Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har Megiddo which means Mount Megiddo).
This map showing the ancient caravan routes to Babylonia also shows the convergence of several routes of trade in the land of Canaan, and especially at Mount Megiddo. Megiddo overlooked the main north-south thoroughfare of middle eastern trade. Go north from Megiddo and you would reach the rich city of Hazor and then Damascus or deviate towards the coast and you could ship goods out of Akko or you could trade with the Phoenicians in Tyre. Go south and you could reach the Mediterranean ports of Gaza and further south, Egypt. Boats on the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf could then access the wealth of India and China for spices and silk. Canaan was at the center of it all.
It was straight into the middle of the ancient world that God decided to put the Israelites. The promised land was the center of commerce, the buffer zone between empires (Assyrian, Egyptian and Babylonian) and pivotal to the security of the region's trade. The fact that it was dominated by one ethnic tribe that absolutely refused to assimilate to the surrounding cultures must have been especially galling. By promising the Israelites land that was already occupied by other pagan cultures, God illustrated his supremacy and made sure that all the other people got the message. News of the Israelite conquest under Joshua spread far and wide as other powerful kings of Canaan either were either slaughtered by or made subject to the upstart tribe from the desert. This tribe was different. It did not make peace with its neighbors. It did not intermarry. It prayed to one invisible god. It was set apart.
The Jewish presence in the centrally located land was the source of great conflict. Jerusalem, "Abode of Peace," has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. (As the German map illustrates, in terms of commerce, Jerusalem was at the center of the world). Subsequent conquering empires decided that the only way to control the Israelites was by forcibly removing them from the land--a policy followed by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and, eventually, the Romans.
When the British announced in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that they would "support the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," they once again introduced conflict to the region. This time the Jewish people's presence in Palestine severed the links between Arab states. It was not the Canaanites but the Palestinian Arabs who were the "people in the land."
Standing on Har Meggido, looking out across the peaceful valley, I can see several minarets in the neighboring hill towns. One exit down the highway is the West Bank. Could this be the great battleground at the end of the world? As the people here become more entrenched in their separateness (divided by religious practices, language, ethnicity, culture and history), conflict seems inevitable. I hope I'm wrong.
First, you have to get out of your head the very modern idea of nation states. For a good part of human history, association was based on geographic proximity: family, tribe, city, kingdom, empire. The "border" was wherever the influence of a family, tribe, king, or emperor waned and was superseded by a different family, tribe, king or emperor. These areas of influence, usually commanded from a central settlement or city state, were linked by trade. Often, as in the case of the ancient cities that survive today, they were located at the hub of a major trade route where merchants could sell, trade or purchase goods that they could carry with them to the next city. No matter how homogeneous a city's population might be, the influx of traders kept up the exchange of foreign ideas and foreign goods. Cities along these trade routes grew wealthy with such luxury goods and taxes and thus became attractive to other cities or kings looking to expand their circle of influence. This explains the city of Megiddo which we know today as Armegeddon (a Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har Megiddo which means Mount Megiddo).
This map showing the ancient caravan routes to Babylonia also shows the convergence of several routes of trade in the land of Canaan, and especially at Mount Megiddo. Megiddo overlooked the main north-south thoroughfare of middle eastern trade. Go north from Megiddo and you would reach the rich city of Hazor and then Damascus or deviate towards the coast and you could ship goods out of Akko or you could trade with the Phoenicians in Tyre. Go south and you could reach the Mediterranean ports of Gaza and further south, Egypt. Boats on the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf could then access the wealth of India and China for spices and silk. Canaan was at the center of it all.
It was straight into the middle of the ancient world that God decided to put the Israelites. The promised land was the center of commerce, the buffer zone between empires (Assyrian, Egyptian and Babylonian) and pivotal to the security of the region's trade. The fact that it was dominated by one ethnic tribe that absolutely refused to assimilate to the surrounding cultures must have been especially galling. By promising the Israelites land that was already occupied by other pagan cultures, God illustrated his supremacy and made sure that all the other people got the message. News of the Israelite conquest under Joshua spread far and wide as other powerful kings of Canaan either were either slaughtered by or made subject to the upstart tribe from the desert. This tribe was different. It did not make peace with its neighbors. It did not intermarry. It prayed to one invisible god. It was set apart.
The Jewish presence in the centrally located land was the source of great conflict. Jerusalem, "Abode of Peace," has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. (As the German map illustrates, in terms of commerce, Jerusalem was at the center of the world). Subsequent conquering empires decided that the only way to control the Israelites was by forcibly removing them from the land--a policy followed by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and, eventually, the Romans.
When the British announced in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that they would "support the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," they once again introduced conflict to the region. This time the Jewish people's presence in Palestine severed the links between Arab states. It was not the Canaanites but the Palestinian Arabs who were the "people in the land."
Standing on Har Meggido, looking out across the peaceful valley, I can see several minarets in the neighboring hill towns. One exit down the highway is the West Bank. Could this be the great battleground at the end of the world? As the people here become more entrenched in their separateness (divided by religious practices, language, ethnicity, culture and history), conflict seems inevitable. I hope I'm wrong.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Happy Passover--No Bread for You!
Tomorrow marks the beginning of spring break in Israel, but it already feels more like summer. Unlike in the US where spring break is about as nonreligious a holiday as you can get, in Israel spring is tied to Passover, which the Christians then tie to Easter. Since Passover follows the lunar calendar, it jumps around and this year it's pretty late into April, hence the summer-like feeling. Temps are soaring into the mid 80's as families and teenagers crowd the beaches. School got out last week and won't be back in session until 4/26. So, on the surface of it, the holiday looks very American.
However, as with everything in Israel, it's what's below the surface that matters. I haven't written about food in Israel yet because it is one of the most annoying things about life in this country. It's a democracy so as a person living in Israel I have a right to eat or not eat whatever I like. However, to eat a bacon cheeseburger in Israel you have to first find the bacon, which feels like trying to buy drugs on the black market. I'm told by other more experienced ex-pats that you can find Arab Christian butchers on a street in Haifa who will cut you a nice slab of pork, but I have yet to see a slaughtered pig anywhere--maybe they keep them in the back room.
The reason why you will not find any pork or clams or lobsters or scallops or other tasty things in your local supermarket has everything to do with kosher dietary laws which restrict the sale of non-kosher items in any store that also wants to carry kosher ones. It's a zero-sum game. In order to be kosher, the item must not be kept in the same room as anything non-kosher. A supermarket that wants to be kosher cannot allocate one half to serve the kosher patrons and one half to serve non-kosher. Anything non-kosher in the entire store renders the other items non-kosher. This is also the reason behind the yummy subsidized lunches at the cafeteria. If the cafeteria controls what I eat in the dining hall and the cafeteria cooks according to kosher laws, everything is kosher. If I brought a cheeseburger in my lunch box to the cafe (forget the bacon this time--you can't mix meat and dairy), it would render the entire cafeteria non-kosher and offend 15 orthodox Jews--so that's out of the question. So now that you understand what kosher is, please understand that in Passover, kosher goes into hyperdrive.
Way back in the days of the exodus when the Israelites had camped at the base of Mt. Sinai, Moses told the assembled crowd to commemorate their escape from slavery in Egypt by holding a yearly feast of Passover.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month between the two evenings is the lord's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the lord; seven days ye shall eat unleavened bread. (Leviticus 23:5)
This practically means that the Jewish people are to eat no leavened bread for seven days. I'm sure you've seen the Matzo cracker that substitutes for bread during this week, and although my Israeli coworkers lament that it is the most terrible thing to be forced to eat, it doesn't taste that bad. Okay, so Matzo is like the Thanksgiving turkey (appearing once a year and lasting for seven days :-), not so bad. But this is where the lawyers take over. Different rabbinical schools have different interpretations "unleavened bread" so they created the classification of "chametz" for "leavened" food which is banned. Chametz is anything made with five types of grain and anything left to ferment or rise. That means in addition to no bread or pitas, there is no pasta, no couscous, no barley, no oats and no wheat products (flour) in the supermarkets. There is no beer since beer is fermented (big no) wheat (double no). Rice is borderline and possibly a yummy substitute for Matzo for the kids. It sneaks in because although a grain, it was not cultivated in the land of Israel at the time of the exodus. Cakes are also banned, unless flourless chocolate, and depending on the orthodoxy, chemical leavening is suspect. Eggs and potatoes are permitted and so feature heavily in the Passover dishes.
But wait, there's more! Since the Torah explicitly says the Israelites are supposed to remove every crumb of leavened product from their houses, modern interpretation is that non-chametz products such as jam, if made in a factory that also produces chametz, also becomes chametz-contaminated. So the grocery stores will carry dual inventories of jam. The chametz-contaminated one goes under the sheets "for sale the rest of the year" and the one produced in a clean factory is sold expressly during Passover. You cannot purchase items from out from under the sheets, as we were warned by the checkout lady on Friday. "There will be no bread."
What's a good Christian to do? We shopped like we were going camping for forty days in the desert. Stocking up on loaves of bread, pastries, cookies, pasta, couscous, beer, we filled the shopping cart. Our fridge has never been so full. All of my coworkers and ex-pats told us, go shopping, stock the fridge. If you don't you'll be stuck eating Matzo. As aforementioned, Israel is a democracy. As a "goy" I can eat chametz during Passover--I just have to find it.
For more about chametz, check out this wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chametz
I would say it was made up or exaggerated except that my Israeli cross-cultural trainer told me personal stories about searching out crumbs of chametz with a feather and a candle when she was young.
So now it's the night of the Passover Seder and all the families are gathered together for one big meal, like Thanksgiving. The festival continues for a week which is all family time, like it or not. We get two days off from work which is a nice thing and we are going to spend the vacation going to Jordan where alcohol will be harder to find, but bread will not.
I miss Easter!
However, as with everything in Israel, it's what's below the surface that matters. I haven't written about food in Israel yet because it is one of the most annoying things about life in this country. It's a democracy so as a person living in Israel I have a right to eat or not eat whatever I like. However, to eat a bacon cheeseburger in Israel you have to first find the bacon, which feels like trying to buy drugs on the black market. I'm told by other more experienced ex-pats that you can find Arab Christian butchers on a street in Haifa who will cut you a nice slab of pork, but I have yet to see a slaughtered pig anywhere--maybe they keep them in the back room.
The reason why you will not find any pork or clams or lobsters or scallops or other tasty things in your local supermarket has everything to do with kosher dietary laws which restrict the sale of non-kosher items in any store that also wants to carry kosher ones. It's a zero-sum game. In order to be kosher, the item must not be kept in the same room as anything non-kosher. A supermarket that wants to be kosher cannot allocate one half to serve the kosher patrons and one half to serve non-kosher. Anything non-kosher in the entire store renders the other items non-kosher. This is also the reason behind the yummy subsidized lunches at the cafeteria. If the cafeteria controls what I eat in the dining hall and the cafeteria cooks according to kosher laws, everything is kosher. If I brought a cheeseburger in my lunch box to the cafe (forget the bacon this time--you can't mix meat and dairy), it would render the entire cafeteria non-kosher and offend 15 orthodox Jews--so that's out of the question. So now that you understand what kosher is, please understand that in Passover, kosher goes into hyperdrive.
Way back in the days of the exodus when the Israelites had camped at the base of Mt. Sinai, Moses told the assembled crowd to commemorate their escape from slavery in Egypt by holding a yearly feast of Passover.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month between the two evenings is the lord's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the lord; seven days ye shall eat unleavened bread. (Leviticus 23:5)
This practically means that the Jewish people are to eat no leavened bread for seven days. I'm sure you've seen the Matzo cracker that substitutes for bread during this week, and although my Israeli coworkers lament that it is the most terrible thing to be forced to eat, it doesn't taste that bad. Okay, so Matzo is like the Thanksgiving turkey (appearing once a year and lasting for seven days :-), not so bad. But this is where the lawyers take over. Different rabbinical schools have different interpretations "unleavened bread" so they created the classification of "chametz" for "leavened" food which is banned. Chametz is anything made with five types of grain and anything left to ferment or rise. That means in addition to no bread or pitas, there is no pasta, no couscous, no barley, no oats and no wheat products (flour) in the supermarkets. There is no beer since beer is fermented (big no) wheat (double no). Rice is borderline and possibly a yummy substitute for Matzo for the kids. It sneaks in because although a grain, it was not cultivated in the land of Israel at the time of the exodus. Cakes are also banned, unless flourless chocolate, and depending on the orthodoxy, chemical leavening is suspect. Eggs and potatoes are permitted and so feature heavily in the Passover dishes.
But wait, there's more! Since the Torah explicitly says the Israelites are supposed to remove every crumb of leavened product from their houses, modern interpretation is that non-chametz products such as jam, if made in a factory that also produces chametz, also becomes chametz-contaminated. So the grocery stores will carry dual inventories of jam. The chametz-contaminated one goes under the sheets "for sale the rest of the year" and the one produced in a clean factory is sold expressly during Passover. You cannot purchase items from out from under the sheets, as we were warned by the checkout lady on Friday. "There will be no bread."
What's a good Christian to do? We shopped like we were going camping for forty days in the desert. Stocking up on loaves of bread, pastries, cookies, pasta, couscous, beer, we filled the shopping cart. Our fridge has never been so full. All of my coworkers and ex-pats told us, go shopping, stock the fridge. If you don't you'll be stuck eating Matzo. As aforementioned, Israel is a democracy. As a "goy" I can eat chametz during Passover--I just have to find it.
For more about chametz, check out this wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chametz
I would say it was made up or exaggerated except that my Israeli cross-cultural trainer told me personal stories about searching out crumbs of chametz with a feather and a candle when she was young.
So now it's the night of the Passover Seder and all the families are gathered together for one big meal, like Thanksgiving. The festival continues for a week which is all family time, like it or not. We get two days off from work which is a nice thing and we are going to spend the vacation going to Jordan where alcohol will be harder to find, but bread will not.
I miss Easter!
Monday, April 11, 2011
A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey
I, like many who attended Sunday school as a child, learned that God gave to Israel "a land flowing with milk and honey," but I never stopped to think about what that meant other than a general idea of abundance. Now, in the spring, living in one of the most fertile ares of the country, I think I have a better grasp of that description. Milk and honey means lots of good pastureland filled with lots of flowers!
The purple flower is Judean viper's bugloss (which has got to be the best name in the world!)
Red flowers are corn poppies and purple ones are stork's bills
Before they could conquer Canaan, the Israelites were forced to wander in the desert for 40 years, until everyone that had been of military age when they left Egypt had passed away. This was God's punishment for their cowardice because upon scouting out the land that was good but occupied, the Israelite spies lost faith in an easy victory and tried to persuade the people with lies, telling them that they were better off in the desert.
I spent two days in the desert in southern Israel and I can't imagine spending 40 years there. It is brown and dusty even in springtime. There is nothing green except small bushes growing in the dry stream beds or wadis. Food is scarce and water is scarcer, bubbling up in springs, but not flowing far. It is quiet and completely desolate and completely safe from other people. It is my opinion that the Israelites were not so much lost in the desert as hiding out in it.
So contrast that with the "promised land," the good land of Canaan. Here's a picture of the Jezreel Valley in the lower Galilee, where the Canaanites had their royal city of Megiddo. The land is flowing with milk and honey because it is incredible pasture land, filled with grasses for livestock and flowers for bees. The Canaanites were famous horsemen and the rich plains of the Jezreel Valley enabled them to keep a well-provisioned cavalry.
The flowers here are beautiful. They carpet the hills in ever-changing colors like living works of art. No one flower has dominance so each patch of land contains new and interesting combinations of color and form. Here is just a small sample of the goodness of the land:
Not sure what the little pink ones are, but they are fabulous. The red flowers here are crown anenomes and they are rare (no black center).
I wish I could just spend my days in the fields studying this profusion of color and texture, but, sadly, I need to go to work. The flowers will be there next weekend.
As for my meditation, I think about what the Israelites wanted to give up on because they lacked faith in God. If they had not trusted God for victory over much better fed, better trained and better provisioned armies they would have remained out in the dusty desert forever. When they finally crossed over the Jordan into the territory controlled by Jericho, God said to Joshua three times, "Do not be afraid; do not be terrified." This is great wisdom. If fear overcomes your faith, you might miss the unexpected blessings of the good land.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Under Construction
Construction sites in Israel do not get the same respect they do in the US. Like driving in Israel, an individual’s actions in a construction zone are determined by a personal calculation of risk vs. reward. The straightest path goes right through the construction site so the reward (a brisk walk) often outweighs the risk of say, being run over by a bulldozer. Common sense dictates behavior and each individual bears the consequence of taking the risk.
I have first-hand experience with this nonchalance since I walk nearly every day along a beach boardwalk that will be under construction until May. At first, I skirted the torn up boardwalk, deviating to the beach whenever I saw men working. Later, after watching everyone else walk straight through the work zone, I did the same. There were a few days when they put up red tape or waist-high fencing which increased the effort to reward ratio and meant, "we really recommend that you do not walk here" so we went around. Still, even then, avid walkers were hopping the waist high fencing (only plastic) and ignoring the red tape. You don't want to walk across wet cement, but that's about the limit to caution. Besides, there are several juice bars and restaurants that would suffer greatly if their stores were inaccessible to beach goers. They have to trust that the customer will be both stubborn and creative enough to find their way through the construction maze.
The building where I work is also under construction. The top floor is unfinished which necessitates the use of cranes and cherry pickers. The cafeteria has lovely outdoor patios but there are signs up and red tape warning people not to sit outside because of the dangerous construction taking place on the roof. These signs are largely ignored and people sit outside on the patio anyway. Yesterday, while they had a man up in a cherry picker, the safety staff felt it was necessary to increase the danger level by posting more red signs and actually moving a planter in front of the doors. Thanks largely to the planter, no one went to the patio--the message came through that it was not only dangerous, it was going to involve a lot of effort. Without the planter the reward of eating outdoors on a nice day was worth the effort of walking through the door that someone had propped open + the potential risk that something could fall from the roof. Now, with the heavy planter firmly in place, the effort + the risk far exceeds the potential reward and people stay out.
In the US, we are never given so much trust as individuals to make our own risk/reward calculations. Construction sites are usually surrounded by 9 ft tall chain link fence with barbed wire tops 3 months before any work begins on the site. Clientele is driven from restaurants and the whole place shuts down. If you are allowed on site, you need a hardhat and an escort. Unlucky walkers have to detour or, heck, this is the US, they have to drive around.
Construction occurs in one big blast and once it's complete and the fences are removed the building is expected to require only minor maintenance. In Israel it seems like things are happier in a constant state of repair. Construction is not just a one-time occurrence. If walls are falling down, they can be patched. If roofs leak, buckets provide a handy solution. It seems like the only requirement in the building code (at least for beachside restaurants and bars) is that the building hasn't fallen down yet. It's not shoddy construction but rather construction as a process instead of one-time act.
So you take a risk, but living here is an acknowledged risk, and people are happy to do it. Things aren't as slick or as polished as they are in the US but maybe that brings them closer to reality. I've gotten used to walking on rubble (the entire country is full of it) and it makes you reflect on the temporary nature of existence. Today's cafe is built on a Roman road that was built on the foundations of a Phoenician village which was built on a prehistoric shell mound which means there were people here before you came and there will be people here after you leave--all of those people choosing, like you did, to run the risk of living in this very strange and ancient land.
I have first-hand experience with this nonchalance since I walk nearly every day along a beach boardwalk that will be under construction until May. At first, I skirted the torn up boardwalk, deviating to the beach whenever I saw men working. Later, after watching everyone else walk straight through the work zone, I did the same. There were a few days when they put up red tape or waist-high fencing which increased the effort to reward ratio and meant, "we really recommend that you do not walk here" so we went around. Still, even then, avid walkers were hopping the waist high fencing (only plastic) and ignoring the red tape. You don't want to walk across wet cement, but that's about the limit to caution. Besides, there are several juice bars and restaurants that would suffer greatly if their stores were inaccessible to beach goers. They have to trust that the customer will be both stubborn and creative enough to find their way through the construction maze.
The building where I work is also under construction. The top floor is unfinished which necessitates the use of cranes and cherry pickers. The cafeteria has lovely outdoor patios but there are signs up and red tape warning people not to sit outside because of the dangerous construction taking place on the roof. These signs are largely ignored and people sit outside on the patio anyway. Yesterday, while they had a man up in a cherry picker, the safety staff felt it was necessary to increase the danger level by posting more red signs and actually moving a planter in front of the doors. Thanks largely to the planter, no one went to the patio--the message came through that it was not only dangerous, it was going to involve a lot of effort. Without the planter the reward of eating outdoors on a nice day was worth the effort of walking through the door that someone had propped open + the potential risk that something could fall from the roof. Now, with the heavy planter firmly in place, the effort + the risk far exceeds the potential reward and people stay out.
In the US, we are never given so much trust as individuals to make our own risk/reward calculations. Construction sites are usually surrounded by 9 ft tall chain link fence with barbed wire tops 3 months before any work begins on the site. Clientele is driven from restaurants and the whole place shuts down. If you are allowed on site, you need a hardhat and an escort. Unlucky walkers have to detour or, heck, this is the US, they have to drive around.
Construction occurs in one big blast and once it's complete and the fences are removed the building is expected to require only minor maintenance. In Israel it seems like things are happier in a constant state of repair. Construction is not just a one-time occurrence. If walls are falling down, they can be patched. If roofs leak, buckets provide a handy solution. It seems like the only requirement in the building code (at least for beachside restaurants and bars) is that the building hasn't fallen down yet. It's not shoddy construction but rather construction as a process instead of one-time act.
So you take a risk, but living here is an acknowledged risk, and people are happy to do it. Things aren't as slick or as polished as they are in the US but maybe that brings them closer to reality. I've gotten used to walking on rubble (the entire country is full of it) and it makes you reflect on the temporary nature of existence. Today's cafe is built on a Roman road that was built on the foundations of a Phoenician village which was built on a prehistoric shell mound which means there were people here before you came and there will be people here after you leave--all of those people choosing, like you did, to run the risk of living in this very strange and ancient land.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Road Trip: Sea of Galilee
The last day of our road trip was spent on the north side of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinnereth). We drove from Haifa to Tiberias and then to the small town of Tabgha and Capernaum. Since it was the Sabbath and Tiberias was a ghost town, we had a lunch of hummus and pitas outside the local gas station/mini-mart. If you don't plan Sabbath meals ahead of time you take what you can get.
The hills were a brilliant green and a welcome contrast to the brown desert we had been in for the past three days. I am told that even these hills go brown in summer (just like California) and that now is basically the best season for any place in Israel. "Go see the Galilee while it's green! Go to the Golan while the waterfalls are flowing! Go to the desert while it's still cool enough to hike!" Listening to all of this "advice" you get the feeling that in just a few months Israel will become a very hot and boring place.
For now, however, spring is here.
We went to the Galilee to see the "town of Jesus." In the gospels Capernaum is referred to as the home base for Jesus' ministry. It was the home of Andrew and James (the "fishers of men") and the home of Peter. Archeologists uncovered some very interesting ruins along the shore of the lake including a Byzantine church centered around a 1st century room that tradition has held was the house of Peter. The church created a series of octagonal walls around the sacred space but they preserved one wall of the original house, which you can see today. A small town surrounds the church ruins and it is thought that this is the town where Jesus lived. I was looking for signs that said "Jesus Slept Here" but there were none to be had. Veronica bought her dad a vial of dirt that said "holy land" and that's about as funny as the gifts got.
The hills were a brilliant green and a welcome contrast to the brown desert we had been in for the past three days. I am told that even these hills go brown in summer (just like California) and that now is basically the best season for any place in Israel. "Go see the Galilee while it's green! Go to the Golan while the waterfalls are flowing! Go to the desert while it's still cool enough to hike!" Listening to all of this "advice" you get the feeling that in just a few months Israel will become a very hot and boring place.
For now, however, spring is here.
We went to the Galilee to see the "town of Jesus." In the gospels Capernaum is referred to as the home base for Jesus' ministry. It was the home of Andrew and James (the "fishers of men") and the home of Peter. Archeologists uncovered some very interesting ruins along the shore of the lake including a Byzantine church centered around a 1st century room that tradition has held was the house of Peter. The church created a series of octagonal walls around the sacred space but they preserved one wall of the original house, which you can see today. A small town surrounds the church ruins and it is thought that this is the town where Jesus lived. I was looking for signs that said "Jesus Slept Here" but there were none to be had. Veronica bought her dad a vial of dirt that said "holy land" and that's about as funny as the gifts got.
At any rate, the rough basalt town was not what I expected. Living in Israel and having seen Monty Python's Life of Brian, I expected Jesus to have grown up in a city of the gleaming white limestone that is so abundant here. The real Capernaum with it's rough dark basalt walls, not hewn, but "assembled" didn't fit the picture I grew up with. It was probably even smaller in its day than Nazareth and was afforded no protection. It was a simple lakeside village where people built with what they had lying about which was volcanic rock. The rocks were too weak to support windows so it must have been dark indoors. The rocks were also too weak to support heavy roofs so the roof that was moved so that the roof that was moved so that a paralytic might be lowered in front of Jesus was probably just a light thatch of palm branches. It was amazingly humble.
The black stones stand out in stark contrast to a beautiful white synagogue (also in ruins but somewhat restored) which was built during the 4th or 5th century. More about the site can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capernaum
 |
| House of Peter |
 |
| Town Ruins |
 |
| Synagogue |
Today there is a Catholic church built over the ruins of Peter's house such that it looks like a UFO. You can look through the floor at the original room.
  |
| Looking through the floor of the church into the House of Peter |
We also visited the Mount of the Beatitudes. It is a nice church on a hill just north of Capernaum with a good view over the water. It's plausible to imagine the crowds gathered on the grassy plain to listen to a rabbi's teachings. It was very pleasant since we caught the site just as it reopened for tour buses.
It was a nice end to a good trip with good friends.
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