A happy surpirse

Following our guide -

home!

On our last day in Jerusalem, our guide’s wife invited our whole busload of Americans and Canadians to have afternoon tea and cookies in their apartment.

What fun to be welcomed into their home. To be, for an hour or so, in a family – a warmth and affection worlds away from hotels and buses and tourist stops. To hear who’s who in family photographs, to inquire about vacations and hobbies.

Suddenly conversation ceases as the sobering answer to a naive question is the holocaust. Only our hosts’ grandparents survived. None of the grandparents’ siblings or family. Suddenly the barbarity of genocide past, hits home. We are talking to direct descendents of a few survivors. This country is full of such descendents.

The hosts deftly move the conversation to lighter topics. We snap their photos. It’s time to return to the bus, and dinner, and the airport.

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Picture this large tour bus on a small quiet residential street in Jerusalem, moving carefully between cars parked on both sides. We spill out, following Mishi like children behind the pied piper.

Police in a squad car, blocked behind our bus, beckon Mishi who they know is a tour guide. He has a brief conversation, then returns to the sidewalk grinning.

“What was that about?” we ask.

“They asked me, ‘What could possibly be of historical interest in this neighborhood?’”

“I said, ‘I am bringing them to my home!”

It was truly special.

I am smiling still.

Travel broadens

Sunrise on Galilee

(Lake Kinneret)

People ask, “What did you learn on this trip?”

I ask them, “How many hours do you have?”

I’ll try to keep it brief. Here are a few concepts that totally knocked my sox off. Some may be old hat to you, but they were new to me. Bear in mind that our guide in Israel was a Jew, so we saw history, geography, politics and peace through his eyes.

1. Israel is celebrating its 60th birthday as a country this year. In that short time its people have taken a desert and turned much of it into a garden. A “tree department” is reforesting the land. Thousands of years ago, the hills were forested.

2. Bible archeology sheds new light on some Bible “traditions” we have grown up with. For me that’s OK. Aside from the initial jolt, it doesn’t matter to me that Jesus’ dad, Joseph, was a stonemason rather than a carpenter – due to the fact that in his day there were not many trees to keep carpenters in business. Stonemasonry was an honorable profession.

3. The holocaust is recent and very real history for most of the Jews in Jerusalem. They can tell you the names of family members who perished in labor and extermination camps, and also the names of those few who survived – usually their grandparents.

4. One solution for Mid East peace is water. Our guide firmly believes, “Give me enough water, and people willing to work hard, and I can guarantee peace.”

5. The tinderbox of the Mid East, and thereby the whole world, is religion.

Temple Mount - built on the remains
of the Jewish Temple

6. Jesus’ Jewishness. I guess I knew, but it just never penetrated – Jesus was a Jewish boy who became a rabbi, and was crucified as a rabbi. There was nothing new in what he taught (he came not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them). Rather he was highlighting what was important and rebuking what men had imposed on their fellows.

7. I became more aware of unfortunate translation errors in the King James Bible. Don’t get me wrong; I love King James. But it is sometimes misleading because of uninspired translators and uninspired scribes who made the copies.

8. This trip redefined “old.” In America if a building is 200 or more years old, it’s historic. In Israel we saw streets, theaters, aqueducts, and grain storage facilities constructed by Herod the Great – the brilliant engineer and ruthless ruler – who reigned during Jesus’ lifetime. We’re talking 2000 years ago.

2000 years ago, this aqueduct

provided fresh water

to Caesarea by the Sea

9. We saw mounds of cities built upon the remains of older cities until it formed a high hill. Sometimes as many as 20 civilizations had called one spot home over the centuries.

10. Americans really stand out. Is it our cameras? The Nike shoes? The baseball hats? Body language?

11. A Palestinian merchant surprised us on November 5, smiling and chanting, “Obama! Obama!” Our President-elect has indeed struck a chord of hope for peace overseas.

12. I gained a firsthand understanding, after a camel ride in Jordan, of why camels are called “ships of the desert.” When atop a camel, you sit high as though on the deck of a ship. Their gait rocks you gently, as a boat might rock on the sea. Of course camels also traveled as cargo caravans long ago, as ships carry cargo on seas.

There's more, but that'll wait for another post.