RTWbis

Today was a somber day in Jerusalem -- weatherwise and otherwise. Our guide was Mohammed, a Palestinian Arab whose family has lived on Mt. Scopus east of the Old City for generations. He has 8000 cousins of varying degrees of proximity, as many of his ancestors had 10 children. He, however, has one child, a daughter, and does not intend to have any more, because he wants to pay for her eductaiton so she can go to university. Mohammed said that if the Israelis are lucky to have the the Palestinian problem, because without it, there would be civil war between the OrthodoxJews and the others. We started with a visit to Yad Vashem -- the Holocaust Museum.The human figures in this model of Crematorium II at Birkenau are about 3 inches tall. Next we visited the Israel Museum, where we saw this teak altar screen from a 16th century synagogue in Kochi, Kerala. And on the way to Tel Aviv, we stopped in Ein Karem for a visit to the Church of St John the Babptis.  Unfortunate...

40 degrees with intermittent rain. Had to buy gloves. Tour of the Old city was nonetheless well worth it.  Our guide was with Ibrahim ghazzawi.ibrahim@gmail.com). Ibraham is muslim, grew up in the Muslim quarter of the Old City, owns a bus company. He knows a lot about the roots of Christianity, Islam and Judaism in Jerusalem, and so his tours are faith-oriented. He himself is not interested in the faiths, but he believes in God, whom he knows he cannot know. Here's a view of the Old City and the weather in which we visited it. Other highlights include: A view through some gardens of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount., from where Mohammed flew up to heaven. This is a no-go zone for non-Muslims. Here's an image from the station of the cross known as Ecce Homo in Latin, but the Greek shown on the image is Ide O Anthropos. This hangs in the church marking the station of the cross where Jesus was tortured. These murals are on the ceiling of the G...