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East Jerusalem & Goodbye to Israel....GOING HOME Back in East Jerusalem, we were wowed by The Cathedral of St. George. It was the only gothic church we have seen in northern Israel and in Jerusalem. The architectural splendor inside and outside was complemented by sumptuous gardens surrounding a few courtyards. Our last site was the American Colony Hotel founded by European Protestants in the late 1800’s seeking a haven for their Christian simplicity while offering a haven for the poor and the downtrodden Jerusalemites. The grandly modest hotel has a comfortable old-world feel to it. May 25: A fitting end to our stay in Israel was a Classical Music Marathon!! We went to the Jerusalem Theater at 10:30 am for continuous concerts lasting until 4:00 that afternoon. May 26: Packing to go home, and leaving for the airport the next morning at 6:45. It's sad to leave Israel, but we are anxious to see our sweet grandchildren. We finally packed up and headed for home. We're glad to be back with our family. But before we left, we had one last marathon of classical music: 10:30 am to 4:30 pm. WOW....and the quality was excellent. Album was created 9 days ago and modified 5 days ago No comments 0 views 0 visitors 149 files view album | view roll

Yad Vashem & St. Andrew’s Church/Guest House, Liberty Park In the morning, we visited three nearby landmarks: St. Andrew’s Church and Guest House, Liberty Park, and the Inbal Hotel. St. Andrew’s Church was pretty bare bones, no bells and whistles here or in its guest house. But the ambience was welcoming. Liberty Park had a few unusual embellishments: oddly shaped monoliths, a tucked-away amphitheater for kids’ theatrical productions, and a replica of our Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The Inbal Hotel, easily viewed from Liberty Park, is ultra-modern and elegant. Some of its shops contain outstanding heirloom Judaica. Later on, we toured Mt. Hertzl Military Cemetery. Besides seeing the tomb of Jewish notables like Zionist pioneer Theodore Herzl and assassinated Prime Minister Rabin, we roamed through the twenty or so sections devoted to the soldiers who died in various wars defending Israel. The markers along the routes succinctly paid tribute to these soldiers (from 16 year olds to men in their forties). During our first two days at Yad Vashem, we were inside where no pictures were allowed. But this afternoon, we visited the outdoor sites—from the Warsaw Ghetto sculpture to the 2.5 acre massive walls on which were inscribed the names of the Jewish communities that the Nazis wiped out in the Holocaust. The First Day at Yad Vashem—Jaded no More There were abundantly poignant moments at the History Museum in Israel’s Holocaust Museum that my wife and I visited yesterday for seven hours, especially the testimony of survivors. Most of the horror that they depicted was already drearily familiar to me, for example, desperate women in the concentration camps strangling their own babies rather than have the Nazis brutalize and fling these infants into the gas chambers. But one of the testimonial videos—up until the Warsaw Ghetto section—recalled some incidents that I had never heard or read about and will never forget. That video burned off the last layer of any complacency that accompanied me as I dutifully took in the exhibits. It was even more powerful than seeing and touching a cattle car that transported thousands of men, women, and children to Auschwitz. The narrator, a Jewish man in the Treblinka camp, believed that to survive, the strong had to exploit the weak and the victim, unless he in turn became the predator, was doomed. One night, the inmate realized that his hat was missing. He was terrified because anyone who wasn’t wearing a hat during morning inspection was automatically shot dead. Unable to locate his cap, he realized that his only chance to remain alive was to steal a hat from someone who wasn’t vigilant enough. Moving from bunk to bunk, the man saw a portion of a cap sticking out from underneath a fellow inmate’s stomach. The man removed the cap and returned to his own quarters. He didn’t try to rationalize his theft; he simply did not want to die, no matter who had to be sacrificed. Although he couldn’t face the man as he was executed that morning, the survivor said that he wasn’t ashamed of his treachery. But what he did regret occurred a few days later. His father, exhausted and debilitated, fell down in a ditch. Anyone who couldn’t stand up would be soon sent to the crematorium. The son wanted to pick up his father, but if he did so, he would be violating a Nazi regulation, incurring his own death. Torn between his allegiance to his father and his own survival, the son remorsefully chose to leave his father in the muck. And for all the ensuing years, he has never been able to forgive himself for selfishly deserting his father. Blood may be thicker than water, but under dehumanizing duress, survival at any cost can break that bond as well. To survive or not to survive, that is the question that so many of the Jews and non-Jews alike grappled with as they withered away in the Nazi hell holes. Day Two at Yad VaShem Yesterday, my wife and I finished our self-guided tour of the Holocaust History Museum. I touched all of the exhibits—from the triple-decker inmate bunk beds to the carts and concrete blocks from the work camp projects. I saw gruesome pictures of skeletal remains of the living and the dead. I listened to survivors recounting their litany of Nazi atrocities. I read many accounts of the Righteous Gentiles who endangered and sometimes sacrificed their lives by harboring Jews throughout Europe. But none of these gut-churning and throat-constricting remembrances equaled the overpowering sense of loss I felt at the last station of the Holocaust’s own via dolorosa. On one of the videos commemorating Israel’s becoming an independent state in 1948, a large group of grade-school children were singing Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem. Finally, there was something to truly celebrate, the perpetuation of the Jewish race. But as I watched the video for a second time, I noticed—on the upper right hand corner of the screen—an inscription: Munkacs, 1930’s. These children were not Israelis: they were Jewish Hungarians singing a traditional song (written in the 1880’s) about yearning for a homeland in Zion. How tragically ironic! How slight the possibility that any of these youngsters might have escaped the Holocaust to witness the creation of the state of Israel. It was too late in the day for my wife and me to tour the Children’s Museum at the far end of Yad VaShem. Maybe that’s just as well. I need time to recover from the haunting video of the doomed school children who would soon fill the ranks of the six million murdered in the Holocaust. This was our last day at Yad VaShem. Quite by accident, my wife located an enclave containing memorial plaques—some matter of fact, others poignant—composed by family members of Holocaust victims. Next we finished our tour of the Valley of the Communities, the massive towers listing every one of the annihilated Jewish populations in Nazi-controlled Europe. The only bright spot for me was that the Dutch town Vlaaringen that my wife and I once stayed in for a couple of weeks while on vacation was not inscribed on the pillars. The last thing we did was revisit the Children’s Memorial. We spent much more time there than we did on an earlier visit. What struck me the most was that the panoramically reflected lights representing the 1.5 million children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators seemed like innumerable sheets of stars glowing in the firmament. Album was created 21 days ago and modified 9 days ago No comments 0 views 0 visitors 247 files view album | view roll

East Jerusalem May 23 Our first locale for the day was the Rockefeller Museum on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. It contained artifacts from Israel, beginning with the earliest periods in pre-human history and moving on to Holy Land relics from Israelite, Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic civilizations. I was surprisingly impressed by the variety of exquisitely crafted pottery, but I also enjoyed looking at the mosaics, statues, sarcophagi, and commemorative plaques. One of these plaques applauded a Roman legion that had helped crush the second (Bar Kochbar) Jewish revolt against the Empire. The next venue was Zedekiah’s Cave, a few steps from the Damascus Gate of the Old City. The cave, once used as a quarry, is the largest artificial one in Israel. It extends under some of the paths in the Muslim Quarter. One of the areas in the cave is a mammoth hall filled today with tables and chairs for some sort of a gala affair. Occasionally, majestic limestone columns—some slender, some stout—bolster parts of the cave’s ceiling. Just by accident, we came across the stately Notre Dame Jerusalem Center administered by the Vatican. This magnificent building is one of the most prominent sites in Jerusalem. The chapel on the second floor has an understated elegance, with a glowingly alabaster sculpture of the Virgin Mary as the centerpiece. Album was created 11 days ago and modified 11 days ago No comments 1 views 1 visitors 276 files view album | view roll

May 22--Our Anniversary Today we meandered through the ultra-orthodox section of Jerusalem, visited an Italian synagogue, and self-toured a museum of Judaica. My wife and I have seen clusters of the ultra-orthodox Chasidim and Haredim throughout Jerusalem, but never exclusively in their city within a city, Mea Shearim. I made sure to take pictures discretely—focusing only on buildings--because of the sect’s sensitivities. The narrow bustling streets, tenement outcroppings, and various small shops were a picturesque scene from Eastern Europe in the 19th century. Ironically, our only purchase was a couple of photos of typically reverent ultra-orthodox men; tourists are warned not to take pictures of any ultra-orthodox man, woman, or child in Mea Shearim. Next, we visited the Italian Synagogue, so-called because all of the ornate furnishings—from the Ark to the light fixtures—either came from or were reproductions of Italian synagogues, primarily one in Venice. The large gold-leaf Ark was the most impressive one I have seen in Jerusalem. Our last site was the Heichal Shlomo Museum. It contained a wealth of Jewish memorabilia. Three rooms were particularly striking. One housed a collection of anti-Semitic propaganda in the form of grotesquely caricatured Jewish figurines and graphic images of rapacious Jews found in newspaper clippings and posters around the world. Very disturbing stuff. Another room had a dozen or so hanging cloth bags containing irreparably damaged Torahs from Holocaust Europe. Each of the “deceased” was numbered as if it were a tattoo in the concentration camps. But the most emotional moment for me occurred in part of a room containing a tallit that had survived many close calls since the Holocaust. The incident involved a ship with illegal Jewish immigrants who had tried to dock at Haifa during the Holocaust. The British, not allowing the refugees to disembark, demanded that the ship return to Nazi-dominated Europe, where the deportees would most likely be slaughtered. Some of the Zionist activists on board decided it was better to blow up the ship than send the immigrants back to a certain death—a situation akin to the mass suicides in Masada to avoid Roman slavery. Hundreds of Jews were killed (and 20 British soldiers) in the explosion, but the tallit years later was recovered intact in Haifa harbor. Album was created 13 days ago and modified 13 days ago No comments 3 views 3 visitors 264 files view album | view roll

Squeezing the Last Once Out of Our Stay This day was a nostalgic panorama of many places we have enjoyed frequenting: the cosmopolitan area around the King David Hotel, the quaint alleyways of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, the artistic accoutrements in The Jerusalem Theatre, and the luxurious sections of Rechavia. Album was created 14 days ago and modified 14 days ago No comments 1 views 1 visitors 95 files view album | view roll

May 20: Dome of the Rock & Jewish Quarter of Old City Today marked the beginning of our last week in Jerusalem. In the morning, we visited the Temple Mount. It was a much larger area than we had anticipated. Besides the famous mosques, there were many arches and seemingly endless pavement. The Dome of the Rock, which we had frequently seen at various angles from the Mount of Olives and from Hebrew University at Mount Scopus, up-close was impressive but not as spectacular if we had never had a glimpse of it from afar. We knew that we, as non-Muslims, were not allowed to go into the Dome of the Rock. As we neared the open-door entrance, we met someone who was figuring some religious beads. He reminded us that there was a reason why non-Muslims can’t enter the sanctuary, and of course we were aware of the reason for the prohibition: before we could respond, he said: “Christians and Jews are unclean.” The man could himself have been Christian, lamenting the fact that he accordingly was banned from the mosque. Or he could have been Muslim, asserting Islam’s superiority to other degenerate faiths. In either case, we lost our desire to continue touring the Temple Mount. I wasn’t too disappointed with our hasty exit. He was brooding over the fact that the Muslims for decades have allegedly bulldozed—in the environs of the Dome of the Rock—archaeological remains of the Second Temple, trying to eradicate any evidence that there even was such a structure. That way, the Muslims can claim sole jurisdiction over the Temple Mount. In fact, Middle-Eastern Muslim clerics and politicians have invariably denied that there ever was a Second Temple, never mind a First Temple. Their claims (especially about the Second Temple) are bogus according to dozens of excavations over the years that have found internationally authenticated remains of the Second Temple. After leaving the Temple Mount, we wandered into the Jewish Quarter where we saw young people celebrating Jerusalem Day, the time when during the 1967 Six Day’s War, Israel gained control of Jerusalem. There was a lot of chanting, dancing, and waving of flags. One teenager was even wearing a flag. After eating at our favorite restaurant in the Jewish Quarter, Keresh Kotel, we visited the Four Sephardic Synagogues, all of which the Jordanians had virtually destroyed during the 1948 War of Independence, all of which the Israelis have restored—with the help of splendid Jewish synagogue furnishings from Italy and Spain. I noted that during all of the Arab-Israeli wars, Israel has never bombed any Muslim religious site--in fact, a mosque is still standing next to the once-decimated Hurva Synagogue, the main reconstructed sanctuary in the Jewish Quarter. Our last roundup in the Jewish Quarter consisted of visiting the unadorned Ramban and Chabad synagogues, marveling at the ornately carved doors of a closed kabalistic synagogue, and touring the Court Museum primarily devoted to Jewish domestic life in the Ottoman and British Mandate eras; many intricately crafted Torah scrolls were also on display. Album was created 14 days ago and modified 14 days ago No comments 0 views 0 visitors 181 files view album | view roll

Scrolls of Fire & Hebrew University at Mt. Scopus "And I shall put My spirit in you and you shall live, and I shall place you in your own land." That is the translated inscription from Ezekial that is engraved on the Scrolls of Fire, a huge sculpture about the Holocaust and the consequent creation of the State of Israel. At the bottom of the sculpture we see the pitifully dehumanized victims of the concentration camps. But as the layers of figures spiral upward, indomitable Israeli soldiers are lifting up the revitalized Jewish people--secular and religious--and an angel is leading the procession that signifies the transcendent might of Israel: the newly formed nation will squash any attempts to initiate another Holocaust. We also visited a high-end harp factory. Each kind of harp, from doorbells to concert instruments--is exquisitely designed. We owe everything we toured to a woman who befriended us earlier at Megiddo and escorted us yesterday (with her delightful children) to two sites that we on our own would never have seen. Our visit to Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus was a delight. The abundant array of flowering plants along the main campus path was stunning. The uncultivated botanical garden, while not lush, contained copious indigenous foliage painstakingly marked at every turn. Within the garden were some well-documented ancient Hebrew tombs—with many ossuaries. The modern campus buildings were architecturally diverse and named after famous Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel— Steve Lawrence, Edie Gorme, and Barbara Streisand, Harry Truman, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, George Bush. Adjacent to and within the buildings are avant-garde sculptures, one by the celebrated Henry Moore. The locale of the University at the top of Mt. Scopus is magnificent. You can see the Judean Hills, the Dead Sea, the Old City, and parts of East and West Jerusalem. Album was created 18 days ago and modified 14 days ago No comments 3 views 3 visitors 131 files view album | view roll

Paris Week 3 Only a One-Star Attraction? The not-so-highly-touted park at Buttes-Chaumont on the outskirts of Paris was full of unexpected treats for my wife and me: an impressively strong waterfall cascading into a grotto vaulted by branches that looked like stalagmites, a gazebo on top of a cliff with a clear view of the towering churches of Montmartre, and secluded pathways leading to a long wooden bridge spanning a man-made lake. There were added bonuses as well. Festive orthodox Jews were having a party on the lawn. In another area of the park two brides wearing fancy wedding gowns paraded about. We saw and heard the pure delight of a toddler bouncing on her father's shoulders as he carried her to a playground. And near one of the exits, someone was taking photo shots of a classy female posing seductively. Two men in black were on each side of her, scanning the area as if they were bodyguards. My wife took one picture of the spectacle, and was ready to take another when one of the men cautioned her not to do so. There was no doubt that he was serious because he had a plainly visible holstered gun, as did the other man. They really are bodyguards, and the woman must be some sort of prized celebrity. My wife and I quickly moved away--we did not want to antagonize the men in black. But we ultimately were quicker on the draw: we have a picture of the scene, with her exposed thighs and their exposed guns. Album was created 1 year 11 months ago and modified 17 days ago 2 comments 5 views 4 visitors 106 files view album | view roll