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Published: August 14th 2022
We had a bit of a late morning the next day and ate breakfast at the hotel before we were driven to the Jordan-Israel border where we would return to Israel, but this time Jerusalem. Getting there in the late afternoon, we spent time in our Air BnB and ended our night with dinner in a nearby mall.
Our first morning in Jerusalem started in Rachel’s Tomb. Jewish women- as the tomb was divided by sex- bowed their heads in prayer and cried as they faced the walls of the tomb. I am Jewish, but by blood, not faith, so it was interesting to see real devotion and practice of the religion, especially in the holy land. Following the tomb was the Shepherds’ Field Chapel where supposedly an angel came down to inform the shepherds of Jesus. There, I saw a man wearing a brown robe and wondered what he was. Our driver informed us that he was a Christian priest, and I was reminded yet again that the land I was in housed the three Abrahamic religions alongside one another; I had seen Jewish prayer, Christian clergy, and would hear Islam’s call to prayer shortly, all in
the same day. We then made our way to the Banksy Museum that stood outside Israel’s freedom-prohibiting wall and learned more about the Israel-Palenstine conflict. After, we toured the church atop the place where Jesus was born before we took time to shop and eat. The rest of our day was spent in the Old City outside market as well as at the Wailing Wall where I felt the same feelings I had felt in Rachel’s tomb. We ended our day with Armenian food and headed back to our room.
The next day, we went to Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum. Everything was very well-displayed and touching, from the video recordings of survivors to the horrifying images of emaciated and tortured humans. Outside the museum were exhibits and memorials; the child’s memorial- a dark room lit only by what seemed to be millions of little candles and unsilenced by an ongoing list of child victims and their ages- was the most touching, personally. After the museum we drove to a famous market bustling with shoppers, sellers, and lunch-goers like ourselves. We picked a place to eat and afterwards, I enjoyed my favorite treat- rugelach. We went back
to our place before leaving to the Jewish Quarter. It was quite different from the Old City as it was youthful and more modernized. After walking around for a while, we found a place to eat and ended our day.
We had another late morning the next morning before my dad and I went to get bagels for breakfast and for the drive we would have the next day. This was followed by some boring business activities- getting our rental car- before we met my sister and Ania in the mall near our place. Together we journeyed back to the Old City, this time more or less following the Jesus trail. After a while I came to notice that many of the shops sold the same types of jewelry and clothes, but it was still fun to walk around. But it got a little less fun when we were trying to find a place to sit- like a bar or a small restaurant- but the first place my dad picked from his Lonely Planet book was closed for Shabbat, and the second place strangely hadn’t even opened for business yet and only had a “coming soon” sign. He finally
found another place where we had dinner. On the way out of the Old City and to our place, I tried a Turkish delight for the first time- it was lovely- and Ania got halva.
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