Adventures in the Old City

Its been one week since I left Chicago and Jerusalem is finally starting to feel like home. I know where most of the main places are that I'll be going to this year, and I've eaten enough falafel and schwarma for a month! I've also taken two fun, yet different, trips into the old city.

On Monday I went to the Old City with four classmates, Marina, Brian, Ari, and Alexis. We just decided to wander the streets for a while and see what we found. We went in through the Jaffa Gate and walked through the Arab Shuk and Cardo (main street in the Jewish quarter) for a while and then grabbed lunch nearish to the Kotel. After lunch we decided to keep walking through the Shuk and just explore with no real direction to where we were going. The only thing I knew I wanted to do was buy a board for sheishbeish (backgammon) so I could sit around in Jerusalem and play. Sheishbeish in Jerusalem is like chess in New York City. People will just sit around on the streets and play. I hope to spread my love of sheishbeish to the rest of the HUC students this year.

Today, Wednesday, I went to meet Beth at the Old City so we could see a few of the NFTY-ites in Israel including Emma, my past-president at LCTY (my youth group in Highland Park, IL). After we saw her and the rest of her group, we met with Sam and Henry, Beth's friends, and the four of us got to experience two of the cooler things to do in the Old City. A few days ago, Sam made friends with someone in the park at random, and that person happened to be a bigshot at the Kotel and invited Sam to come for a tour of the caves under the wall. Before touring under the city however, we first went through the Chain of Generations Center, a brand new artistic exhibit right next to the Kotel exploring how all Jews are connected from Abraham to the modern day. It was amazing. Pictures will be on facebook soon.

Then we had about 2 hours before our tour under the wall began so we walked to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and saw where Jesus was crucified and buried. It is a very impressive church and had the feeling of a Dan Brown novel while inside. So many things seemed to exude symbolism and I don't think I understood even a small part of it.

Then the tour under the Western Wall was very fun. We walked the entire length of the wall that stood outside the second Temple from over 2000 years ago. The wall was constructed by King Herod right around the turn of the calendar from BCE to CE. It was great to see how impressive just the foundation of the wall was. The second layer of stone, was one giant stone that weighed over 500 tons (thats 1 million pounds folks). Its unfathomable to think about how they would have moved that stone into place.

Now I'm resting and trying to take care of my blisters. Too much walking in this city has not been good for my feet. I popped one blister (it kinda exploded when I did that, and I'm sure you didn't need to know that either) and the other one isn't too bad, so I'll let it be for now. They are definitely smaller than the blister after my marathon, but much more painful.

Orientation starts in 5 days so I still have time to explore more places in Jerusalem and hope to do that before I'm in school 5 days a week.

Erev tov from Jerusalem