Weekend
The weekend was very uneventful. I went shopping on Friday afternoon. I went to the supermarket down the street and bought essentials. Then went to the fruit & vegetable store. And I still had to go to the next door shop to pick up a few other things. What I need to figure out is where you get fresh meat and where the bakery is. I joke with people here about missing Wal-Mart where you can do all of your shopping in one place.
I had planned to go with someone to their church Sunday morning. I made the mistake of not finding out what time and where to meet him. I expected him to knock on my door when he was ready to go. Later I realized that all was quiet in the dorm and I had been left behind. I will try not to make that mistake again.
Arabic Class 9/29
Arabic class went okay. There are times when the teacher gives us a few minutes to memorize a conversation in pairs. I did okay with mine. Then there was an exercise we were supposed to do and I just didn't understand. We were suppose to take a conversation and then change it to make it about ourselves and someone else in the class. I felt like an idiot, but I couldn't do it because I don't know anyone well enough in the class. He helped me through it, but I still felt stupid. I did okay when he called on me to recite a noun with pronoun endings.
At the end of class we worked on numbers. I had studied them in the afternoon, so I did okay. He gave each of us a CD that apparently has him reading the text of the book. I'm glad to have that. I would like to buy the second book and CD at the end of the term so I can keep studying.
It turns out that Ramadan is ending and Muslims are out shopping. Where my Arabic class is held is a suq with many shops. The street was very busy. I was sort of laughing to myself. I came here to see Palestinians and I'm getting an eye full. Apart from the merchants shouting out to people to buy their goods, the people are quiet, friendly, and courteous. The street may have some clutter and be streaked with the result of years of traffic, but people are clean and dressed nicely. Friends greet each other with a hand shake or maybe even a kiss on each cheek, men and women both. Even in the midst of a shopping spree, Bethlehem is a very hospitable place.
Daily Life
My daily life is structured by the morning tea time at 10:30 am and the lunch at 1:00 pm. Since many people leave home early in the morning in order to commute to Bethlehem, there are, what we would call, sub sandwiches for sale. Many people buy a sandwich and put it in the sandwich press to heat it up.
The lunch is usually rice with some kind of topping and pita bread. On the table will be bowls of "salad" to add to your plate and what we would call a "relish" tray of pickles and olives. I don't have any indication that anyone is paying for the lunch. I sat with the Dean of Administration during a lunch and it sounded like he tries to get people to pay something for lunch – but no one does. That's my kind of common meal.
It gets dark here in Bethlehem by 6pm. It's now 5pm and the sun is beginning to set behind the mountain west of us. This usually brings with it a period of strong breeze. There have been some nights that the wind is blowing so hard my curtains are sailing up in the air. Beautiful sleeping weather. But in the morning the air is usually very still.
I get that sense that Palestinian Christians here get annoyed with hearing the meuzin call Muslims to prayer. I can hear the chanting of the Qur'an, but to me it's like listening to Gregorian chant. One person said he can sit in his living room and hear well enough to listen to the Friday sermon. I suppose, if you could understand Arabic, that might be distracting. During the past six months I listened to Muslim chanting of the Qur'an as a meditative or spiritual practice. So it doesn't bother me the way it does the Christian residents here. I recorded a minute of sound from my window (mp3).
Trip to Jerusalem – 10/2 
Rami arrived this morning at about 9 am to take me on a half-day tour of Jerusalem. Rami has majored in Bible geography and archaeology and is a trained tour guide. Besides being a knowledgeable guide, he's also a wonderful person to be with and to talk with.
Rami took the back roads into Jerusalem that avoid the main highways with their checkpoints. Rami is a Jerusalem citizen, so he is able to move around quite freely. Just looking at the scenery is spectacular, but I often was so engrossed in our conversation that I didn't notice much of what was around us.
Rami pulled over to the side of the road so I could get a good view of the old city of Jerusalem, the site of the Jerusalem temple, and the al-Aqsa mosque with its gleaming gold dome. He explained that the Mt. of Olives is a chain of mountains along this ridge.
As we descended toward the Christian sites on the Mt. of Olives we stopped to take a picture. Here was an opportunity to have a camel ride. I just couldn't see taking a camel ride around a parking lot. If I'm going to ride a camel, I want it to be in the desert not on a city street with a man leading the camel around.
We traveled on down the road, which is a very narrow path between stone walls. One could easily imagine this to be an ancient path people would have traveled in the first century.
We stopped at the site of the Garden of Gethsemane. Rami showed me around and talked about the ancient olive trees, some of which might be as much as 1,000 years old. I went into the church where Rami said was the stone on which Jesus was thought to have prayed and wept. The inside of the church is kept dark to symbolize the darkness of the night of Christ's suffering. It's too bad actually, because the byzantine artwork was quite beautiful. There was a Latin mass going on as people came walking through. I couldn't find the rock anywhere. There was a rock in one corner, so I wondered if that was "the" rock. Rami didn't go inside with me; in fact he said he would go back to the van because it wouldn't be good for him to hang around in front of the building. He told me later that the rock was in the center where the group of people were gathered around in worship.
I didn't spend much time in the church. I stopped for a minute and paid two shekels to relieve myself. There's just something funny about paying shekels to use the bathroom. There's no sign posted. There's just an Arab guy telling people it costs two shekels once they get there. You think you could haggle over the price, especially if you weren't going to spend much time in there, if you know what I mean.
We must have stopped again where I took some more pictures of the eastern side of the temple mount. It is a spectacular view. I had hoped to get a closer view today, but our timing was off and the mosques were not open. I hope to make another trip and be able to visit the Mosque of Omar and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
We parked the van near the southwest of the temple mount and walked along an old wall. You could see at the bottom the ancient wall, then stones in the wall that were reused Herodian stones, and what remains above are the later building work from the Ottoman period. What was also interesting were the ancient ritual baths (mikvaoth) that lined the walkway. I was surprised to see how many tombs were also there. I hadn't realized tombs were so close to where people walked.
We decided not to go through the archaeological park, but to walk alongside toward the western wall, known by Jews as the Wailing Wall. An odd thing happened here. There was a young Muslim couple walking in front of us. A woman was coming from the other direction and bumped into the Muslim woman. It was more like a shoulder block by a football player. The older woman didn't seem to care one bit what she had done. It even looked intentional, but there was no way of knowing. I was shocked. The Muslim woman turned and looked at the woman but then turned back around and kept walking. This will stick in my mind. Even if it was an accident, it was inhuman to bump into someone like that without any apology.
The southwestern corner of the temple mount shows some of the original stone from the temple wall. Here is the area where archaeologists discovered a stone with an inscription leading to the conclusion that it might have been the top corner stone, the so-called "pinnacle" of the temple. To the right is the southern wall where steps lead up to the Huldah Gates. We walked around to the left toward the western wall.
We went through a metal detector to enter the courtyard. The small section of the western wall, the Wailing Wall, is a bustle of activity. To the right is a women's section and on the left is the men's section. There are many plastic tables and chairs giving the area the feel of a piazza. On the men's side was a group celebrating a boy's bar mitzvah. Standing at the wall were various people in prayer, some chanting prayers and bowing. There were of course Israeli police around everywhere.
Rami brought me to a place where we could walk around in the old city. We wanted to have lunch, so Rami took me to a wonderful Arab diner. He knew the people, some of them having connections to where he goes to church. I ordered another falafel sandwich. The problem is ordering a falafel sandwich is like going to Subway. You're supposed to tell them what you want inside the pita bread along with the falafel. I was about to get up to look at the display case so I could point to things, but the guy waiting on me asked if he should make it like he likes it. I gave him the thumbs up, the universal sign that in Arabic means tayyib. I asked Rami if we could have our picture taken in front of the restaurant. The man whom he met outside was actually a well-to-do businessman or political official. It was actually amazing how many people Rami knew, which shouldn't be so surprising since he grew up in this part of Jerusalem. What was even more surprising was our running into his mother-in-law.
We went walking through the buildings. Rami tried to explain to me about the various sections of the city: the Jewish quarter, the Christian quarter, the Armenian quarter, and the Muslim quarter. If I'm remembering correctly, the area he showed me was a section that had been a place where Christian Palestinians lived, but Jews drove them out and rebuilt the homes for themselves. It was a beautiful walk through the narrow street, an urban canyon with women walking with children or pushing strollers with infants.
We came out on an area where you could see first century ruins. The main street, the cardo, with the Roman columns running down the center and shops lining either side were visible below the current street level. We saw further remnants of the cardo. At another place there were open excavations of an ancient wall thought to have been built during the time of Hezekiah.
We then spent some time looking through a museum built around the remains of a first-century aristocrat's house. The lower levels were built further down the slope of a hill, while the upper-level living spaces were further up. The lower levels contained much of the water for the house, a cistern, baths, and the ritual mikvaoth. The floors contained mosaic tile floors with simple but elegant geometrical shapes. Some of the walls of the rooms showed remnants of the fresco wall-paintings. In many ways the rooms of the house resembled those I saw in Italy a few months ago. The architectural had similarities but the artistic subject was different. There were no images of people. The wall-painting seemed to imitate the type of stonework with inlaid edges. Unfortunately the museum had a "no photography" sign posted, so I didn't take any pictures.
When we left this part of the city, we traveled to south-western Jerusalem to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Park. I was most interested in the areas in which the park commemorated the "righteous gentiles" who sacrificed themselves on behalf of Jewish people during the Holocaust. It was particularly meaningful for me to take a picture beside the memorial. To me it was also significant to be there with a Palestinian. The current Middle East conflict is directly related to the mass murder of Jews in Europe and their desire to live in peace and security. But in many ways the Palestinians now experience what the Jews did in Europe, even to the extent of all of Gaza being a concentration camp in which people are being slowly strangled to death. What Rami and I have in common is being a follower of a Jew who gave his life for others. One of the highest callings of our faith is to be willing to lay our lives down for others.
Our ride back to Bethlehem was uneventful. We only spent about six hours in Jerusalem but it felt like a lifetime, millennia of history packed into a few short hours.
Class Day & a Quick Trip
I think I'm getting better at making it through the class time. Whenever I mention something that is a difficult theological issue, there are some students who want to discuss or debate the issue. These are important theological topics, but they are the typical ones Christians have argued about for two thousand years. Most of the students have not yet had systematic theology, so they are very eager to figure out what they believe. On the one hand, they are deeply influenced by what Muslims teach about Islamic doctrine and what Muslims teach against Christianity. They also have learned about Christian doctrine from the various catholic traditions. At the end of class some people were debating the nature of Mary and the sinlessness of Christ. I wasn't going to try to explain that one.
At lunch some people wanted to know more about my views on the book of Hebrews. So I tried to give them the basics of my approach to Hebrews. They seemed genuinely interested and wanted to have a time when I could give a public presentation of my work on Hebrews. A couple of days ago, by the way, my editor emailed me saying that my book has been printed, he had a copy sitting on his desk, and he said it looked great. Now I have to wait a few days before I get to see what it looks like on the Wipf and Stock web site and hopefully Amazon.com.
A visitor here for a few days is from New Zealand. He works with Tearfund , a Christian aid agency, and is on his way to a conference in Europe somewhere. I joined him on a quick trip around Bethlehem. It turned out to be about the same tour as Rami gave me a week ago, when we looked at Solomon's Pools. Our guide this time was Atallah, the Dean of Administration at Bethlehem Bible College (BBC). He drove south on Hebron Rd. and pointed out the refugee camps. I knew there was a camp across the street from BBC, but didn't realize that the buildings we saw on the other side of a vacant lot is actually the sort of apartment building complexes that have grown up around this refugee camp. I suppose we might refer to it as a "ghetto." There's a very narrow street that runs through the middle of it. People who live there are still waiting to be able to return to their homes that were either taken over by Israeli's or to the land where their homes once stood.
We also passed by a vacant lot that at one time had been the Palestinian Police station. Israeli bombers blew it up. There's a stark contradiction when Palestinians are blamed for not being able to provide security but Israeli's destroy the police infrastructure.
We went further down Hebron Rd. to the place where the Israeli's have a gate. Whenever they choose they can close the gate and prevent Palestinians from leaving. Nearby you can see the new highway the Israeli's built for the settlers to get quickly to Jerusalem.
