Salt, Sun, and Christianity

My last images from Jerusalem.  This is half of Jaffa Gate on the right at sunset:

I love the combination of these colours..

Walking around at night and randomly stumbled across the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  That’s the thing about Jerusalem.. you can literally take a stroll around the cobbled alleyways of the Old City and simply stumble into churches and tombs that appear from seemingly nowhere.

This church is where Jesus is said to have died, so you can imagine just how significant this place is to Christians.

I think I could have edited the above a bit to get rid of the saturated colours, but nevermind!

These images don’t reflect how large this place is – compared to many of the humble churches in Jerusalem, it’s spacious and has lots of stairs leading up and down various cave-like rooms.  Definitely interesting to see.

The next morning we went to the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem to catch a coach to the Dead Sea – yay.

These soldiers asked me in Hebrew to take their picture.  Even though I didn’t have a clue what they said, I just instinctively raised my camera and they posed. I guess I’m psychic!

En route to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth!

Even in the middle of nowhere, you can’t escape advertising.

Even though the Dead Sea is only about an hour away from Jerusalem, you descend to 400m below sea level and the temperature shoots up to 40C.  Hot is an understatement.

You can see the hills in Jordan:

The water is a lovely temperature but VERY salty. You might remember from my blog on the Dead Sea last year.. even getting the water up your nose will burn, let alone in your eyes.

I took a waterproof disposable camera in with me – pics in the next blog : )

Wide angle = great for self portraits!

Walked barefoot with Nynke (from the Netherlands who is in Israel on a placement from uni) on rocks for aaages in search of some mud – eventually found it!

The Dead Sea has the kind of climate that really isn’t ideal to stay in for very long, so after a couple of hours we headed back.  My body/skin really couldn’t take much more of the intense sunshine and heat.  Apparently you can’t burn easily as the atmosphere here is so low, but I can now confirm that isn’t true! I wanted to see if Michael Netzer, the Batman illustrator I met last year, was still living near here, but the heat got the better of me.

Sadly, as I mentioned last year, the water here is retreating at a dangerous level so something has to be done fast to preserve this area..

On the way back to Jerusalem.. bedouin communities along the roadside.

Back in Jerusalem I got talking to an American grandmother who moved to Jerusalem to be with her grandkids.  She was explaining how life here was so different but she loves it.  I don’t know why but I was amused by the Israeli flag on her crocs:

The Western Wall by night is lovely.  It’s open 24 hours and it was nice to walk around it when the temperature is much cooler.

A man being questioned by security:

My lens wasn’t fast enough to really capture these kids playing with toy guns:

This is where the Last Supper supposedly took place:

Lots of tourists = annoying.  I wasn’t overly fussed about taking pictures of some of these places but I kind of felt obliged – after all, for many, these places are so important to their way of life that I almost felt I had to do those people a service and capture the places that make up their fundamental beliefs..

Mount Zion, where Oskar Schindler (made famous after the movie Schindler’s List) is buried.

The cemetery was completely deserted apart from this boy who guided us to Schindler’s tomb:

I guessed from afar which grave it was, by the amount of rocks on it. No other grave had as many.. (In the Jewish tradition, rocks are placed on graves as a sign of respect, kind of how flowers are put on graves.)

This was one of the more ‘significant’ places to me, because it’s where someone is ACTUALLY buried.  All the other places including Bethlehem are simply where people speculate so and so was born/lived/died.

We then went to the Mount of Olives which has great views of Jerusalem.

Some of these Jewish graves are 2000 years old..crazy.  Some Jews believe this place to be extremely sacred, and being buried there will take you straight to heaven..

The Garden of Gethsemane:

This is where Jesus and his disciples are thought to have prayed before Jesus’ crucifixion and this was the spot where he apparently weeped:

And without the tourists in the way..!

There were signs saying not to pick the olive tree leaves and some men were selling separate leaves claiming they were from the Garden itself.  We didn’t believe they were, so this man who worked in the Garden jumped over the fence and plucked a few off :o

Church of All Nations:

This is one of the more grand churches – probably the biggest and most flamboyant of the churches in Jerusalem.

I wonder how many non-Christians visit these sights.. everyone else seemed to be part of pilgrim tour groups. Hm.

Back in the Old City:

“Birth Place of the Virgin Mary”.  Another place we randomly stumbled across

Shops like this one were preparing backlava (Middle Eastern sweets) before the Muslim fast is broken for the day.

This stuff is sooo delicious.  In fact, I couldn’t wait until leaving the shop to eat, so I was stuffing my face without thinking that everyone there was fasting.. slightly rude but that’s what happens when you make amazing sweets!

After I told them I love this stuff, they let me go in the back and see how they prepare it.

: )

Mohammed, a very charming shopkeeper:

So it was back on the bus headed to Netanya to meet Ricki and her family again : )

Tel Aviv to come..! <3

The Wall of Separation

For those of you who don’t know much about the situation in the West Bank, to cut a long story short, the West Bank, also known as the occupied territories, or Palestine (although some would debate what constitutes Palestine..) is separate to the rest of Israel in that although the Israeli military maintains the borders, Arabs mostly occupy this land. The currency is the same as Israel but in many ways it’s a separate state. Although there are Jewish settlements in parts of the West Bank, Jews will generally not venture into this area – the army will stop them from entering in some cases. Likewise, Arabs wanting to enter Israel may find difficulties in doing so – they will need to pass checkpoints and show their IDs.

The situation really can’t be summed up in a few words and it’s quite hard to find articles that aren’t biased in one way or another. The wikipedia page is probably a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank

Following violence in 2002 between Palestinians and Israelis, a wall started to be constructed to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel and essentially separating the West Bank from the rest of Israel. This controversial wall has been the subject of many debates, and since Banksy left his mark on it 2 yrs ago, others have followed in his footsteps. The wall is now strewn with all kinds of political messages.

I think this is one of Banksy’s pieces:

Another one of Banksy’s:

So this was in Bethlehem. I came here last year as well and I found it really peaceful – there were literally no tourists. This time there were groups of pilgrims everywhere which was annoying, but considering Bethlehem’s significance to Christianity, it makes sense. It’s weird.. even though I love street photography which is mostly people-based, I tried to avoid capturing any tourists in these images.

Church of Nativity:

The security officer in the left of this image remembered me from last year:

(Apparent) Birthplace of Jesus:

I think I waited 5 minutes to get a shot as there were so many crowding around it..

Church of St Catherine:

I’m not religious nor Christian, but yet I find religion quite fascinating and to think that this is one of the most sacred towns in the world is pretty cool. There’s just so much history here..

Next stop from Bethlehem was Hebron. Hebron is also in the West Bank and we took a Service Taxi there. These are a common way for locals to travel – it’s basically a shared taxi/bus service and it costs around 7 shekels (around £1.20).

Hebron isn’t your typical tourist town – it really seemed ‘authentic’ in that there were no markets catering for outsiders, for example selling souvenirs. There was, however, this brilliant glassblowing factory made up of one man..

He was rolling it into all kinds of shapes and it was quite an intricate process.

He asked me if I wanted to try but the furnace was HOT and I really didn’t have the confidence to be glassblowing when I don’t have a clue as to how to do it.

I wanted him to make me a customised one but it takes a day for it to cool..: (

There was also this man making pots:

They had a shop of all the stuff they’d made:

That place was so cool and the glass was also so cheap. As the bus driver had told me – Hebron is famous for two things – glass, and grapes.

Hebron’s food market:

Mmm.

These guys were trying to sell me some fruit and they wanted a picture taken. They were being pervs as well. I actually found that many Arabs were pervs (without generalising) – they’d try to be flirtatious and it was really quite unappealing. I’m not sure why it is.. I mean OK maybe in Hebron tourists aren’t a common sight, but even in Jerusalem, young Arabs would try to lure women – I got a number of marriage proposals. That’s not to say there weren’t any decent Arabs – quite the opposite. I wish I’d taken a picture of the man from Hebron who sat next to me in the bus back to Bethlehem – he was really helpful and we had an insightful conversation about politics and the state of the West Bank.

Some more graffiti from the wall:

Even the Hindu ‘Om’ sign featured..

None of these messages reflect my own opinion. This is simply what I saw.

I guess tourists and locals use the wall as a way to channel their views

So it was back to the checkpoint to go back to Jerusalem:

You have to wait for the light to turn green before entering:

Luckily it wasn’t busy – I’ve heard it can take hours to get through during busy times such as when Arabs go to Jerusalem for Friday Prayers.

On the way back to Jerusalem:

View from Jaffa Gate, and my lame attempt at a night shot:

More from Jerusalem and the Dead Sea next time.. : ) Sorry if this entry sounded a bit dull – I had a bit of an accident and ended up falling face-first into concrete so my face is bruised and grazed which means I won’t be going out for a while! : ( I guess I’ll finally have the time to edit all my pictures..! Ah, painkillers, here I come..

Thanks as always for looking.