I’ve arrived (and already followed Jesus…)

We arrived in Tel Aviv this afternoon around 2:30pm local time, with a brief foray in Rome. (Not impressed with the Rome airport or the flight staff of Alitalia – more on that later). We met up with two of our fellow travelers from Minnesota and made our way to Jerusalem in a van driven by an Arab man named Mohammed.

Our hotel for the first two nights, Holy Land Hotel, is right in the middle of East Jerusalem, which is primarily a Palestinian area (although there are Jewish neighborhoods here as well). From the window in my hotel room, I can see into the “Old City” and the famous gold dome of the Rock of the Dome, an area sacred to both Jews and Muslims. Simply gorgeous.

We were also able to do a little unscheduled exploring before dinner tonight, and the group of us walked around, down by the ancient Old City wall (built in the 1500s) and saw Herod’s and Damascus Gates. This was where Jesus was lead to his crucifixion, now known as the stations of the cross.

We stopped into a shop run by an Armenian family (Armenian Catholics represent a small population of Jerusalem today, many still residing in the Old City) where we spoke with the proprietor about bargaining, Armenia, the Jerusalem cross and the city itself. He also told us a little about the stations of the cross, and Station #5 is located right outside of his shop.

For those of you who didn’t grow up Catholic (even for those, like myself, who did and need a refresher course), station #5 is where Jesus began to falter for a second time and rested his hand upon a stone. That stone is still there, and visitors and pilgrims are able to touch it. Directly experiencing that piece of history was so meaningful to me, despite having left the Catholic church years ago. I even took a picture with it!

It has been an a huge learning experience for me already: seeing first hand some of the persecution that the Palestinians have endured since the 1967 Six Day War. The Palestinians have been relegated to small villages, literally fenced in with their roads blocked so they cannot travel (driving or walking) on the same road as the Jews. It drew many parallels for me with racial segregation in the United States.

I want to update more about what I saw today and my impressions, but I am being consumed by jet lag. I do want to add one note about my blog over the next two weeks: these are just my impressions on what I’ve seen. I don’t lean either way; I am just as pro-Israel as I am pro-Palestine. I realize that there are far more than two sides to this whole conflict and anything mentioned here should not be regarded as my firm belief in any one argument. Each and every person and ancestry has suffered and gained a great deal over the genesis of this sacred land, and can be just as culpable as the next.

Tomorrow we will be exploring more of Jerusalem, so look out for more pictures on my Flickr page!

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