Acre? Akko? Akka?

In a spur of the moment decision, my friends and I made hostel arrangements and hopped on the bus to go to the small city of Akko. While not impossible to get to, it’s not easy. After a two hour bus to Haifa and then an hour bus to Akko, we arrived in the tiny bus station and made our way to the hostel. Usually we might try to wander around the city, but when we got to the Old City, most everything was shut down by 7:30. The hostel was FREEZING! Granted the outside world was rainy and cold, but the stone building was even colder than outside. We thought that we had to pay for heat, so we didn’t say anything for a day until it was so cold that we really couldn’t take it anymore. Then we found out that they had just forgotten to give us the remote…. The actual Old City was gorgeous, but a lot of it was still under excavation. We first went to the Prisoners Museum, which was a British fortress and prison where Haganah and Etzel members were held prisoner and executed. We got to see the Prisoner’s cells, including the special treatment cells and the death row cells. We got to walk with the “prisoners” as they did their exercise in the yard and got to see the gallows where members of radical Jewish groups were executed. Moving on from the Underground Prisoners Museum we went to the Hospitaller’s fortress and entered the vaulted halls of the Middle Ages. The courtyard of the fortress is still being excavated and there but it was still fascinating how preserved that this was. It was all buried was buried and to form the foundations for several buildings that were built on top of it. My favorite part was wandering though the little tunnels underneath the city… which was actually the sewer system.  But it was still really cool! Especially since we came up out of the tunnels in a completely random part of the city, which actually happened a second time when we went to the Templar Tunnels. The tunnels were built after Saladin’s defeat and were intended to be a safe passage for pilgrims in case of another attack.  Luckily the old city does have fantastic signs and we were able to find our way back fairly quickly. Before heading to our next stop, we went to what is supposed to be the best hummus restaurant in Israel. It actually wasn’t bad, which is rather high praise, considering I don’t even really like hummus. It was really busy and I’ve never seen waiters balance and carry so much stuff at one time! From the restaurant we went to the old Turkish Bath with a rather cool multimedia presentation, but other than that it was a bit of a let down. :P I was a fascinating old city that was surrounded by so much history.

Yad Vashem

There’s so much to see in Jerusalem itself, so when there’s weekends that my travel buddies and I either have too much work, didn’t get around to making reservations in a hostel or just ran out of food so we have to spend the morning at the market getting groceries, there’s still a lot to do and see in the city limits. It’s a little restrictive since, so many things still close early on Friday. One of the things that is always on the Must See list is Yad Vashem. The Holocaust Museum is very much what you would expect: depressing. It takes the history of the Holocaust from a distinctly Jewish perspective that is designed to make the Museum a truly emotional visit. Yad Vashem itself is in a beautiful part of the mountains on the outskirts of Jerusalem and the view before you enter the museum is absolutely breathtaking. As you enter the museum one of the first exhibits is the remains of things that were burned by the Nazis when the Allies began liberating the camps. Photographs, letters, watches. All these things were remnants of the lives of people that seem so easy to destroy. The other exhibits examine the rise of Nazism and anti- Semitism from propaganda to anti Semitic board games and yellow stars. The museum winds itself through the different rooms so it’s impossible to miss something. It also makes it a pain with all the tour groups since they are impossible to get around them.  As the path takes you though the museum it descends into the history of the Holocaust from their isolation in the Ghettos to the beginnings of the mass murders during Operation Barbossa, made even more haunting by videos of survivors and the remnants left behind of those that has died.  Leaving the main gallery take you to the Hall of Names, which commemorates all the Jews that died in the Holocaust, with 600 photographs and short biographies of the victims. Perhaps the most moving and depressing part of the entire museum was the Children’s Memorial. To get to it, we had to walk though a stunning garden and into this tiny underground tunnel into a pitch black hall. It is so dark that it is impossible to see anything, even after your eyes adjust. As we reached the end, we could hear a female voice reading off names, locations and ages of all these children at time of death. Finally, after coming out of the pitch blackness there’s little pinpricks of light ahead and entering the main room, there’s hundreds of little lights surrounding the path in this pitch dark room while the woman kept reading. There’s one candle in the center of the exhibit and the light from it is reflected around the room by mirrors, creating this illusion of  these hundreds of stars symbolizing all these children.

Taybeh

I had an interesting predicament last weekend, of trying to find something to do. My usual compatriots had decided to go on a religious retreat in the Negev Desert. I had opted out due to have no desire to have a particularly religious weekend, and I had more than enough homework to keep me occupied. However, there is only so long that I can stand looking at the walls of my apartment, and before I went crazy and decided to clean the bathroom, I started looking into activities. I had been told about JStreet U at the beginning of the semester, however I was never able to attend an event. JStreet is an organization that works for an equal settlement of the Arab- Israeli conflict that has the approval of both sides. For more information about their goals, vision, and objectives go to: http://jstreet.org/jerusalem. The trip that I went on was billed as a trip to a Palestinian Brewery, but our first stop was to the Latin Church in Taybeh, which was amazing. Taybeh is the ancient city of Ephraim, which is mentioned in the Bible seven times and was the city that Jesus went to after raising Lazarus from the dead. Taybeh is the last completely Christian village in Palestine and is home to three Churches: the Greek Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic. We visited the Roman Catholic Church, and got a tour from Farther Raed Abusahlia of the Church and the Proverb House. The church has many fantastic paintings  depicting Jesus raising Lazarus, Jesus and the Samaritan, Saint George and Saint Michael. The mosaic behind the altar of the church depicts Jesus being welcomed by the citizens of Taybeh- Ephraim.  Perhaps the most unique part of the church is the icon of Notre- Dame of Ephraim, which depicts  the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus and a pomegranate. Besides just being an awesome fruit, in the Middle East the pomegranate is a symbol of fruitfulness and fecundity. According to the lore of Taybeh, Jesus told a parable using the pomegranate to explain that to reach the sweetness of his resurrection, he had to go through the bitterness of his passion. This small church is also trying to make a big impact in the world by selling Peace Lamps to put in every church around the world. “As our last resort, we address our prayer for peace in the Holy Land to the Lord with a simple and symbolic idea…Our goal is to place a Peace Lamp in every single church in the world and to unite as many Christians and people of faith in a common prayer for peace in the Holy Land”. I loved how Fr. Raed put it, that we will be prodding God over and over again until he gives us the possibility for peace. Also, attached to the church was what Fr. Raed called the Parable House. It was a three hundred year old Arabic House that was used to  explain parts of the New Testament. For example, the story of Jesus’s birth.  How it was explained was that it was unlikely that Arab hospitality would have allowed a family to turn away a pregnant woman. However she couldn’t stay with the other women and children since she was about to give birth. They could offer her the stable, which was in the house, below the main floor.  The stable would be warm and soft, and further proof was offered that the woman who had lived in the parable house had given birth to all her children in the stable. After leaving the church, we headed to the Taybeh Brewing Company, which is the first microbrewery in Palestine. It’s a small operation, hence the name, but they market everywhere though East Jerusalem and Palestine. We got a tour of the brewery and some samples as they explained their business and the intricacies of getting supplies in and product out through the checkpoints. It was a fascinating experience and I’m hoping to go back.