4/1/2011 - Machane Yehuda

We left Yad Vashem and its sadness and drove toward the bustling area of Mahane Yehuda.  On the way we passed this very modern bridge that is incorporated into the new Jerusalem light rail system.

Shalom parked the bus on a side street and we jumped off and through the parking lot - noticing a barbershop quartet playing and singing - to Mahane Yehuda where the vendors were selling fruit, nuts, olives, fresh breads and pastries, fish and poultry among other items.  The market was very crowded, filled with shoppers getting ready for Shabbat.  We purchased items for our Shabbat lunch - olives, hummus, strawberries, pita bread and juice and stopped at a cafe for an iced coffee.

The best pastry shop!

Chocolatel

Couldn't resist this sign on the house where we regrouped.

4/1/2011 - Yad Vashem

We then traveled to Yad Vashem - the Holocaust memorial.  We began our tour by walking into the Children's Memorial - a room lit by five small candles reflected in mirrors as the names of some of the 1.5 million children killed are recited.

After leaving the Children's Memorial, we made our way to the main museum that walks you through the timeline from the beginning of antisemitism in Europe through the liberation of the camps by the Allied Forces.  There are many rooms with poignant displays and videos that take into great detail the humiliation and pains pressed upon the Jews and Gypsies all across Europe.  One of the displays included Schindler's List.

The Nazis created their theories on the ideas that the Jews were going to take over the world so they must be eliminated.  Much of the antisemitic actions arose from the times of St. Peter who was proselytizing for Jesus among the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.  The Jews wouldn't accept Jesus as the Messiah at that time or ever.  This theory was carried forward by St. Augustine stating that the Jews were a retched people that shouldn't be killed, but instead tortured and tormented.  This, of course, was carried forward by Hitler with his plan for an Aryan Nation without any Jews.  Amazingly, as in the past and into the future, the Jews have remained a strong people, surviving many obstacles and opponents.

Upon leaving the main museum building, you look upon a beautiful vista of JNF (Jewish National Fund) forests and the cities surrounding Jerusalem.

The entrance to the Children's Memorial.

4/1/2011 - Theodore Herzl

We began our morning on Mt. Herzl going through the Herzl Museum.  Theodore Herzl was born in Budapest in 1860 and died in Vienna in 1904.  He formed the World Zionist Congress that met for the first time in Basil, Switzerland in 1897.  The museum was presented like a dress rehearsal for a play, moving from screen to screen and room to room telling the story of Theodore Herzl and his dream - a dream that only covered the last nine years of his life -  of a zionist state, a place Jews could come and live in peace.  His famous quote, If you will it, it is no dream, was the basis for the song Im Tirtzu by Debbie Friedman z"l.

Im tirtzu, Im tirtzu

Ein zo agada, ein zo agada

L'hiyot am chofshi b'artzeinu

B'eretz (Eretz!_ Tzion (Tzion!)  Virushalayim

 

If you will it, it is no dream;

to be a free people in our land,

in the land of Zion, and Jerusalem.

Herzl began his quest for a Zionist state following the decommissioning of Captain Alfred Dreyfus as a result of the Dreyfus affair, a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana and placed in solitary confinement.

 

 

Although Herzl never stepped on Israeli land, his body was exhumed from Vienna and buried on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem in 1949.

3/31/2011 - The Dead Sea

On we went to the Dead Sea.  I decided to stick my feet in both the Dead Sea and the mud pit, but not to totally immerse.  The climb up Masada definitely took its toll.  Dina and I took photos of our travelmates in the water and then several of them headed for the mud pits and washed off in the Sea.

Allan, Mark, Darren & Bobbi

Patty

Patty, Mark, Bobbi, Dick, Darren & Allan

Shirley & Ralph

Mike coated in the mud.

Mark mudding up.

Dick getting an even coat.

Patty layering on the mud.

Salt balls on the shore.

Dina with muddy calves.

Mark sharing a moment in mud with Darren.

We returned to Jerusalem and had a quiet dinner on Ben Yehuda Street at Moshikos before turning in for the night.