Memory Flashes
High Lights
There were the moments when the
stimuli of particular places produced an immediate reaction. Sometimes the
reaction was fleeting. It came. It was there. It went. Yet, as I sit here now
they once again invade my consciousness. Some Samples:
a. Walking down those layers of
civilization at Meggido, each one thriving, fighting, dieing, and now silent as
an archeological dig.
b. Masada, vacation and security of
Herod, then place of resistance and death each and everyday of Jewish
defenders. What if I had been among them? What if I had been the leader? Would
I have made the same decision? Is there any circumstance under which I could
kill my family to save it from greater torture?
c. The gardens of the Bahai shrine.
How beautiful nature can be, all tended and nurtured and laid out with only one
goal: to be beautiful. It stirred my memory of a book written 3 decades ago by
a famous Biblical scholar, Jaroslav Pelikan in which he challenged me to answer
the question: What is finally the true, the good and the beautiful?
d. The Mt. of the Beatitudes with
Edie’s moving reading of those beatitudes. Blessed are the meek, the
peacemakers… … and the quiet prayer, Lord let me claim those blessings.
e. Quaram, the Dead Sea Scrolls,
the Museum of the Books. Centuries of written fragments miraculously confirm
and then testify to the amazing accuracy of the Biblical texts over all these
years. Can this all just be chance? What an amazing example of the providence
of God.
f. Sitting near the Garden Tomb,
listening to our evangelical guide, and then seeing The Place of the Skull.
Maybe this is Golgotha.
g. I had never heard the theory of
Jesus being kept in a “dungeon” after his Maundy Thursday arrest, his trial
before Caiaphas - and awaiting the morning trial before Pontius Pilate. The
site makes a pretty compelling case. Could it be? Yes, yet I doubt.
h. Just wondering. The security at
Tel Avis as we left was tight. The questions I was asked were “no nonsense”.
e.g. Did anyone join this group who had not been a member of your church as
long as the rest? Why is she not with you now? Do you know where she is at this
moment? Aha, so someone gave you a gift (a small oil lamp given to me by the
shop owner in Bethlehem). And after all of this, and a thorough bag inspection,
yet we were not asked to remove our shoes.
i. Just wondering: Did the Golden
Tulip Hotel in Tiberius change its alcohol policy after we left - namely
free beer, wine and Israel produced liquor (all included in the price of the
room)?
Low Lights
I’ve listed some highlights, some
highly inspirational moments. Naturally there were a few matters that did not
make it to the top ten list:
1. The Blue Bay Hotel in Netanya and our first night check-in. We did not get
off to a good start with accommodations. It was close to 7:00 p.m. when we
arrived. We were told our rooms would be ready. They weren’t. We were told to
go have dinner and then our rooms would be ready. We did. The rooms still
weren’t ready. Finally, everyone had their keys, but no bellmen to take luggage
to the assigned rooms. I hadn’t even gotten to our room before my roommate Ken
came with the news, “Mel, did you know that we are sharing the same bed?” When
I protested to the manager she was surprised at my displeasure. She said, “Sir,
I gave you a nice room with a nice view!” When my protests continued she said,
“Well, okay. I’ll send up a roll-away cot for you.” My protests continued.
Eventually she assigned Ken and me a room way beyond the swimming pool which I
had great difficulty finding in the dark - and to which a bellman did not want
to accompany me.
Of course, by this time I learned
that virtually every two-some of unrelated persons all had rooms with
one double bed - and we never did get satisfaction.
The answer was the same, “You folks
arrived on the Sabbath. Jewish people can’t drive until after sunset. They
don’t check out until after sunset. You are unreasonable to expect rooms to be
ready and all bed arrangements right. You should know better than to arrive on
the Sabbath.”
I didn’t sleep all night, even
called at 1:30 a.m. to complain about a malfunctioning air conditioning system.
The same person who thought she had given us good rooms answered the phone. She
was consistent. “Well, we certainly can’t do anything about that at 1:30 in the
morning. You must have messed with the controls!”
The breakfast was wonderful. The
next hotel had rooms ready for us but we didn’t really care because free beer,
wine and Israel produced gin was just waiting for us, as was the $7.00 a bottle
tonic. But we didn’t complain.
The wine and beer even flowed from
the spigot into water glass-sized glasses. The Calvary group (including me)
could handle that!
2. The food. I eat what is set before me. When I travel to a foreign
country I don’t expect American menus. The meals by and large worked great for
me. Yes, I had to turn my eyes away from most of the breakfast items at the
Bethlehem Hotel. I regret that Bob and Judie got some salmonella and were
really sick for a few days after their return. I learned that Ken has an
amazing appetite and capacity for herring. In Jerusalem Olga Nawas brought me a
dish filled with sweets. I said to her, “Wow!. Thanks! I’ll have a hard time
finishing all this before we leave Israel.” She responded, “I brought it for
your wife!”
3. Floating in the Dead Sea. Being afraid of water from my earliest years I am a
very poor swimmer and an even worse floater. I imagined it would be great to
calmly lie on my back and float serenely on the Dead Sea. Wrong! It was a
slimey, dirty, slippery mess. I did’t have the courage and the patience of
Suzanne to get beyond the waves near the shore. She had a great float. Ken and
I hung on just to make it and were happy to get showered and back on the bus.
So I never floated - in the Dead Sea - or anywhere else.
4. Biggest disappointment - and
yet. I was not surprised and yet was
somewhat saddened by the commercialization of all the sacred sites, from the
Annunciation to the Ascension. The hubbub around the Holy Sepulcher was
especially disturbing, making it almost impossible to be reverently respectful.
And yet, suppose no one ever came
to the sites. Suppose nobody ever visited Nazareth, Bethlehem, the Mt. of
Olives! Suppose the story of the life of Christ was a forgotten one. Suppose no
one cared. That would be the bigger tragedy.
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