Hi friends! This is just a quick entry, since we are about to leave Kibbutz Ginnosar for Yotvata. We drove down (up?) to Jerusalem yesterday, and met with Nora Kort and two of her staff people. They were absolutely thrilled that we had TWO heavy suitcases full of things for them. One of the staff people with Nora, a woman named Aida (like "Ida"), is a social worker who organizes their children's programs. They hold several summer schools all over the West Bank and Gaza for children identified as high need. This means they may have a disability, or they are "socially orphaned," a phrase that means they have their biological parents, but the parents are not capable of parenting, usually due to a drug or alcohol addiction. Anyway, our school supplies will be used in those programs.
The fun thing is, they want Susannah to come and be a guest/participant in their Jerusalem program, and they want her to distribute the gifts from the suitcases. That will probably happen after the dig concludes, on July 1, or if we can arrange it, as early as June 20. Anyway, they were so thrilled to receive so many items. I want to pass on their thanks from them to all of you who helped "pack Mary's suitcase."
Well, we need to check out and hit the road going south. Hopefully we will hit the checkpoints just right, since I have absolutely no ID, except a photocopy of my stolen passport. Yesterday, coming back from Jerusalem, we had to stop at a checkpoint that had only women soldiers, as far as I could see. They had their automatic weapons poised, and the one who questioned us realized she needed to use English with us. What do you know! This gruff Israeli woman broke into a big smile! She was from Milwaukee, Wis.! So, that checkpoint was pretty easy.
So, we hope to be in touch again as soon as possible, but it feels a bit like we're disappearing over the horizon going to Yotvata. Our internet connections will not be as easy.
Until then, love and prayers from Israel and Palestine!
Mary, Randy, and Susannah
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Onward and Upward
Top: Tabgha Middle: Jordan River Bottom: BethsaidaHmmm, instead of the next night, I’m getting back to the blog five days later. Things have been a whirl, but a very good one.
I ended the last blog entry with the Mohr Mazda searching for a police station in Tiberias. Guess what? We found it on the first try! It looked like a war zone, with barred fences and gates all around topped with barbed wire and razor wire. We found a place to park, and headed for the main door. Susannah thought it was a pretty intimidating place, and asked if she could hold my hand. She sort of clung to me in a vice grip. An officer in uniform stood at the top of the steps, and watched us approach at our tentative saunter. As we got close, he turned and went inside and disappeared. I’m sure he didn’t want to deal with this trio of American tourists at 8 o’clock at night!
So, Randy went into the station first. I followed a few seconds later, dragging the leg that a nine-year-old had lashed herself to in a barnacle cling. Once we got the language thing figured out, with one officer able to speak fairly good English, things started to look promising. Susannah relaxed enough to develop a crush on one of the police officers. And, my goodness, this would be a single woman’s paradise! Enough said.
I was asked to fill out a “Notice of Loss” form. That sounds easy, if the form is in English. This one was in Hebrew, as should be expected. I went through three forms before I filled one out correctly. The person who must have been the desk sergeant was extremely patient with me, and I much appreciated that. I was pretty preoccupied with my paper shuffling, and I knew things sounded noisy and animated around me, but I was focused on the Hebrew form to fill out. Later, Randy commented on the way guns were being “tossed around” casually. Okay. Also, one of the officers worked with Randy and was kind enough to program the telephone number for the US Embassy into our cell phone. In the meantime, Susannah was watching some security monitors nearby, and actually saw a robbery in progress! Film at Eleven!!
Anyway, with an actual police report in hand, things have fallen into place quite well with the whole stolen purse dilemma. Except for the embassy escapade. Randy called the embassy in Haifa the next day, and spoke to a woman with an Israeli accent. She told him that we would need to go to the embassy office in Tel Aviv, and that “it is best to go in the morning.” Sounds good. Randy asked her for directions to the Tel Aviv embassy. She answered, “Where are you now?” Randy said, “Near Tiberias.” You’ll love her response. “Ask someone there.”
So we drove down to Tel Aviv the next day, and arrived about 12:30, only to be told that the office we needed to see was closed for the day. Apparently it closes at 11:00! Tel Aviv is about a two and a half hour drive one way from where we are staying, so that ate up a lot of the day. We had to go back the next day. So we did, and once we had gone through the required lines and security checks, we were helped by an American man about our age, who is Presbyterian! It was a Presbyterian who helped us clear the final hurdles of the whole passport thing, and our replacements will be mailed to us in about three weeks to the kibbutz down by Yotvata.
Whew! As we drove “home,” we stopped at the site of Megiddo, had lunch, toured the site, and then drove on to Mount Tabor and drove to the top of it. More later on all that. Now, I will tell you about some of the very exciting places we have been able to visit, in roughly the order in which we have seen them. The whole stolen purse thing ate up a lot of our time and energy, but at the same time, it was all an interesting experience!
Tabgha
This is a shrine site just up the road from us. It commemorates the miracle of the Feeding of the 5,000 with the five loaves and two fish. It has a very pleasant outer courtyard with vibrant purple and scarlet bougainvillea vines surrounding it, then an inner courtyard with a fish pool, and then a very prayerful and beautiful sanctuary. It is located on the side of the old “Via Maris,” or “The Way of the Sea,” an important highway for trade and communication in ancient times. As a matter of fact, part of the sacristy at the front of the church lies across the old roadbed of the Via Maris.
The centerpiece of the church is the top of a large rock that protrudes out of the old mosaic floor right under the altar. It is said that Christians from Capernaum before 350 AD venerated this rock as the altar/table that Jesus used when he broke the loaves and fishes into pieces to feed the 5,000. Whether or not there is any historical core to the tradition, it is still a wonderful place to pause and ponder how our small offerings placed in the hands of Christ can bring blessing beyond imagination. Being as it is right on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee and close to the site of Capernaum, it cannot be far from the place of the original event.
A pilgrims’ shrine/chapel was built here in the fourth century, and it also highlighted the rock under its altar. There are some windows built into the floor of the current church building that show the foundation stones of this early church. As the years went by, this church fell into disrepair. The Crusaders then built a church on top of this early one, expanding its size and reorienting its alignment. It had exquisite mosaic floors with many varieties of birds and flowers. It has some lotus flowers in it, which are not native to this area, but to the Nile Valley. It is assumed that the artist was Egyptian. This Crusader church also fell into disrepair, but the mosaic floors were repaired in 1936, and the present church building was built upon the Crusader church foundations. It was dedicated in 1982.
On our way out of this shrine, we stopped at a little kiosk by the parking lot. It was HOT, and we needed some ice cream. I had one of the best lemon Popsicles ever!
We drove on down the road to Capernaum, the town where Jesus lived as an adult. The site had just closed, but, quite honestly, I’ve been there before, and the Franciscans who have custodianship of it really have not displayed or interpreted it well. We weren’t crying with disappointment that it was closed.
On down the road we drove, to see the Jordan River as it enters the Sea of Galilee. It looks muddy, but I don’t know about cold (like the old spiritual). Since we were close to the recently discovered site of Bethsaida, I thought it would be neat to see if there is anything open to the public to see. I was not to be disappointed!
Bethsaida
The site of Bethsaida has been unknown for 1700 years. It is the town where Jesus was headed with his disciples before the 5,000 were fed (Luke 9). John 1:44 also tells us that Bethsaida was the home of Philip, Andrew, and Peter. This is where Jesus cured a blind man (Mark 8:22 ff.), and where he sent his disciples when he walked on the water (Mark 6:45 ff.). It is one of three cities to be cursed by Jesus in Matthew 11 and in Luke 10.
Bethsaida was quite possibly the capital city of the small kingdom of Geshur in the time before Christ. Geshur is first mentioned as a city-state in the el-Amarna letters, found in Egypt, and containing a treasure trove of diplomatic correspondence between two pharaohs, Akhenaten and his father, Amenophis III, around 1352 BC. By the time of the tenth century BC, it is thought that Bethsaida/Geshur allied with King David and his dynasty. Joshua 13:13 mentions that the Israelites could not displace the Geshurites. It also mentions two Geshurite kings by name, Amihud and his son Talmai in 2 Samuel 13:37. We also learn that King David married King Talmai’s daughter Maachah (2 Samuel 3:3), probably to cement relations between the two kingdoms. It was Maachah’s son Absalom that tried to overthrow his father David, after murdering his half-brother Amnon. Absalom fled to his mother’s land of Geshur, and his story becomes quite tragic. Absalom did have a daughter, named Maachah after her grandmother, and this woman became the wife of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon who became king of Judah. Maachah is said to have been the favorite wife of Rehoboam (2 Chronicles 11:21). There are remains of a fortification wall around the city, built to protect it from the battering rams of the Assyrians. It is almost
This is all to say that Bethsaida played a role in the Judeo-Christian history long before we hear of it as a fishing village in the time of Jesus. So, if it was supposed to be a fishing village, remnants of it should be along the shore of the sea, right? But no site for Bethsaida could be found for centuries. It disappeared 1700 years ago. Pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land through the centuries have left shrines and offerings on the approximate stretch of shoreline where Bethsaida should be, but there has not been a town site there.
Then, in 1987, excavations began at a site referred to as “et-Tell,” which is Arabic for “the Mound.” It is located about one and a half miles from the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. Now, what is a fishing village doing so far from the sea? Well, over time, the course of the Jordan River changed, and the shore of the Sea of Galilee changed, and, in addition to that, a major earthquake in 363 AD was probably the cataclysmic event that brought a landslide of rocks, gravel, and soil across the plain on which et-Tell stands, cutting the city off from the shore of the sea. The fishing village was literally left high and dry.
Well, I hoped to see something of this recent excavation, since we were in the neighborhood anyway. So I was thrilled when we came upon signs to the site! The site of Bethsaida is combined with a “Jordan River Park,” where many people go river rafting and fishing and camping.
As we approached the gate for the site/park, it looked closed. The gates were down, and there did not appear to be anyone in the gatehouse. Even so, we approached the gate, and found a young Israeli woman on duty. She proved to be yet another eternally flowing Israeli fount of information.
The woman was leaning back in her chair, and looked very disinterested in us. Randy said, “What are your hours?”
“We are always open.”
Randy: pause. “What do we have to do to get in?”
Woman: “You have to pay.”
Randy: another pause. “How much do we have to pay?”
Woman: “Fifty shekels.”
So, the money was given, the gate was lifted, and off we went.
Bethsaida is a wonderful site. It is well interpreted, and there are places to sit in shade that take advantage of the beautiful view all the way south down the Sea of Galilee. There are also views from the river park from which one can see remnants of what was once the very impressive city wall of Bethsaida/Geshur.
Well, I need to stop. We are having an amazing and wonderful time! Watermelon has just come in to season, and it is sweet and wonderful. (Randy: her stack of watermelon slices at breakfast is a sight to see!) I’m not going to say when I will log on to the blog next, since I was pretty far off the last time. However, there is much to tell about Megiddo, Mt. Tabor, Hazor, Corazim, and more. We hope to connect with the Sindyanna folks in Nazareth soon, as well as Nora Kort in Jerusalem. There’s lots to do, and time is going fast! Susannah is becoming quite a fixture at the kibbutz swimming pool, having found part of the lifeguard’s goggles this afternoon. A bunch of folks had been combing over the bottom of the pool to find it, and Susannah found it on the first try. They all cheered for her, and made her day. She will miss her new friends when we head south next Wednesday.
I hope all of you are doing well.
Shalom/Salaam,
Mary, Randy, and Susannah
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
We've landed, but without the divine Fiat
Hello friends and family!
We are doing well this evening. Our entrance into Israel has been, well, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It has been absolutely wonderful to see and do things that cannot be replicated elsewhere. However, the first morning we were here, my purse was stolen out of the trunk of our rental car, yes, with all of my ID, credit cards, passport, and also Susannah’s passport, as well as our airplane tickets home. It also had the new mouthpiece that I had just gotten three weeks ago for my sleep apnea (insurance didn’t really like paying for it the first time, so this will get interesting, I’m sure!). So, trying to recover from all that has colored our time here, on top of being up for a little over fifty hours before finally getting to crawl into bed here at Kibbutz Ginnosar. Now, here are the details.
When we landed in London, we did indeed have a good opportunity to take “the tube” into town and spend several hours at the British Museum. We all wish we had been more awake, but even so, it was thrilling to see the actual artifacts that we have seen pictures of in books for years. Even Susannah was saying “Hey, I’ve seen that in my books!” We saw the Rosetta Stone, the Lachish Letters, the limestone panels from the Assyrian palaces (with the notable siege and destruction of Lachish), and so much more. How cool is that?
Our plane was delayed about an hour between London and Tel Aviv, so we landed at Ben Gurion Airport about 7 a.m. local time last Saturday. It was a beautiful morning, sunny and a balmy 70 plus degrees. I can’t believe Ben Gurion Airport these days. It is absolutely beautiful! When I first traveled to Israel in 1978, our plane had to stay at the end of the runway for security reasons, and when we disembarked, soldiers stood all around us with machine guns trained on us as we shuffled across the tarmac to an ugly building slapped together out of corrugated metal sheeting. It had no air conditioning, so we had to swelter while we waited. Now, one disembarks on a lovely jetway, and the airport is an architectural masterpiece with lovely pale golden limestone blocks and gleaming stainless steel everywhere. Water fountains “rain” in a beautiful cascade out of the ceiling in the main atrium, and there are portions of old mosaic floors decorating walls, as well as modern artwork. It is amazing.
Well, Randy was waived right through the passport control in a matter of seconds. I’ve suspected that I am on a “list” for some time, and indeed, I had to stand for several minutes while the passport control officer said nothing but clacked away at her computer, all the time with a troubled furrowed brow. She finally stopped, hastily stamped my passport without a word, and I was through.
As we picked up our rental car, Susannah was tugging at me, saying she was seeing palm trees. It’s all quite exotic for a child of the pacific northwest! There was a wonderful, heavy scent of jasmine blossoms in the air, and indeed, there were some jasmine vines lazily hanging nearby in the rosy early morning sunlight. I reflected how this part of the world can be such a paradise when it is not ripped apart by violence and war.
Well, I’m getting long-winded, so I’ll try to condense the rest of our time for your sake!
We drove north to Caesarea Maritima, where Randy and I had been ten years ago, and I had dug for a season there. It is thrilling to see what has been excavated since then, and Israel has done an admirable job of displaying it for sight-seers. Some exquisite frescoes and mosaic floors are under cover from the weather, but nicely signed with wooden viewing platforms and trails so that they can be enjoyed. The beach was lovely, and there were local folks fishing from the shore. Susannah played in the water a bit, and we walked over more of the site. What a thrill to see a wonderful site getting the attention and preservation it deserves. What a greater thrill to show it all to my daughter, who skipped along and loved every bit of it. I was pregnant in my second trimester when I excavated there ten years ago. The dig team nicknamed the then “unknown” baby “Little Caesar.” Now, here were Randy and I walking along paths that felt as if we had been on them only last week, and “Little Caesar” frolicked alongside with wide eyes, now very well known to us as Susannah.
So, we returned to the car, which was parked by the Roman Theatre of Caesarea (there is a gated entrance to the site there). Much to our horror, we discovered that my purse had been taken out of the trunk of the car! How were we to know that Mazdas required us to lock the trunk separately from the doors of the car?! Yes, we were upgraded to a Mazda instead of a Fiat. Anyway, the purse was gone, snatched from a car trunk with a push button lock. Randy immediately ran to the entrance gate of the park to report this to someone.
Now, I know you won’t believe me unless you experience it yourselves, but Israelis just don’t like to make an effort to give out information, and they can be quite blasé about the concerns of others. So, Randy found few people paying him attention initially. A bus load of tourists was squeezing through the gate, so the ticket booth man was occupied. The only person that Randy could grab to talk to was some Israeli in his early twenties dressed in a toga and a fake laurel wreath on his head. Apparently he was paid to “add atmosphere” to this very Roman capital of the ancient region.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. What a picture! Here we had a potential financial catastrophe on our hands, and Randy could only find a faux Cicero to talk to! His English wasn’t very good, either, and I could tell by the look on his face that he had no idea why Randy was gesturing wildly and yelling about his wife’s purse. I figured, “Forget Toga Boy. I’m going to the woman with the uniform, the gun, and a look on her face that means business!” So I elbowed aside a couple of tourists to talk to the security guard.
She wasn’t awfully impressed with our problem. She gave me that blasé look, and Toga Boy came up to her and said something in Hebrew that was probably, “What’s wrong with these people?” She answered him in Hebrew and laughed. Yes! She laughed! Randy and I fumed about that quite a bit the rest of the day. Anyway, staying with our immediate concerns, we pushed them to understand that something should be done. “Go to the police in Hadera. Can you find Hadera?”
“Yes,” we said. It’s a little town about two miles away. They told us that it was useless for them to call the police, because the police couldn’t come out to them, or do anything anyway. But we could go to the police if we wanted. “Great!” we said, “How do we find the police station?” “You just go to Hadera, and go to the main road, and you will find it.”
Okay.
Well, we didn’t “just find it.” We searched all over Hadera, and asked several people how to find the police station. We got similar answers. “You just go over there, and you will see it.” As they said this, they would wave a hand in the air like a fishtail. Now, what does that mean? Right? Left? Over where? Also, since it was Shabbat (Sabbath), nothing was open. Nothing.
Then, we thought we had struck gold! There was a police van, with blue lights flashing (they always flash them here, whether there is an emergency or not), stopped along a curb. This was it! Randy did a fast maneuver with the car, and pulled up behind a car that was behind the police van. I hopped right out, and ran to the van. I leaned in the passenger side window, and saw some guy in dirty regular clothes sitting in the driver’s seat. Huh? No uniform? Was he a driver for the real police? “Police?” I asked him. “Ken, ken.” (“yes” in Hebrew).
I started to tell him my purse had been stolen, passports, tickets, etc., and he slowly shook his head and pointed to a small shop. Aha, I thought. He wants me to speak to the real police officer. There was a police radio in the van, buzzing and broadcasting the usual police type chatter, so I figured this was really the police.
Then the “real” police officer came out of the shop with a couple of Cokes. He wasn’t in uniform, either, and didn’t look like he wanted to be involved in any police work. I chattered at him, too, but he just shrugged and got in the van. Then the car between the van and our car began to honk. Who honks at a parked police car? Well, apparently they were all old friends, because they ignored me and stood in a little bunch on the sidewalk chuckling. I just looked at Randy with my jaw dropped, and shrugged my shoulders. Randy got out of the car and joined me, and we became a matched set of ignored people. Then, another “old friend” pulled up to chatter. Now, he knew some English. One of the van officers apparently asked him to find out what could be my problem. I explained. He explained. They all furrowed their brows and rubbed their chins, and asked a question. “Mr. English” translated: “Oh, that is bad that you lost passports. Have you been to the police station?”
Yes, I’m not making that up. He actually said that! Randy and I tried to stay calm while we replied, “No, because we can’t find it! That’s why we stopped to talk to these people!”
“Oh, well you have to go to the station.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s, uh, it’s over there.” Again, the fishtail wave in some nebulous direction. “Just go over there and you will see it.”
“What is the name of the street it is on?”
“Uh, the name of the street.” A brief conference among the old friends, and then, “I don’t know the name of the street. Just go over there, and you will find it.”
So we went “over there,” and looked some more. It was about then that Susannah threw up all over the back seat. Well, the Mohr Mobile had had it. We gave up on the Hadera Police Station, if it does exist, and drove on to Galilee, figuring that we needed to get into our kibbutz guest room and try to cancel credit cards, etc., from there.
It was a relief to drive up into the Mount Carmel range, and through the pass that had been the battleground that had determined the fate of empires in the past. This pass is presided over by Megiddo, and the lovely sweeping plain of Jezreel is also called the Plain of Armeggedon. How calming it was to drive through gentle rolling farmland, leaving the frantic, crowded coast with imaginary police stations far behind us.
When we arrived at Kibbutz Ginnosar, we asked a woman at a registration desk what to do about the whole purse thing. “Oh, that is bad,” she said with some concern. “You must report that to the police. Go into Tiberias and report this at the police station.”
A police station! Just ten minutes’ drive away! “Where is the police station?” we almost yelled together.
“Oh, um, how you say? You just go into Tiberias, and stay on the main road. Go up the hill, and it’s on the – how you say? – left? Well, I’m not sure how you say, but just go over there, and you will see it.”
This seems to be a standard answer over here.
Goodness, this needs to quit for the night. We are doing well, having a great time, and we’ll write more tomorrow. Now that we have the purse thing sort of under control, we’ll write more about Capernaum, Tabgha, Bethsaida, and more.
Good night/ lilit tov.
Mary, Randy, and Susannah
We are doing well this evening. Our entrance into Israel has been, well, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It has been absolutely wonderful to see and do things that cannot be replicated elsewhere. However, the first morning we were here, my purse was stolen out of the trunk of our rental car, yes, with all of my ID, credit cards, passport, and also Susannah’s passport, as well as our airplane tickets home. It also had the new mouthpiece that I had just gotten three weeks ago for my sleep apnea (insurance didn’t really like paying for it the first time, so this will get interesting, I’m sure!). So, trying to recover from all that has colored our time here, on top of being up for a little over fifty hours before finally getting to crawl into bed here at Kibbutz Ginnosar. Now, here are the details.
When we landed in London, we did indeed have a good opportunity to take “the tube” into town and spend several hours at the British Museum. We all wish we had been more awake, but even so, it was thrilling to see the actual artifacts that we have seen pictures of in books for years. Even Susannah was saying “Hey, I’ve seen that in my books!” We saw the Rosetta Stone, the Lachish Letters, the limestone panels from the Assyrian palaces (with the notable siege and destruction of Lachish), and so much more. How cool is that?
Our plane was delayed about an hour between London and Tel Aviv, so we landed at Ben Gurion Airport about 7 a.m. local time last Saturday. It was a beautiful morning, sunny and a balmy 70 plus degrees. I can’t believe Ben Gurion Airport these days. It is absolutely beautiful! When I first traveled to Israel in 1978, our plane had to stay at the end of the runway for security reasons, and when we disembarked, soldiers stood all around us with machine guns trained on us as we shuffled across the tarmac to an ugly building slapped together out of corrugated metal sheeting. It had no air conditioning, so we had to swelter while we waited. Now, one disembarks on a lovely jetway, and the airport is an architectural masterpiece with lovely pale golden limestone blocks and gleaming stainless steel everywhere. Water fountains “rain” in a beautiful cascade out of the ceiling in the main atrium, and there are portions of old mosaic floors decorating walls, as well as modern artwork. It is amazing.
Well, Randy was waived right through the passport control in a matter of seconds. I’ve suspected that I am on a “list” for some time, and indeed, I had to stand for several minutes while the passport control officer said nothing but clacked away at her computer, all the time with a troubled furrowed brow. She finally stopped, hastily stamped my passport without a word, and I was through.
As we picked up our rental car, Susannah was tugging at me, saying she was seeing palm trees. It’s all quite exotic for a child of the pacific northwest! There was a wonderful, heavy scent of jasmine blossoms in the air, and indeed, there were some jasmine vines lazily hanging nearby in the rosy early morning sunlight. I reflected how this part of the world can be such a paradise when it is not ripped apart by violence and war.
Well, I’m getting long-winded, so I’ll try to condense the rest of our time for your sake!
We drove north to Caesarea Maritima, where Randy and I had been ten years ago, and I had dug for a season there. It is thrilling to see what has been excavated since then, and Israel has done an admirable job of displaying it for sight-seers. Some exquisite frescoes and mosaic floors are under cover from the weather, but nicely signed with wooden viewing platforms and trails so that they can be enjoyed. The beach was lovely, and there were local folks fishing from the shore. Susannah played in the water a bit, and we walked over more of the site. What a thrill to see a wonderful site getting the attention and preservation it deserves. What a greater thrill to show it all to my daughter, who skipped along and loved every bit of it. I was pregnant in my second trimester when I excavated there ten years ago. The dig team nicknamed the then “unknown” baby “Little Caesar.” Now, here were Randy and I walking along paths that felt as if we had been on them only last week, and “Little Caesar” frolicked alongside with wide eyes, now very well known to us as Susannah.
So, we returned to the car, which was parked by the Roman Theatre of Caesarea (there is a gated entrance to the site there). Much to our horror, we discovered that my purse had been taken out of the trunk of the car! How were we to know that Mazdas required us to lock the trunk separately from the doors of the car?! Yes, we were upgraded to a Mazda instead of a Fiat. Anyway, the purse was gone, snatched from a car trunk with a push button lock. Randy immediately ran to the entrance gate of the park to report this to someone.
Now, I know you won’t believe me unless you experience it yourselves, but Israelis just don’t like to make an effort to give out information, and they can be quite blasé about the concerns of others. So, Randy found few people paying him attention initially. A bus load of tourists was squeezing through the gate, so the ticket booth man was occupied. The only person that Randy could grab to talk to was some Israeli in his early twenties dressed in a toga and a fake laurel wreath on his head. Apparently he was paid to “add atmosphere” to this very Roman capital of the ancient region.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. What a picture! Here we had a potential financial catastrophe on our hands, and Randy could only find a faux Cicero to talk to! His English wasn’t very good, either, and I could tell by the look on his face that he had no idea why Randy was gesturing wildly and yelling about his wife’s purse. I figured, “Forget Toga Boy. I’m going to the woman with the uniform, the gun, and a look on her face that means business!” So I elbowed aside a couple of tourists to talk to the security guard.
She wasn’t awfully impressed with our problem. She gave me that blasé look, and Toga Boy came up to her and said something in Hebrew that was probably, “What’s wrong with these people?” She answered him in Hebrew and laughed. Yes! She laughed! Randy and I fumed about that quite a bit the rest of the day. Anyway, staying with our immediate concerns, we pushed them to understand that something should be done. “Go to the police in Hadera. Can you find Hadera?”
“Yes,” we said. It’s a little town about two miles away. They told us that it was useless for them to call the police, because the police couldn’t come out to them, or do anything anyway. But we could go to the police if we wanted. “Great!” we said, “How do we find the police station?” “You just go to Hadera, and go to the main road, and you will find it.”
Okay.
Well, we didn’t “just find it.” We searched all over Hadera, and asked several people how to find the police station. We got similar answers. “You just go over there, and you will see it.” As they said this, they would wave a hand in the air like a fishtail. Now, what does that mean? Right? Left? Over where? Also, since it was Shabbat (Sabbath), nothing was open. Nothing.
Then, we thought we had struck gold! There was a police van, with blue lights flashing (they always flash them here, whether there is an emergency or not), stopped along a curb. This was it! Randy did a fast maneuver with the car, and pulled up behind a car that was behind the police van. I hopped right out, and ran to the van. I leaned in the passenger side window, and saw some guy in dirty regular clothes sitting in the driver’s seat. Huh? No uniform? Was he a driver for the real police? “Police?” I asked him. “Ken, ken.” (“yes” in Hebrew).
I started to tell him my purse had been stolen, passports, tickets, etc., and he slowly shook his head and pointed to a small shop. Aha, I thought. He wants me to speak to the real police officer. There was a police radio in the van, buzzing and broadcasting the usual police type chatter, so I figured this was really the police.
Then the “real” police officer came out of the shop with a couple of Cokes. He wasn’t in uniform, either, and didn’t look like he wanted to be involved in any police work. I chattered at him, too, but he just shrugged and got in the van. Then the car between the van and our car began to honk. Who honks at a parked police car? Well, apparently they were all old friends, because they ignored me and stood in a little bunch on the sidewalk chuckling. I just looked at Randy with my jaw dropped, and shrugged my shoulders. Randy got out of the car and joined me, and we became a matched set of ignored people. Then, another “old friend” pulled up to chatter. Now, he knew some English. One of the van officers apparently asked him to find out what could be my problem. I explained. He explained. They all furrowed their brows and rubbed their chins, and asked a question. “Mr. English” translated: “Oh, that is bad that you lost passports. Have you been to the police station?”
Yes, I’m not making that up. He actually said that! Randy and I tried to stay calm while we replied, “No, because we can’t find it! That’s why we stopped to talk to these people!”
“Oh, well you have to go to the station.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s, uh, it’s over there.” Again, the fishtail wave in some nebulous direction. “Just go over there and you will see it.”
“What is the name of the street it is on?”
“Uh, the name of the street.” A brief conference among the old friends, and then, “I don’t know the name of the street. Just go over there, and you will find it.”
So we went “over there,” and looked some more. It was about then that Susannah threw up all over the back seat. Well, the Mohr Mobile had had it. We gave up on the Hadera Police Station, if it does exist, and drove on to Galilee, figuring that we needed to get into our kibbutz guest room and try to cancel credit cards, etc., from there.
It was a relief to drive up into the Mount Carmel range, and through the pass that had been the battleground that had determined the fate of empires in the past. This pass is presided over by Megiddo, and the lovely sweeping plain of Jezreel is also called the Plain of Armeggedon. How calming it was to drive through gentle rolling farmland, leaving the frantic, crowded coast with imaginary police stations far behind us.
When we arrived at Kibbutz Ginnosar, we asked a woman at a registration desk what to do about the whole purse thing. “Oh, that is bad,” she said with some concern. “You must report that to the police. Go into Tiberias and report this at the police station.”
A police station! Just ten minutes’ drive away! “Where is the police station?” we almost yelled together.
“Oh, um, how you say? You just go into Tiberias, and stay on the main road. Go up the hill, and it’s on the – how you say? – left? Well, I’m not sure how you say, but just go over there, and you will see it.”
This seems to be a standard answer over here.
Goodness, this needs to quit for the night. We are doing well, having a great time, and we’ll write more tomorrow. Now that we have the purse thing sort of under control, we’ll write more about Capernaum, Tabgha, Bethsaida, and more.
Good night/ lilit tov.
Mary, Randy, and Susannah
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Well, we're almost ready....
Hello friends and family!
Here is the first real posting of our journey, "Learning from the Lands That Have Nurtured Faith."
Well, I think we're going to make it. We head to SeaTac tomorrow, with six large suitcases loaded to the brim, and our allowed carry ons, too. This sounds like overkill, except that the response from the congregation was wonderful for our book and school supply drive. Randy and I weighed the materials when we brought them home Sunday afternoon. The picture is above. We weighed between 110 and 115 pounds of materials! So, we've been "distributing" that among the suitcases. Thanks for a wonderful response, and I know that Nora Kort and her staff at the Arab Orthodox Society headquarters in Jerusalem will be thrilled to receive all of your items for their youth programs.
So far, the heaviest suitcase is 65 pounds (the limit is 70). It has a lot of the children's books in it. The next heaviest is 60, and it has my dig tools, and the bulk of the school supplies. Next is about 40 pounds, then Susannah's reflects the most common sense at about 20 to 25 pounds. We haven't weighed the last two yet, and they carry the bulk of the computer/camera/electronic equipment. Who needs to weigh everything anyway?
We have a stopover in London for about 11 hours on our flight. If all goes according to our best wishes, we will be able to take the tube from Heathrow to spend some time in the British Museum. Susannah hopes we can see Egyptian things. Randy and I are hoping for some other items that are semi-related to the overall trip. Then, maybe we can buy some McVitties biscuits and catch our flight into Tel Aviv. We are scheduled to arrive in Tel Aviv at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning (Israel is ten hours ahead of us, so that will be 7:30 p.m. on Friday night, Bellingham time). We are renting a car at the airport. It is supposed to be a Fiat "Spice." I guess that means we'll be transported around the Holy Land for two months by Divine Fiat (ha, ha). It seemed to work well for Philip in last Sunday's lesson from Acts 8.
We will not be able to check into our guest room at Kibbutz Ginnosar until 3 p.m., so we will probably drive up to Caesarea Maritima, where I dug ten years ago. Randy and I are anxious to see what has been uncovered since we've been there! Also, we know where there is a good sandwich shop (next to an old excavated and reconstructed Byzantine plaza with seated statues of a couple of caesars...emperor types, not salads). We also know where the popsicle and juice stand is, if it's still there! Then there is the amazing beach filled with artifacts in the sand along that beautiful clear blue Mediterranean Sea. My plan is to catch a nice nap there before we continue up to Galilee for our eleven day "headquarters" at Kibbutz Ginnosar.
Hopefully we'll be able to find a good internet cafe in Tiberias (about 10 miles from the kibbutz), and fill you in soon on what actually happens en route.
Until then,
Grace and Peace,
Mary, Randy, and Susannah
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
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