Hey all!
I am back in Golden Valley, safe and sound... the trip back to MN was much easier and smoother than the trip to Jerusalem in December. Baruch HaShem, as they say in Israel. It means praise the Lord, kind of. Anyway, thank you all for following my adventures in Israel! I am very thankful for all the great experiences I had--I hope you enjoyed them as well!
11 May 2008
01 May 2008
On Pesach and the Bedouin Adventure
Hey all! It's been quite a while since I last blogged... partly because not much has been going on, and partly because so much has been going on. I have not been travelling nearly as often as last semester, so I haven't had a lot of exciting trips to talk about like I did then. Instead, I have been doing a whole lot of school work. I wrote a five-page paper and a 9-page take-home final this week; I have a 10-page paper to do over the weekend and three finals next week to study for. I leave for MN in 7 days. AHHH! So much to do before then...
Anyway, I will take this opportunity to quickly update y'all on the past few weeks. (This will be my last blog post in Israel, by the way.) So by the "past few weeks," what I really mean is "last week." Last week was a big week here in J-Town--it was Pesach, perhaps better known to many as "Passover." This is one of the big pilgrimage holidays in Judaism traditionally, and that holds true today. The place was literally stuffed to the gills with tourists. It was kind of fun to walk around Jerusalem and know exactly who the tourists were, especially when they were Israelis and had no idea what they were doing. It was also Orthodox Holy Week, so there were tons and tons of Orthodox tourists as well. So many tourists. It felt good to know that I live here.
So for Pesach, orthodox Jews clear out their houses of any leavened product for the entire week. That means that the cracker and cookie aisle, and several other areas of the Superdeal (the nearest supermarket) were literally tarped over, so you could not access any leavened product. I tried to buy brownie ice cream... no sirree. Even that was taken away. There was a big festival outside Jaffa Gate as well--there were movies playing on the city wall, and fireworks four nights in a row (by the way, I LOVE the fireworks in this city!), and so many people that it was ree-diculous.
But it was kind of cool to be here in Israel remembering what Pesach represents--the celebration of God leading his people out of Egypt. Read Exodus 12 for the story. This is what I was thinking about... As I was walking back from my visit to the kosher-for-Passover Superdeal, I happened upon a song called "Exodus" on my ipod. Here's the chorus:
Lead, Lord with unfailing love
Those that you have ransomed
And we will sing out as we go on
Our God is faithful
Check out Psalm 78 as well. It's such a beautiful picture of God's faithfulness, which is exactly what this week of remembrance is about. Being in Israel is a pretty amazing testimony to that faithfulness--and I don't mean that as any sort of political statement at all. The very existence of the Jewish people, regardless of the existence of a Jewish state or a state of the Jews or whatever you want to call it, is a miracle. (For those of you who don't know, today is Yom HaShoa--Holocaust Memorial Day. Read any Jewish history book and learn about how that happened, albeit on a smaller scale, basically anywhere the Jews went ever.) So that's what Pesach was about for me this year. If you want an even better picture of God's faithfulness, think about Christ, the ultimate Passover lamb (more on that later.)
My last JUC field study was this past weekend--we spend three days in Jordan hangin' with the Bedouin for my Cultural Background of the Bible class. Unfortunately, my camera went to the big Photoshop in the sky, so the following pictures were taken by a friend of mine:
We all piled into the backs of some Jeeps to get to the Bedouin camp. I'm in a reddish shirt, just to the right of the person standing up and waving.
Some desert landscape. This was taken from a big rock (a really, really big rock) right next to our camp, which is behind the camera.
This is looking down on our camp from that big rock.
Our hosts pulling aside the two sheep they were about to slaughter for our big feast that evening. If you are interested in some very graphic pictures of a sheep being killed, I can help you out. This was both incredibly gross and incredibly moving--it was so bloody and nasty and real, and that's the picture of sacrifice that the Bible talks about. Americans in general don't understand that, I think. Read Isaiah 53 and John 1:29 and Leviticus 4:27-35. Jesus was our Pesach lamb and the offering taking away the sins of the world. So many amazing pictures--hard pictures, but amazing and so so true.
This is a Bedouin village with a crusader castle above it. There's been a growing trend of nomadic Bedouin settling down into villages, often so their children can go to school.
We visited a Bedouin sheikh--a tribal chieftain, kind of. He was just chillin', roastin' him some coffee. Pretty sweet. The girls got to visit one of his wives (he has four, but none of them live in the same house or tent) in the women's side of the tent. She gave us milk to drink out of a goat skin laying on the ground in the tent--see Judges 5. It was sour, of course, so that it would keep. Very interesting--the kind of thing that doesn't happen every day in the US!
Amazing tents at an amazing campground where we stayed our second night. We got mattresses and everything--even showers! This was camping with style.
So that was the weekend with the Bedouin! It was pretty much fantastic--very relaxing and informative. So much of what goes on in that culture is a pretty clear echo of the biblical time period, if not exactly as it was then. I really enjoyed it.
In other news... next Tuesday I will be running to Bethlehem! My running buddy and I have been working up to that point for a few months now. We're not training rigorously or anything, just running together regularly. This morning we went for a solid 6 or 6 1/2 miles; Bethlehem is about 7 miles there and back. I'm looking forward to it! I will be very busy in the next few days trying to get packed and get one more paper written and three finals studied for and presents bought and goodbyes said... so, as I said before, this is my last blog in Israel for now! I will let y'all know when I get home and I'm looking forward to seeing many of you very soon!
Shalom!
Anyway, I will take this opportunity to quickly update y'all on the past few weeks. (This will be my last blog post in Israel, by the way.) So by the "past few weeks," what I really mean is "last week." Last week was a big week here in J-Town--it was Pesach, perhaps better known to many as "Passover." This is one of the big pilgrimage holidays in Judaism traditionally, and that holds true today. The place was literally stuffed to the gills with tourists. It was kind of fun to walk around Jerusalem and know exactly who the tourists were, especially when they were Israelis and had no idea what they were doing. It was also Orthodox Holy Week, so there were tons and tons of Orthodox tourists as well. So many tourists. It felt good to know that I live here.
So for Pesach, orthodox Jews clear out their houses of any leavened product for the entire week. That means that the cracker and cookie aisle, and several other areas of the Superdeal (the nearest supermarket) were literally tarped over, so you could not access any leavened product. I tried to buy brownie ice cream... no sirree. Even that was taken away. There was a big festival outside Jaffa Gate as well--there were movies playing on the city wall, and fireworks four nights in a row (by the way, I LOVE the fireworks in this city!), and so many people that it was ree-diculous.
But it was kind of cool to be here in Israel remembering what Pesach represents--the celebration of God leading his people out of Egypt. Read Exodus 12 for the story. This is what I was thinking about... As I was walking back from my visit to the kosher-for-Passover Superdeal, I happened upon a song called "Exodus" on my ipod. Here's the chorus:
Lead, Lord with unfailing love
Those that you have ransomed
And we will sing out as we go on
Our God is faithful
Check out Psalm 78 as well. It's such a beautiful picture of God's faithfulness, which is exactly what this week of remembrance is about. Being in Israel is a pretty amazing testimony to that faithfulness--and I don't mean that as any sort of political statement at all. The very existence of the Jewish people, regardless of the existence of a Jewish state or a state of the Jews or whatever you want to call it, is a miracle. (For those of you who don't know, today is Yom HaShoa--Holocaust Memorial Day. Read any Jewish history book and learn about how that happened, albeit on a smaller scale, basically anywhere the Jews went ever.) So that's what Pesach was about for me this year. If you want an even better picture of God's faithfulness, think about Christ, the ultimate Passover lamb (more on that later.)
My last JUC field study was this past weekend--we spend three days in Jordan hangin' with the Bedouin for my Cultural Background of the Bible class. Unfortunately, my camera went to the big Photoshop in the sky, so the following pictures were taken by a friend of mine:
We all piled into the backs of some Jeeps to get to the Bedouin camp. I'm in a reddish shirt, just to the right of the person standing up and waving.
Some desert landscape. This was taken from a big rock (a really, really big rock) right next to our camp, which is behind the camera.
This is looking down on our camp from that big rock.
Our hosts pulling aside the two sheep they were about to slaughter for our big feast that evening. If you are interested in some very graphic pictures of a sheep being killed, I can help you out. This was both incredibly gross and incredibly moving--it was so bloody and nasty and real, and that's the picture of sacrifice that the Bible talks about. Americans in general don't understand that, I think. Read Isaiah 53 and John 1:29 and Leviticus 4:27-35. Jesus was our Pesach lamb and the offering taking away the sins of the world. So many amazing pictures--hard pictures, but amazing and so so true.
This is a Bedouin village with a crusader castle above it. There's been a growing trend of nomadic Bedouin settling down into villages, often so their children can go to school.
We visited a Bedouin sheikh--a tribal chieftain, kind of. He was just chillin', roastin' him some coffee. Pretty sweet. The girls got to visit one of his wives (he has four, but none of them live in the same house or tent) in the women's side of the tent. She gave us milk to drink out of a goat skin laying on the ground in the tent--see Judges 5. It was sour, of course, so that it would keep. Very interesting--the kind of thing that doesn't happen every day in the US!
Amazing tents at an amazing campground where we stayed our second night. We got mattresses and everything--even showers! This was camping with style.
So that was the weekend with the Bedouin! It was pretty much fantastic--very relaxing and informative. So much of what goes on in that culture is a pretty clear echo of the biblical time period, if not exactly as it was then. I really enjoyed it.
In other news... next Tuesday I will be running to Bethlehem! My running buddy and I have been working up to that point for a few months now. We're not training rigorously or anything, just running together regularly. This morning we went for a solid 6 or 6 1/2 miles; Bethlehem is about 7 miles there and back. I'm looking forward to it! I will be very busy in the next few days trying to get packed and get one more paper written and three finals studied for and presents bought and goodbyes said... so, as I said before, this is my last blog in Israel for now! I will let y'all know when I get home and I'm looking forward to seeing many of you very soon!
Shalom!
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