Sukk, Monks Angelo and Theophanis, and Misc Events Through July 4, 2010
Here are most (a good selection, but alas! Not nearly all!) of the places/things I’ve done in the last few weeks. This will probably be my last post for the next two weeks as I will be in the Galilee!! However, in addition to the photos and video below, I have uploaded a whole collection […]
Old Testament Insights: Deuteronomy
Today I had my last test in my Old Testament Class here at BYU-J. At the beginning of the class, I’ll admit: I was really worried—though I had read the entire Old Testament before, it still seemed so… distant, archaic, and downright not applicable to me. I thought it was boring. The New Testament and […]
Mary, the Mother of Jesus
One of the amaaaazing things about Jerusalem is that you literally can just walk down the streets and pass a dozen historical sites—and not just recent history. So yesterday, we went out to look for a few sites, but on the way there, we passed a place that claimed to be the birthplace of the […]
Holy Sepulchre, Church of the Redeemer, Church of John the Baptist and Passover
Church of the Holy Sepulchre! Inside one of the lower chambers The entire place is very… ornamented. Isn’t that the COOLEST glow ever? Despite being kind of dirty and overly busy, it definitely had a spiritual atmosphere We befriended a nice Christian shop owner just outside the main area of the Holy Sepulchre. His name […]
Matthew Kalman, Professional Reporter of the Middle East Conflict
Today we had more classes, I organized my photos and studied for finals coming up… not a lot worth writing about, but for the weekly forum, we had an excellent forum speaker who talked to us about the role of media in this conflict… and how it falls short of what it could be in […]
Elias Feinzlberg, Holocaust Survivor
Today we had 7 hours of class (1 hour of Old Testament, two sets of 2 hours of Judaism, and two hours of Palestinian). It was quiiiiiite the gauntlet. It was kinda frustrating, because it was really interesting stuff (we finally got the “founding of the state of Israel” war from the Israeli view in […]
Package Joy, Ethiopian Church and Me’a She’arim
Today I got my first and (hopefully) only package from home! I say hopefully because not only does it take a long time to get packages, but Israeli mail has an extremely frustrating tax law on all incoming packages: they have set up a list of all the things that they deem should be taxed […]
Yad Vashem
Yesterday, we went to the grave of Oskar Shindler and watched “Life is Beautiful.” They were in preparation for what was coming today… I was more than a little apprehensive about what was coming because I inherently don’t like unhappy things. You see, I have this philosophy that you can find something good in everything, […]
Oh! The “Whittle’d” Town of Bethlehem
Today we went to one of the most iconic, most recognizable, most talked about places in the entire history of the world: Bethlehem—the birthplace of our Savior Jesus Christ. We sing about it. We reread the happy story of His birth. But have you wondered: What is the state of Bethlehem today? I hadn’t. Until […]
Israel Zoo!
Today I went to the Zoo! There was a giant ark there, which was pretty much empty inside but it had a great view of the zoo and the surrounding area. We got to ride on a little train too to get around. One of the best parts of the day was that there was […]