The valley below JUC is the Hinnom Valley, which is referred to in the New Testament as Gehenna, also used to describe hell (e.g. Matthew 5:30). So when several inches of snow fell just a few days ago, Hell was officially frozen over.
It only snows this much in Jerusalem about every 7 years or so--it was very exciting! Of course, with this much snow the entire city shut down for 2 days, which was kind of ridiculous to my Minnesotan mentality, but it was fun to get out and see the snow. It was mostly really, really sloppy. Also there were tons of kids running around and wanting to throw snow at us. Unfortunately, when I was out in the snow my friends and I were all trying to take pictures, so we had our cameras out, and so the guys I was with got really angry, one in particular who was carrying a camera worth well over a thousand dollars, and it didn't even belong to him. I got hit in the face with a nasty snowball once on our way down to the Western Wall. My glasses fell off and when I bent over to pick them up I saw a guy videotaping me. I think he was with the hooligans who were throwing snowballs from a nearby roof. I was very, very close to breaking either his camcorder or his face. The guys I was with were also very angry and tried to get the guys to go away, but there's no reasoning with Jerusalemites in the snow. Or pretty much any other time. Hmm... a little too cynical perhaps? Perhaps not.
Anyway, here are a few pictures from my snow time! The snow is now gone, except for piles where kids made snowmen. It was over 60 degrees yesterday, and sunny and 50s today, so the weather is quite nice. It's actually considerably warmer outside than in, because the stone buildings just retain cold like none other.
This is the Hinnom Valley! Hell frozen over.
The view out JUC's front gate. It was snowing!
My friend Karin and I with the Dome of the Rock and some snow.
I made a snowman!
It was a very small snowman.
No fun biking in this stuff!
Palm trees and snow. How often do you see that?
The Dome of the Rock with snow. Love it!
We could barely even see the Mount of Olives.
So that was the fun snow adventure! Of course it would be during the first week of classes... but thankfully we didn't miss any classes at all! It was pretty impressive, considering that nothing was open, and the buses weren't running, and basically everyone just holed up and waited for the snow to go away. Which it now has. My classes are going to be fun, I think. I've already dropped one, so I'm down to 4 classes and 1 audit. I think that's a good load for the semester. I'm taking Cultural Background of the Bible (amazing class! We get to go to Jordan and stay with Bedouin), Jewish Thought and Practice (taught by Rabbi Moshe, the former head rabbi of Japan... head of all 5 Jews there, I guess), Post-Biblical Hebrew (we're reading Mishna), and Historical and Social Settings of Modern Israel, which will also be really good. Then I'm auditing Historical Geography taught by Anson Rainey (if you do any work in historical geography, his name will come up... he wrote the book on it. Literally. It's called The Sacred Bridge... it takes me an hour to read a page, there's that much information). So it will be a good semester I think! I'll be plenty busy, for sure, but I think it will be a good time. I'm going to make an effort to actually do most, if not all, of the reading this semester. Last semester I did little to none of the reading for my classes... oops.
Happy Superbowl Sunday y'all! I will be watching the game at some friends' apartment... should be a fun time, considering that it starts at 1 AM in the morning, and also that I could care less about football. Go team go!
