Jerusalem Israel

Wow is Jerusalem ever not what I expected. There are tons of pilgrims and tourists here. There is fresh squeezed juice on every corner to match every denominations churches, mosques, and synagogues. There are religious buildings everywhere and they are all connected by narrow covered cave like passage ways lined with shops and restaurants between numerous, upon numerous holy sites. There are spots where Jesus, fell, died, where his mother was born, Mohammad ascended, etc.

The Old City is divided up into quarters, the Jewish, Christian, Armenian and Muslim quarters. So within each area are different denominations from that faith. Knees must be covered in holy places so you will see a scarf tied around my legs as a skirt to be a bit longer than the one I was wearing. The funny thing is men cannot wear shots so they have sarongs etc tired around them, and some don’t make it all the way around some of them.

There is a syndrome in Jerusalem that the doctors call Jerusalem Syndrome, it affects 200 Jerusalem visitors a year. It makes them think they are the second coming of Christ or a dead prophet from the past etc. They say these people have had no previous psychiatric problems and are inflicted usually for a week or so and afterwards are embarrassed that that happened to them, an interesting tidbit of information.

I went to Jesus’ tomb, Mary’s tomb the Prophets tomb, where Jesus died, the Stations of the Cross, the Mount of Olives and where he ascended, the Wailing or Western Wall and saw numerous Bar Mitzvahs  and 13 year old boys reading from the Torah for the first time.

There was a cool place where Jesus prayed the Our Father with the Disciples before he died at the Mount of Olives and around the property is the Our Father on tiles in every language. Groups come into a cave like structure and sing or chant the Our Father.

We visited the Israel Museum. It was a large modern building and had great exhibits. There are tons of famous pieces of art work there and many pictures and information on Jewish life and lots of archeological artifacts.

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