03-25-2014, 12:11 PM
Sunday was our day to visit Temple Mount and check out one of the holiest sites for the third religion that dominates Jerusalem. We started a bit later than intended but the delay was worth it. Besides how important is it to get in line for the visit to Temple Mount early?
Turns out, very important. By the time we reached the entrance, the line for the Temple Mount, stretched through the Dung Gate and down the street that runs parallel to the Southern Wall of the city. When we first descended down towards the entrance across the western wall plaza, we were excited to watch people already making their way up the covered ramp to the Temple Mount. The gate was open early. My enthusiasm waned as I saw the line stretching towards the Dung gate. But how long could it take?
A long time. As we entered the line outside the wall, tour buses continued to disgorge their contents behind us. In particular was a group of young Germans. They seemed determined to be obnoxious as possible. Of course, they were just being kids and I was being a grumpy old man. But I had enough of their singing and clapping and selfies after about the first hour.
Because, yes, we were in line for almost two and a half hours. My paranoia was telling me that VIP tour buses were being let in front of us, because there were long stretches when our line didn’t move at all. We crept through the Dung Gate, admiring the gashes in the old stone where big trucks were too big for the opening.
Cindi and I took turns leaving the line to take pictures. We took bets on whether we would be on the Mount by 9:45 or 10:30. I had the former. A sign hanging over the last gate before the entrance informed us that according to the Rabbi of the Western Wall, the torah didn’t allow Jews atop the mount.
We were about twenty yards from the security shack and entrance to the ramp, when an official came out of the shack . He started screaming at the crowd to move back and go away.
What? This is a joke, right? You can’t close the line when we are so close. It can’t be because the Temple Mount was full. One of our guides told us during a celebration, they had 250,000 people up there. But, the door was locked in front of us and we were told to go away.
I thought maybe we could hang out close to the gate and tell the guy, “But it’s our Honeymoon”. I never got the chance. The line behind us, that still stretched to the Dung Gate, gradually dispersed.
Boy it would have been nice to know the operating hours for this entrance. How about a small sign posted with the opening hours? The people in charge of the Temple Mount don’t really care about tourists at their Holy Site. They only let people up there begrudgingly. There are other entrances that only Muslims can use and this crowded port is the only way up for non-muslims.
We found out later some kids had engaged in stone throwing and the security had shut the site down early. If the small riot hadn’t occurred, we would have gotten in as the Mount was open for another thirty minutes. So close. Unfortunately, that was our last free opportunity to visit Mount Moriah. Put that down on the list of things to see on our next visit.
We headed up the steep stairs into the Jewish Quarter to wander that area. Some nice Jews canvassing for charitable donations took our coins and gave us red Kaballah threads in exchange. We visited the Cardo which are the remnants of the ancient Roman Road that use to bisect the city. We had a pizza at Mozarella. Yes, I had mine with that Israeli delicacy, corn. I won’t be revisiting that experiment. It didn’t add a lot to my experience.
We headed out the riddled with bullet holes Zion gate to see the Dormition Abbey and the traditional site of the Last Supper. For some reason they held the Last Supper upstairs in a disused Mosque. You can still see the Mihrab in the wall and Islamic script on the walls.
For those Latin lovers, the Last Supper site is called the Coenaculum. I was supposed to get in here during the midnight bike ride but to our guides’ consternation, the place was locked.
The whole area atop Mount Zion, just outside the Zion Gate, is packed with sites. Near the Coenaculum, is a statue of King David. His tomb is just down the hall. Behind the statue is the Dormition Monastery which is the last resting place for Mary, Mother of God. And a more recent site is Ben Gurion’s apartment up on the roof behind the Coenaculum.
I had stumbled upon the apartment during my first morning walk in the city and was hopelessly lost in my quest for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was nice to finally see it in the light.
The King David statue was built by Christians and hated by the Orthodox Jews. The Jewish Faith doesn’t like representations of their religious figures much like Islam and Mohammed. So, this statue is constantly under assault. It is covered in gold spray paint to hide the graffiti on it. If you look at the face, you can see that the nose has been broken.
Ben Gurion had small rooms here because before 1968, this area was the only area near the city controlled by Israel and was the closest point you could get to the Western Wall. He would loan out the room to special friends as a reward.
The Dormition Abbey was closed at this point. Posted hours of opening would have been nice.
On the way back through the Jewish Quarter, Cindi stopped to buy a Mezuzah to hold the broken glass from our wedding ceremony. I was appalled when the store proprietor mentioned a price and Cindi just reached for the cash. You are supposed to haggle in the Middle East, something Cindi is loathe to do. The proprietor said they didn’t haggle here in the Jewish quarter, but he still knocked 40 Shekels off the price after my badgering.
Our one scheduled activity for the day was a trip underneath the city along the buried section of the Western Wall. The Western Wall is referred to as the Kotel and we were taking the Kotel tours. You might remember the controversy years ago when the tunnels were being dug and the people of temple mount were furious thinking that it was just a ploy to allow digging into the temple mount. If there is one thing the Muslims don’t want is evidence of a Jewish Temple underneath Temple Mount.
Anyway, we took the tour from a very enthusiastic tour guide and a old man who wanted to share all the information he had about the Western Wall. The tour had a few highlights. We got to see the largest stone in the mount which probably weighed over 50 tons. There was a bricked up old entrance to the Temple mount that was probably filled hundreds of years ago. A room has been built so Jewish women can come in and pray at what they believe is the closest point to the Holiest of Holies, the spot were the Ark of the Covenant was stored. The men pray upstairs in a room directly overhead just of the Western Wall courtyard. At one point, they didn’t bring stones in for the walls, they just carved the bedrock so it looked like dressed stone. One area was where the quarry for Temple Mount stones were made. This included one stone that was half-finished and never used.
For me the wildest thing was the aqueduct channel carved to carry water to the Struthion pool. This half of the pool is still full while the other under the convent under the Via Dolorossa drained into this one when they accidentally knocked a channel between the two halves.
The tour let us out along the Via Dolorossa. While I stopped to adjust my camera things, an Armenian Boy named Amir came up and asked us if we wanted to go into the site of the old second station of the cross. Before Cindi could say no, I said of course. Cindi tried to give the let’s get out of her sign, but I remembered from reading of Gila’s book that this was one of the ways into the Madrassa that now sits in the place of the Antonia Fortress. The Antonia Fortress is where Jesus went through the Barabas routine.
Cindi’s qualms about our trip in quickly vanished as we saw the view over Temple Mount. This was the closest we got to the Dome of the Rock the entire visit. Amir showed us around the courtyard and pointed to a fountain which was the original site for the 2nd station of the cross.
Since Amir showed us the site, I thought it only fair we visited his family shop which was located at the bottom of the ramp leading up to the Madrassa. Now, my father had tasked me with finding some gifts for his Catholic buddies who are somehow affiliated with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Gila had suggest I take back candles but there was no way I was going to get those back to California in nothing more than little tiny pieces. I decided on the Jerusalem cross, the Catholic symbol for Jerusalem. It is a cross that has four additional crosses in each section of the main cross.
When I saw the prices Amir wanted for his silver Jerusalem Cross, I knew that I wasn’t going to buy them here. At the same time Cindi was looking at a nice Chai made with Turquoise. Amir said 400 shekels for both and I said thanks but no thanks. I figured the only way to buy them was for the 200 shekels in my pocket.
I made the move to walk out when Amir brought over his older brother. Elder brother figured we could split down the middle. I figured no and made to leave. More haggling. They could sense I was stuck on 200, so they brought in Dad. More haggling. Dad tried to get me to shake at 220. I withdrew my hand.
We finally agreed on 200 with Dad saying I was a great businessman. I should have said 100. Amir wanted to come with us to show us the rest of the Via Dolorossa. I told him we had already seen it and were on our way back to the other side of town. I agreed though to give him a tip for showing us into the Madrassa.
We went back to the Dormition Monastery to see if it was open. I had a checklist and by god things were going to be checked off. Seriously, I knew nothing about the history of the place. I just wanted to go in because we had been thwarted earlier.
Luck was with us and it was open when we returned to Mount Zion outside the Zion gate. Cindi and I went downstairs to the crypt to take photos only photobombed a few times by fellow visitors.
One of the trickiest areas to visit in the city of Jerusalem is the Armenian Quarter. The gate only opens for thirty minutes everyday and the signs to the opening aren’t marked. At least I couldn’t find them.
After we left the Dormition Monastery, we made are way to the Jaffa gate looking for the entrance. We arrived a few minutes before they allowed entry into Cathedral of St. James, according to our guide book the most beautiful church in Jerusalem. Next to the door were a bunch of rules about the church, the most odious being no photography. But there was also something about not putting your hands in your pockets.
And it was a beautiful church, with what seemed like hundreds of lanterns hung from the ceiling on an intricate series of pullies. One ornate altar has the head of St. James buried in it. We had actually come in time to hear the Armenians read the liturgy. That was fun for about five minutes and enough time for one of the little old ladies to admonish Cindi for crossing her legs. No leg crossing in the Church of St. James. I would have stayed longer if picture taking was involved. Eventually the incense drove us out.
We wandered back to our hotel through the Purim revelers at the Mamilla mall. We had seen a group of kids earlier having a fun fare amidst the Roman Columns on the Cardo.
Sunday at Sunset, Purim starts in the city of the Jerusalem. Purim is the festival of Queen Esther who helped save thousands of Jews in Persia. One of the games I got to play was to find out the exact day of the festival. Now it falls in the month of Adar, but there are two Adar’s in the Jewish Calendar. It also falls on different days depending on if you are inside a walled city or outside a walled city. It falls inside a walled city the day after it falls outside a walled city. With me? Everytime I tried to find the date on our calendar, I got the run around. Eventually, I found it to start at Dusk on March 16th in the city of Jerusalem. It starts on the 15th in Tel Aviv.
Cindi only requested we do one thing while in Israel and that was to attend a Meghilla reading on Purim and eat Hamentashen. The Meghilla reading is the story of Esther and Hamentashen is a triangular chocolate filled pastry. I had taken care of the Hamentashen at the pizza place but now it was time to go the service.
Cindi wanted to soften the blow by going to a reformed reading since then we could sit together. I figured we should just go to the big new Hurva Synagogue, since according to my bike guide, Roy, it was the nicest Synagogue in town. I was a big boy and could sit by myself. Plus, I needed to go into sites that had been locked to me.
But one look through the window at the very seriously dressed Jewish men in their black or furry hats and I knew my blue jeans and ball cap would get me thrown out. Cindi had seen flyers posted up about a partyesque Purim at the Chabad center so we wandered in that direction.
Cindi was starting to waver about the whole Purim thing so I reminded her that this was the one thing she said wanted to do. An older women came up to us and asked if we were here for the service. I said yes.
So think of this fish and this water he is supposed to be in and is now out of. That was me in the Meghilla reading. It was held in this tiny white washed room. A table had been set up at the front for snacks and drinks. I guess that was part of the party the flyer referred to. The chairs were the white plastic ones you can get cheap at the Orchard Supply Hardware store. Although where you can find an OSH in the Holy Land, I do not know.
Cindi was taken by the older women to the other side of the screen where I could not see here. Because of the disposition of the chairs and not wanting to ask anyone to move, I ended up in the front row about a foot from the guy delivering the service. I was probably the oddest looking person to my fellow parishioners despite the fact one guy was all green ala Kermit the frog and another had a giant blond moussed out wig. They were nice enough to offer me a prayer book, but I declined as my Hebrew is a bit rusty.
It takes two guys to chant the Meghilla. One to chant and one to unroll the scroll. Our Rabbi asked for help with this procedure and I carefully avoided eye contact. The scroll itself came in the finest of grocery store bags. The scroll was fairly thick and I hoped we weren’t going to read the entire thing. Just so you know, Hope dies.
There were a few prayers with bowing and odd steps back and forth before we began. I just rose when they did and sat when they did, keeping my eyes down like I was lost in contemplation.
The one thing I remembered from Cindi’s description was that you were supposed to shout whenever you heard the bad guy’s name in the Meghila reading. It became clear pretty quickly the guy’s name was Haman. I could now participate because I could pick his name out as the Rabbi would slow down and pause after saying the name. I opted for pounding the chair next to me to make noise with the rest of the men.
My other contribution was to take a photograph with the Rabbi’s helper’s camera while he was standing at the front with the Rabbi.
It took them a long time to unroll that scroll and read through it. I drowned out Hamon’s name many many times with my chair pounding. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I’ve been in that place before.
Eventually it ended. The first thing Cindi told me after was that she was trying to signal me to leave early. Yeah, there was no way to leave that room early without being noticed.
Cindi and I went down to the Western Wall plaza. I was finally going to get the nerve to actually touch the wall. I also wanted to get a better view of the full moon rising over the wall. I wandered into the room that is closest to the Holy of Holies where the men sit. I took photos as surreptitiously as possible, which isn’t very when you set up a tripod.
We had dinner near the Jaffa gate at another good restaurant. I had the schnitzel which was quite good. While waiting for the food to be cooked, I went outside with the camera to take pictures of the moon hovering over David’s Citadel. I took many more on the way home and a bunch of our beloved YMCA.
Turns out, very important. By the time we reached the entrance, the line for the Temple Mount, stretched through the Dung Gate and down the street that runs parallel to the Southern Wall of the city. When we first descended down towards the entrance across the western wall plaza, we were excited to watch people already making their way up the covered ramp to the Temple Mount. The gate was open early. My enthusiasm waned as I saw the line stretching towards the Dung gate. But how long could it take?
A long time. As we entered the line outside the wall, tour buses continued to disgorge their contents behind us. In particular was a group of young Germans. They seemed determined to be obnoxious as possible. Of course, they were just being kids and I was being a grumpy old man. But I had enough of their singing and clapping and selfies after about the first hour.
Because, yes, we were in line for almost two and a half hours. My paranoia was telling me that VIP tour buses were being let in front of us, because there were long stretches when our line didn’t move at all. We crept through the Dung Gate, admiring the gashes in the old stone where big trucks were too big for the opening.
Cindi and I took turns leaving the line to take pictures. We took bets on whether we would be on the Mount by 9:45 or 10:30. I had the former. A sign hanging over the last gate before the entrance informed us that according to the Rabbi of the Western Wall, the torah didn’t allow Jews atop the mount.
We were about twenty yards from the security shack and entrance to the ramp, when an official came out of the shack . He started screaming at the crowd to move back and go away.
What? This is a joke, right? You can’t close the line when we are so close. It can’t be because the Temple Mount was full. One of our guides told us during a celebration, they had 250,000 people up there. But, the door was locked in front of us and we were told to go away.
I thought maybe we could hang out close to the gate and tell the guy, “But it’s our Honeymoon”. I never got the chance. The line behind us, that still stretched to the Dung Gate, gradually dispersed.
Boy it would have been nice to know the operating hours for this entrance. How about a small sign posted with the opening hours? The people in charge of the Temple Mount don’t really care about tourists at their Holy Site. They only let people up there begrudgingly. There are other entrances that only Muslims can use and this crowded port is the only way up for non-muslims.
We found out later some kids had engaged in stone throwing and the security had shut the site down early. If the small riot hadn’t occurred, we would have gotten in as the Mount was open for another thirty minutes. So close. Unfortunately, that was our last free opportunity to visit Mount Moriah. Put that down on the list of things to see on our next visit.
We headed up the steep stairs into the Jewish Quarter to wander that area. Some nice Jews canvassing for charitable donations took our coins and gave us red Kaballah threads in exchange. We visited the Cardo which are the remnants of the ancient Roman Road that use to bisect the city. We had a pizza at Mozarella. Yes, I had mine with that Israeli delicacy, corn. I won’t be revisiting that experiment. It didn’t add a lot to my experience.
We headed out the riddled with bullet holes Zion gate to see the Dormition Abbey and the traditional site of the Last Supper. For some reason they held the Last Supper upstairs in a disused Mosque. You can still see the Mihrab in the wall and Islamic script on the walls.
For those Latin lovers, the Last Supper site is called the Coenaculum. I was supposed to get in here during the midnight bike ride but to our guides’ consternation, the place was locked.
The whole area atop Mount Zion, just outside the Zion Gate, is packed with sites. Near the Coenaculum, is a statue of King David. His tomb is just down the hall. Behind the statue is the Dormition Monastery which is the last resting place for Mary, Mother of God. And a more recent site is Ben Gurion’s apartment up on the roof behind the Coenaculum.
I had stumbled upon the apartment during my first morning walk in the city and was hopelessly lost in my quest for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was nice to finally see it in the light.
The King David statue was built by Christians and hated by the Orthodox Jews. The Jewish Faith doesn’t like representations of their religious figures much like Islam and Mohammed. So, this statue is constantly under assault. It is covered in gold spray paint to hide the graffiti on it. If you look at the face, you can see that the nose has been broken.
Ben Gurion had small rooms here because before 1968, this area was the only area near the city controlled by Israel and was the closest point you could get to the Western Wall. He would loan out the room to special friends as a reward.
The Dormition Abbey was closed at this point. Posted hours of opening would have been nice.
On the way back through the Jewish Quarter, Cindi stopped to buy a Mezuzah to hold the broken glass from our wedding ceremony. I was appalled when the store proprietor mentioned a price and Cindi just reached for the cash. You are supposed to haggle in the Middle East, something Cindi is loathe to do. The proprietor said they didn’t haggle here in the Jewish quarter, but he still knocked 40 Shekels off the price after my badgering.
Our one scheduled activity for the day was a trip underneath the city along the buried section of the Western Wall. The Western Wall is referred to as the Kotel and we were taking the Kotel tours. You might remember the controversy years ago when the tunnels were being dug and the people of temple mount were furious thinking that it was just a ploy to allow digging into the temple mount. If there is one thing the Muslims don’t want is evidence of a Jewish Temple underneath Temple Mount.
Anyway, we took the tour from a very enthusiastic tour guide and a old man who wanted to share all the information he had about the Western Wall. The tour had a few highlights. We got to see the largest stone in the mount which probably weighed over 50 tons. There was a bricked up old entrance to the Temple mount that was probably filled hundreds of years ago. A room has been built so Jewish women can come in and pray at what they believe is the closest point to the Holiest of Holies, the spot were the Ark of the Covenant was stored. The men pray upstairs in a room directly overhead just of the Western Wall courtyard. At one point, they didn’t bring stones in for the walls, they just carved the bedrock so it looked like dressed stone. One area was where the quarry for Temple Mount stones were made. This included one stone that was half-finished and never used.
For me the wildest thing was the aqueduct channel carved to carry water to the Struthion pool. This half of the pool is still full while the other under the convent under the Via Dolorossa drained into this one when they accidentally knocked a channel between the two halves.
The tour let us out along the Via Dolorossa. While I stopped to adjust my camera things, an Armenian Boy named Amir came up and asked us if we wanted to go into the site of the old second station of the cross. Before Cindi could say no, I said of course. Cindi tried to give the let’s get out of her sign, but I remembered from reading of Gila’s book that this was one of the ways into the Madrassa that now sits in the place of the Antonia Fortress. The Antonia Fortress is where Jesus went through the Barabas routine.
Cindi’s qualms about our trip in quickly vanished as we saw the view over Temple Mount. This was the closest we got to the Dome of the Rock the entire visit. Amir showed us around the courtyard and pointed to a fountain which was the original site for the 2nd station of the cross.
Since Amir showed us the site, I thought it only fair we visited his family shop which was located at the bottom of the ramp leading up to the Madrassa. Now, my father had tasked me with finding some gifts for his Catholic buddies who are somehow affiliated with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Gila had suggest I take back candles but there was no way I was going to get those back to California in nothing more than little tiny pieces. I decided on the Jerusalem cross, the Catholic symbol for Jerusalem. It is a cross that has four additional crosses in each section of the main cross.
When I saw the prices Amir wanted for his silver Jerusalem Cross, I knew that I wasn’t going to buy them here. At the same time Cindi was looking at a nice Chai made with Turquoise. Amir said 400 shekels for both and I said thanks but no thanks. I figured the only way to buy them was for the 200 shekels in my pocket.
I made the move to walk out when Amir brought over his older brother. Elder brother figured we could split down the middle. I figured no and made to leave. More haggling. They could sense I was stuck on 200, so they brought in Dad. More haggling. Dad tried to get me to shake at 220. I withdrew my hand.
We finally agreed on 200 with Dad saying I was a great businessman. I should have said 100. Amir wanted to come with us to show us the rest of the Via Dolorossa. I told him we had already seen it and were on our way back to the other side of town. I agreed though to give him a tip for showing us into the Madrassa.
We went back to the Dormition Monastery to see if it was open. I had a checklist and by god things were going to be checked off. Seriously, I knew nothing about the history of the place. I just wanted to go in because we had been thwarted earlier.
Luck was with us and it was open when we returned to Mount Zion outside the Zion gate. Cindi and I went downstairs to the crypt to take photos only photobombed a few times by fellow visitors.
One of the trickiest areas to visit in the city of Jerusalem is the Armenian Quarter. The gate only opens for thirty minutes everyday and the signs to the opening aren’t marked. At least I couldn’t find them.
After we left the Dormition Monastery, we made are way to the Jaffa gate looking for the entrance. We arrived a few minutes before they allowed entry into Cathedral of St. James, according to our guide book the most beautiful church in Jerusalem. Next to the door were a bunch of rules about the church, the most odious being no photography. But there was also something about not putting your hands in your pockets.
And it was a beautiful church, with what seemed like hundreds of lanterns hung from the ceiling on an intricate series of pullies. One ornate altar has the head of St. James buried in it. We had actually come in time to hear the Armenians read the liturgy. That was fun for about five minutes and enough time for one of the little old ladies to admonish Cindi for crossing her legs. No leg crossing in the Church of St. James. I would have stayed longer if picture taking was involved. Eventually the incense drove us out.
We wandered back to our hotel through the Purim revelers at the Mamilla mall. We had seen a group of kids earlier having a fun fare amidst the Roman Columns on the Cardo.
Sunday at Sunset, Purim starts in the city of the Jerusalem. Purim is the festival of Queen Esther who helped save thousands of Jews in Persia. One of the games I got to play was to find out the exact day of the festival. Now it falls in the month of Adar, but there are two Adar’s in the Jewish Calendar. It also falls on different days depending on if you are inside a walled city or outside a walled city. It falls inside a walled city the day after it falls outside a walled city. With me? Everytime I tried to find the date on our calendar, I got the run around. Eventually, I found it to start at Dusk on March 16th in the city of Jerusalem. It starts on the 15th in Tel Aviv.
Cindi only requested we do one thing while in Israel and that was to attend a Meghilla reading on Purim and eat Hamentashen. The Meghilla reading is the story of Esther and Hamentashen is a triangular chocolate filled pastry. I had taken care of the Hamentashen at the pizza place but now it was time to go the service.
Cindi wanted to soften the blow by going to a reformed reading since then we could sit together. I figured we should just go to the big new Hurva Synagogue, since according to my bike guide, Roy, it was the nicest Synagogue in town. I was a big boy and could sit by myself. Plus, I needed to go into sites that had been locked to me.
But one look through the window at the very seriously dressed Jewish men in their black or furry hats and I knew my blue jeans and ball cap would get me thrown out. Cindi had seen flyers posted up about a partyesque Purim at the Chabad center so we wandered in that direction.
Cindi was starting to waver about the whole Purim thing so I reminded her that this was the one thing she said wanted to do. An older women came up to us and asked if we were here for the service. I said yes.
So think of this fish and this water he is supposed to be in and is now out of. That was me in the Meghilla reading. It was held in this tiny white washed room. A table had been set up at the front for snacks and drinks. I guess that was part of the party the flyer referred to. The chairs were the white plastic ones you can get cheap at the Orchard Supply Hardware store. Although where you can find an OSH in the Holy Land, I do not know.
Cindi was taken by the older women to the other side of the screen where I could not see here. Because of the disposition of the chairs and not wanting to ask anyone to move, I ended up in the front row about a foot from the guy delivering the service. I was probably the oddest looking person to my fellow parishioners despite the fact one guy was all green ala Kermit the frog and another had a giant blond moussed out wig. They were nice enough to offer me a prayer book, but I declined as my Hebrew is a bit rusty.
It takes two guys to chant the Meghilla. One to chant and one to unroll the scroll. Our Rabbi asked for help with this procedure and I carefully avoided eye contact. The scroll itself came in the finest of grocery store bags. The scroll was fairly thick and I hoped we weren’t going to read the entire thing. Just so you know, Hope dies.
There were a few prayers with bowing and odd steps back and forth before we began. I just rose when they did and sat when they did, keeping my eyes down like I was lost in contemplation.
The one thing I remembered from Cindi’s description was that you were supposed to shout whenever you heard the bad guy’s name in the Meghila reading. It became clear pretty quickly the guy’s name was Haman. I could now participate because I could pick his name out as the Rabbi would slow down and pause after saying the name. I opted for pounding the chair next to me to make noise with the rest of the men.
My other contribution was to take a photograph with the Rabbi’s helper’s camera while he was standing at the front with the Rabbi.
It took them a long time to unroll that scroll and read through it. I drowned out Hamon’s name many many times with my chair pounding. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I’ve been in that place before.
Eventually it ended. The first thing Cindi told me after was that she was trying to signal me to leave early. Yeah, there was no way to leave that room early without being noticed.
Cindi and I went down to the Western Wall plaza. I was finally going to get the nerve to actually touch the wall. I also wanted to get a better view of the full moon rising over the wall. I wandered into the room that is closest to the Holy of Holies where the men sit. I took photos as surreptitiously as possible, which isn’t very when you set up a tripod.
We had dinner near the Jaffa gate at another good restaurant. I had the schnitzel which was quite good. While waiting for the food to be cooked, I went outside with the camera to take pictures of the moon hovering over David’s Citadel. I took many more on the way home and a bunch of our beloved YMCA.
So much for the flickr badge idea. Dammit