Chapter 25 Monday May 16th Part I

Our day begins with a bus tour around the walled city. Let me apologize here for the quality of the next few pictures since they were taken from a moving bus.

We pass the Church of All Nations which contains 12 domes, 1 for each nation who donated. Church of All Nations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Gold domes of St. Mary Magdelene on the Mount of Olives, built by the Russian Tsar Alexander III in 1888.

Here is a better picture that I found on-line.

Next is the Dormition Abbey on Mt. Zion.

Passing the Tomb of Absolom. Tomb of Absalom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We get off the bus and enter the Armenian Quarter thru the Zion Gate. We are told that the Armenians built one of the first churches once Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. We are told that the Turks marched 1.5 million Armenians into the desert where they perished but the Turks, when they ruled Jerusalem, left the Armenians alone.

We procede at a fairly rapid rate thru the Armenian Quarter to the Jewish Quarter. This is the upper portion of the old city depicted in the model at the Israeli Museum with red roofs. Adrianus Caeser suppresses the last revolt by Bar Kochba in 135 AD. 200,000 KIA's and 100,000 are enslaved. The Romans turn Jerusalem into a pagan city named Iliacapotina.

In 1948, the entire Jewish Quarter is destroyed by the Jordanian army which was not entirely a bad thing since, if the buildings had not been completely destroyed, the Arabs would have moved into the vacant houses. It also allowed the Israelis, once they recaptured Jerusalem in 1967, to excavate and put underground utilities and also uncover archaeological sites.

Before entering the Cardo, we stop in front of a mosaic that was salvaged from an 6th century Jordanian church in Madaba showing that Jerusalem was a complete city at that time. Jerusalem was destroyed by an earthquake in the 8th century. http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/JerusalemRomanStreets.html This link gives a good description.

We walk through the Cardo and have about 1 hr. of free time to shop before continuing our tour. When we are finished, Ronit advises us to leave all of our shopping bags at the Bar-On gift shop where her proprietor friend will watch the bags till we are ready to go back to the bus at the end of the day.We'll staple our names to the bags and they'll be no problems. What could possibly go wrong with that idea? More about this adventure later when we try and sort everything out on the bus.

The picture above is a mural depicting the Cardo 2,000 years ago.

We walk past some archeological restorations and then out to a plaza where we watch part of a B'ar Mitzvah celebration.

We stop for lunch at numerous cafe's and falafel stands. While I'm sitting in one of the cafe's wearing my Seminoles cap, a jolly man in a Gators cap introduces himself as Beryl the Gator rabbi of Hillel at UF. We chit-chat for a while and asks me to say hello to Rabbi Vogel in St. Augustine, who he's friends with. This wasn't the only time my Seminoles caps got noticed. While we were listening to a lecture on top of Masada, some birthright kids walk by and 2 of them give me the Gator chomp. Both were wearing UF colors. I gave them the tomahawk chop right back.

Continued in Chapter 26