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Published: July 23rd 2011
Last week we went to Bethlehem. We had a nice tour guide named Yamen who showed us the separation wall. The wall was covered in political graffiti and has many words of peace and power. I spray painted a peace sign a heart and my name on the wall with all the other graffiti. Yamen brought a bag filled with marbles and balloons and together we handed them out to the kids in the Aida refugee camp. Yamen showed us how the West Bank is broken up into three zones area a, b and c. Area a is controlled by the Palestinians, area b is shared control between the Palestinians and the Israels and area c is controlled by the Israelis. Then we went to the church of the nativity were we saw a Catholic procession to the cave where Jesus was said to have been born. Our guide explained how there is a lot of confusion among Christians because it was said he was born in a manger. It turned out that in those days people used caves AS mangers. So everyone is right! it was very spiritual hearing everyone sing and light candles. The next day we went
back to Jerusalem and did the tunnel tours. The tunnels run along the entire western wall . All we can see of the western wall is one tiny section, but really, it is the length of three football fields. People built over the street by the wall so that overtime most of the wall was underground. An archeologist found the wall back in the 1800s. The tunnels took 9 years to uncover and that was with hundreds of people working on it . We stayed in Jerusalem so we could see it at twilight and we happen to see a famous rabbi who had come from Eastern Europe many years ago. People were very happy to see him and their faces lit up when he looked at them. At around 7 o’clock we heard the Muslim call to prayer.
Later in the week we drove up to the Golan Heights where we went to the Gomla nature reserve. We saw griffin vultures there. We also drove around Majal Shams, a Drues village where we bought cherries from a Drues woman. The next day we went to Tzfat were we saw a doll museum that an Israeli women made all by
herself. The dolls were very beautiful and were all different colors and sizes . We also went to several different temples, all of them unique and holy. One synagog had a chandelier from the holocaust and another had ancient books used for studying. The last thing we went to was to the old Jewish cemetery where many famous mystic rabbis are buried. Several of the tombs were painted blue. At the most famous tomb, people had tied their head scarfs to the trees and lit candles in the tombs.
I'm so happy I was able to come to Israel. It is something I will never forget!
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