Excursions: Walls, Museums, Domes

The Anglican School community includes Jewish, Muslim, and Christian teachers, and mostly Christian students with a few Muslim families.  Therefore, school began after Ramadan, is closed for Christmas and Easter, as well as all the Jewish holidays, and on the Muslim holidays, there is teacher inservice with the understanding that the Muslim teachers will be excused. October began with the week-long Jewish holiday of Sukkot, so accompanied by the Schades, we did the Ramparts Walk.  This takes us from Jaffa Gate, past Damascus Gate, then all the way to Lion's or St. Stephen's Gate.  If you've never been, imagine the city is a clock, and we walked clockwise from a position of 10:00 to 3:00.  (But it only took 2 hours).  Another tour goes from Jaffa Gate to Zion's Gate, counter clockwise from 10 to 7.

Carrie and Emily overlooking the housetops of the Christian Quarter and the distinctive triangle decor made of pottery cylinders.    

Behind Damascus Gate.

We left the wall briefly for lunch and a tour of Zedekiah's cave, an ancient quarry, said to be the source of First Temple stones in Solomon's day.  An 11th century legend says Zedekiah tried to flee from the city through this cave and emerged near Jericho.  There is no exit today, but the cavern extends 650 feet toward  the Garden Tomb.  One of the large caverns has held masonic meetings since its rediscovery in the 1860s.

 From high up on the wall again, we could see Golgotha, the small caves to the right of the big cave.  The top of the hill is a Muslim cemetery, and just behind the building with arched windows is a bus station.  It's easy to forget while standing near the peaceful Garden Tomb that the site is surrounded by  a busy metropolis.

The Ramparts Walk features uneven stones and endless steps.  Definitely not ADA approved.  I mean in terms of accessibility, not fluoride content.

Nearing the end of our tour, we could see our home, the BYU Jerusalem Center, in the distance.  Funny how we go out on excursions looking for new sites, but we're always eager to see what we're already familiar with from our new vantage point.

Speaking of vantage points,  we went to the Bloomfield Science Museum that same week.  Here are Emily and Linda and all their multiples.

If I try to rotate this photo now, I'm afraid blogger will freeze on my again, so my apologies.  This is an exercise in pulleys and patience.  A small wooden ball sits in the circular hole in the square block, and you raise it to the oval on tope while trying to avoid all the polka dots.  Dad, I can go back with my measuring tape if you want dimensions.  We got a year's membership.

This photo's for my dad, also.  He's a big fan David Macauley's The Way Things Work, which inspired a room in the museum.

I call this the Wacky Wednesday room.  The kids loved watching themselves in the monitor where they could see themselves climbing the walls.

This optical illusion is in the courtyard where we ate lunch.  Watch Emily go from Goliath-sized...

...to David sized.

This isn't an excursion, but here you see our first pita-making experiment.  Click here for the recipe.

The dough puffs up in the oven, then collapses to form a pocket.  If we didn't have such wonderful fresh pita available, my kids would have thought the homemade was pretty good.  I'll try the recipe again next year.

Another day took us to the Temple Mount or Haram Es-Sharif.  From the walkway we had a good view of the plaza.

Here you see a young man's Bar Mitzvah on one side of the wall, while moms and aunties hold up cameras from across the partition.

This is the back side of the eastern Golden Gate, built in the 6th or 7th century on the remains of a lower, older gate, and sealed by the Ottomans in the 16th century.

This view of the Dome framed by a washing station is captured in one of my favorite George Kosinsky paintings.  Muslims wash before prayer, with the intent to be clean but also to be obedient and in the right frame of mind.  An ornate well on the way to the Dome of the Rock provides for foot washing as well as hands, and face.  I hope to write soon about the Seder and include photos of the two-handled cups used by Jews for ritual cleaning before ceremonies and meals.

The size of this shrine is hard to capture.  This is a photo of Karla Schade and Candice Stratford, with Joe as the happy camper in the backpack.  We felt grateful to be up on the Temple Mount/Haram Es-Sharif because as we exited the city an hour later, the entrance was closed.

Walking through the Muslim Quarter, we saw several homes whose bright decorations proclaimed their owner's completion of the Hajj to Mecca.  Our friend and custodian Mr. Zehikka took off work for a month to go to Saudi Arabia, and we expect him back soon. In addition to circling the Qa'aba, many Muslims purchase a lamb whose meat is given to the poor.  A fast day proceeds the feast of Eid el-Adha (October 26th this year), and gifts or cash are given to children.

This mural in the Jewish Quarter depicts the colonnaded Cardo which ran through the city in Roman times.  This was part of Emperor Hadrian's plan to Romanize Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina in the 2nd century A.D. and erase the city as a Jewish icon and center of rebellion.

When the Jewish Quarter was being rebuilt in the 20th century, residences and stores were built in such a way that archaeologists could work below, and so the old is preserved beneath the new.  The Madaba map in Jordan helped with the effort of locating the remains of the cardo.  If you know where to look, you can see a second, smaller colonnaded cardo, which intersects the other on the left (north) side of the picture.  Both paths are still extant in the city today.  

 Some columns remain or have been reconstructed.  This quiet street is 30 feet below a modern thoroughfare where shoppers peruse arched shops for silver jewelry and high-end artwork.

So that's October in a nutshell, new places and old places.