During my first week in Israel I took an EGGED organized tour to JERUSALEM, the capital of Israel (though most countries reject it's status as capital). This was a tour of the Old City, which was controlled by Jordan from 1948 until 1967, and is now controlled by Israel. First we went to The Western Wall, the last remenant of the ancient Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans. There were several Bar Mitzvahs going on in front of the wall, and there were the usual bunch of Orthodox Jews saying prayers, singing, and swinging their heads all around. Watch out for guys here who will try to tell you about the wall and then expect a donation for their Yeshiva (bible school). If they are rude, just say "LECH MEE PO!". I wrote a little prayer on a note and stuck it in the wall (this is the tradition), and then our tour group headed up above the wall to the Temple Mount.
The Temple Mount is the site of the ancient Jewish temple, the center of ancient-Jewish life, but now it is the site of the Islamic Dome of the Rock and the El Akse mosque. It is the most holy site in Judaism, and the 3rd holiest in Islam... who should get it? Good question. The Dome and the Mosque are gorgeous. After the Temple Mount, we walked around the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, seeing ruins from King David's times, and later Roman times, etc. I really had to wonder how Israelis could stand being barred from the ancient section of Jerusalem before 1967. I mean, the Israelis had West Jerusalem, but this isn't the Jerusalem of the bible, it's basically a different city right beside Jerusalem. It almost seems like they were trying to fool themselves by calling it Jerusalem... I guess there's power in a name.
Next we followed the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is a really ugly building, but it's interesting none of the less because of it's somewhat possible status as the site of Jesus's crucifixion. After the church we exited the Old City for Mount Zion. As the group ate lunch I went to to see King David's tomb. Okay, listen up: IF YOU EVER GO TO KING DAVID'S TOMB YOU WILL ENCOUNTER SLIMY PEOPLE WHO TRY TO RIP YOU OFF ANY WAY THEY CAN. WHEN YOU APPROACH THE BUILDING, A MAN WILL PROBABLY BLOCK YOUR PATH AND TELL YOU THAT THERE IS AN ENTRANCE FEE OF 10 SHEKELS. DON'T PAY, IT'S FREE! THEIR ALTERNATE SCAM IS TO TELL YOU THAT YOU NEED A KIPA TO ENTER THE TOMB, AND THAT YOU HAVE TO BUY ONE FROM THEM. THERE ARE FREE PAPER KIPAS INSIDE THE TOMB. PAY NOTHING! Okay. (Obviously I fell for it, otherwise I wouldn't be SHOUTING)
Next we left Jerusalem and entered Bethlehem (right on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem). We saw little except for the Church of the Nativity, which again is ugly but it's interesting to stand there in the place where Jesus is supposed to have been born. The final stop of the trip was Yad Vashem, the holocoast memorial. This memorial is horrifying, but I had to visit it to give my respect both to the millions of victims and to the "righteous gentiles" who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis. If you visit Yad Vashem, please don't talk inside the children's memorial like the bus tourists I saw there.
I returned to Jerusalem many times during my four months in Israel, and every visit held lots of interesting experiences. Once I was staying in a hostel in the Muslim section of the Old City, and I went for a walk to buy a snack. While I was on my way I heard people yelling in Hebrew through a radio, then three Israeli soldiers run past me and turned up an alleyway. So you know what I did...yep, I followed them! I followed them up some steps and saw a group of about 15 Palestinian teens and 15 Orthodox Jewish teens standing face-to-face, yelling at each other and pushing each other. A Palestinian spat on one of the Jews, and then everyone's fists started flying. The soldiers were trying to pull them apart but so far hadn't succeeded. Then one of the Jewish kids picked up a walkie-talkie radio off his belt and yelled something into it in Hebrew. About 30 seconds later 15 more Jews came running and jumped into the fight. But then a couple more soldiers came and helped break them apart. The shouting continued for a couple more minutes, and a bunch of Palestinian women were yelling stuff at the Jewish kids. I don't know who started the fight, but it showed me how delicate relations between Jews and Arabs are in this disputed city.
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