Shabbat in Jerusalem: Not the Witches' Sabbath

Olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane

Before granting approval for Brigham Young University to build its Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in the 1980s, the Israeli government stipulated that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who came here to study must refrain from any proselytizing. At the same time, the government also requested that LDS Church members observe their weekly sabbath on the same day as their Jewish hosts: Saturday. Thus, while most of our friends back in the States have spent their Saturday eating Halloween candy and posting pictures of their kids in cute costumes on Instagram, we in the Holy Land have been quietly celebrating shabbat.

Jerusalem, Jericho, and Bethany: A Tunnel, a Road, a Tomb, and a Wall

Waiting to enter Hezekiah's Tunnel

We had been warned about the hike through Hezekiah’s Tunnel: Wear shorts. Wear water shoes. Wear a headlamp. If you tend to get claustrophobic, plan to stay with the bus driver and meet us at the other end. But hey, we'd already slogged through mud and encountered thigh-high water in that gorge in Petra with no such advance warnings, so how bad could a walk through one of Jerusalem's most popular tourist attractions be?

Crossing the River Jordan

Salad buffet

A typical Jordanian breakfast buffet consists of a number of items catering to American and other western peoples: juice (often canned and therefore disappointing), cereal (usually unsweetened) and milk, roasted potatoes, steamed tomatoes, baked beans, maybe some sauteed mushrooms, “beef sausage” (what we would call hot dogs), and eggs prepared in the usual ways. Sometimes you can get a made-to-order omelette. There is an assortment of small pastries, rolls, and breads for toasting. Then, because this is the Middle East, there is eggplant--sometimes simply roasted, sometimes sauteed in combination with other vegetables, eggs, or cheese. Big bowls of hummus and thick yogurt stand next to smaller bowls of the herbs and spice mixtures you can sprinkle on top, and next to those are the cheeses: cubes of salty Feta sprinkled with chia seeds, thin slices of Provolone or Havarti, and foil-wrapped triangles of bland cheese product of some sort. Sometimes typical American-style cold cuts are set out. Usually there is a basket of fresh fruit, or quartered grapefruit, or bowls of canned peaches, pears, and fruit cocktail (all of which tend to be less sweet than their American counterparts). In addition, there are often dried fruits, too: raisins, apricots, dates, and figs. Most importantly, there are the fresh vegetables: chopped tomatoes, sliced peppers, shredded carrots, and the best cucumbers that didn’t come out of your own garden. Usually there are also three or four different salad combinations, and an assortment of olives and pickled vegetables. And there is always pita, ready to stuff with any or all of the above.

Wadi Rum: Bedouins on Mars

Wadi Rum

Zaid tried to give us more information about his native country as we drove from Petra to Wadi Rum this afternoon, but finally gave up when he realized that most of his audience was asleep. We didn’t feel too bad about closing our eyes because there wasn’t much to see in the bleak desert landscape anyway. Everyone perked up as Jim pointed out Beit Ali, the tent camp where we would return to spend the night, and then when the fantastic rock formations of Wadi Rum began to rise out of the desert floor. If you’ve seen The Martian (which we haven’t yet), you have seen this eerie landscape because the film was shot here.

Petra, Part 2: Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Golden Curse

At Petra's "high place"

Jim had arranged for breakfast to be served half an hour early this morning so that the twenty of us who chose to follow him on a hike up to Petra’s “high place” to see the sunrise would not have to do so on empty stomachs. However, the evening staff with whom he had made the arrangements apparently failed to communicate that message to the morning staff, because they weren’t ready for us when we started gathering in the dining room at 6:00 a.m. Consequently, the sun was already up by the time we got on our way into the old city about 6:45. A guard at the entrance gate carefully checked the names on our two-day tickets against our picture IDs to make sure that we hadn’t bought them from scalpers.

Petra, Part 1: Discovering the Lost City

Petra Treasury

Today we visited Petra, capital city of the Nabataeans, an ancient people who roamed the Middle East for hundreds of years before settling in the Shara mountains east of the Dead Sea in the fourth century BC. They thrived as traders for several centuries, avoiding conquest by every other power because their city was so difficult to find. By the time the Romans located it, the Nabataeans had become powerful enough themselves to convince the Romans to make a treaty with them. At its height, Petra had an estimated population of 25,000. In 749 AD, a tremendous earthquake destroyed much of the city. Survivors scattered and never returned, eventually integrating into other Arab cultures and peoples. Century after century, sand sifted over the rubble and Petra became little more than a memory; only a few nomads knew where it had been. Today, it is occupied by Bedouins, some of whom live in caves that once were Nabataean dwellings and tombs.

Amman, Mount Nebo, and Madaba

The Grand Millennium in Amman

We thought we would be angry when the scheduled wake up call came at 6:30 this morning.  It turned out that we were awake before 6. And as it turned out, we needed the extra time and could have used several more minutes because we were the last ones on the bus. Maybe it felt so nice to finally take a shower and shave that we took a little too much advantage of it. Maybe the breakfast buffet at the hotel was a little more savory than we thought it would be. Maybe it was the extra minutes it took to cross the street to take a picture of the hotel. Whatever the reason, no one complained that we were holding the group up. And it was, after all, only our first day together.  We just have to make sure we haven’t set a pattern.

Departure Day(s)

Waiting to board our flight from Cincinnati to Paris

The centerpiece of the first few days of our trip is a visit to Petra, a city in what is now southern Jordan that was literally carved out of solid rock by the Nabataeans about two thousand years ago. The place was abandoned after a massive earthquake in 749 AD and remained undiscovered by the outside world until 1812. It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage site. (Lynn and Mark signed up for this part of the tour, but Judith and Richard did not, so we won’t see the latter pair until Thursday.) Before we can tour Petra, however, we have to get out of Cincinnati.

"Why are you going to Israel?"

Last week, when Nancy told her Sunday School class (ages 16-18) that they would have a substitute teacher for the next two weeks because she was going to Israel, one of her students came up afterward and asked, “Why are you going to Israel?”

The girl’s emphasis on the first and last words of her question implied that she thought we were crazy--and given the news of increasing violence coming out of Jerusalem during the past week, maybe we are. But the first response that popped into Nancy’s head and thus came out of her mouth was, “Because I want to--and I'm not afraid.”

But that’s only part of the story.