Picture Day and Holy Places

When I was growing up, Picture Day was probably the second most important day at E.C. Brooks Elementary School. (The most important was Field Day, which concluded with a brutal tug-of-war match for grade-wide bragging rights. My fondest memories, however, consist of popsicles and an endless supply of mystery orange drink.) That is why I felt a twinge of nostalgia when the Albright Institute Picture Day rolled around last week. There were some differences, of course: (1) at no point did the photographer say to me, "Come on, Superman, let's have a smile," and (2) I was not wearing hand-me-downs from my brother Brendan. No, my clothes this year are hand-me-downs from my brother-in-law Will. (Thanks, Will! The blazer fits great!) Since I've written about several of these folks throughout the year, I thought you'd like to see some of the shots. Here is the group photo; I am in the second row from the back, fourth from the left. On the end of my row in the tie is Sy Gitin, the director of the Albright.

Here is a picture of me with Linda who has the same fellowship as I do. You may be thinking that she could not resist resting her hands on my broad, muscular shoulders; in fact she is trying to steady herself on the rock ledge she stood on to look taller. Linda is a graduate student from the University of Pennsylvania.

Here is a picture of Rodney, my intrepid travel partner to Jordan. He recently defended his thesis at the University of Wales.

Here's a shot of Christine and Isaac, who are the two National Endowment for the Humanities fellows. Christine just finished her doctorate at UCLA and Isaac is a professor from the University of Chicago. He is here with his wife and three kids who are with him in the group photo.

This is a picture of Erin and Bob, who are two of the Education and Cultural Affairs fellows. (There are four total, but the other two had already left the Albright before the picture day.) Erin is a doctoral candidate at Duke University and Bob is a candidate at the University of Missouri.

And finally here is Ben, who earned his doctorate at the University of Liverpool but before that he studied at N.C. State. He is this year's program coordinator at the Albright, so he organized all of our field trips and made sure the resident hostel ran smoothly.

The morning of our picture day, we took a field trip to the Haram ash-Sharif ("the Noble Sanctuary), or Temple Mount. This enormous platform is perhaps one of the holiest sites in the world and is venerated by Jews, Muslims and Christians. Tradition has linked it with Mount Moriah where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, and it is also regarded as the site of Solomon's Temple, which was rebuilt and greatly expanded by Herod the Great just before the time of Jesus. In fact the present platform still rests on some of the Herodian architecture, most famously the Western Wall, which Jews believe has retained the divine presence of the God of Israel. For this reason that stretch of wall is the most sacred holy site for Jews.

For Muslims this area is sacred for two events in the life of Muhammad: (1) the isra, or night journy, in which the Prophet traveled from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night, arriving on this mount to lead prayer. The night journey is commemorated in the great al-Aqsa Mosque. And (2) the Prophet's miraj, or ascension to heaven, which occurred on the Haram ash-Sharif and is commemorated in the Dome of the Rock, the golden jewel of Jerusalem's skyline.

Here am I in front of the Dome of the Rock:

And again, closer this time:

Here's a picture of me inside the al-Aqsa Mosque. Our group was very fortunate to get inside the mosque, which isn't always open to non-Muslims. We were also allowed to go down to "Solomon's Stables" beneath the mosque.

I took lots of photos inside, but the light was not that great. This one of the stained glass was one of the few that came out well.

Probably the best part of the whole trip, however, was the fact that our tour guide, Khader, wore a Dale Earnhardt #3 hat the whole time. If there's one man who can bring together Jews, Christians and Muslims, it's the Intimidator.

Who You Calling a Nimrod?

Nowadays the word "nimrod" is most commonly used to describe someone who is an idiot. This is the word that has come to mind since my last blog entry, in which I named some Texans (Willie Nelson, ZZ Top and Dan Rather) who I thought had a legitimate claim to the title of greatest Texan since Davy Crockett (of Tennessee). Soon after posting the blog entry, it was brought to my attention that I had neglected to mention the one person who truly is the greatest Texan since old Davy: my sister Catherine who was born at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, TX. So let this blog posting set the record straight once and for all. Case closed!

Nimrod was on my mind for other reasons this week, too. Three other fellows and I made a trip north to Tel Dan (my last visit of the year to the site), and afterwards we continued north to a Crusader period castle, which is called Nimrod, after one of Ham's descendants who was well-known for his hunting expertise (see Genesis 10:8-9).

Here is a view of the castle from Tel Dan:

And then here is our group: me, Rodney, Christine and John. The castle is built on a long ridge with two large tower complexes on either end. We are standing on one and you can see the second in the distance.
Here is the cistern which collected water for the castle. I'm not sure if it's still potable. (Rodney was afraid to try it.)
One of the best parts of the visit was getting to the top of the second tower from which we could see Mount Hermon, the highest peak in Israel. It is the brown mountain rising from my right arm. The peak itself if slightly obscured, but if you follow the brown until it ends, that last part is the peak.
On our way back to Jerusalem, we drove down through the Golan Heights from which you can see Syria. Here is a shot of the only border between Israel and Syria; it is actually a UN outpost, and UN workers are the only ones who are allowed to pass through. Beyond this compound is Syria.

Potus schmotus

Maybe I'm the last person in the United States who doesn't know what "potus" stands for or who hasn't watched an episode of "The West Wing," because when my aunt Susu emailed me and asked me how it was hanging out with potus in Israel, I thought she was referring to a flower that blooms in the mid-spring. After a quick Google search, I learned that "potus" stands for "President of the United States," as in George W. Bush, who was here last week to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel's statehood.

Things got off a little awkwardly when Bush landed in Tel Aviv and remarked that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was "an honest man." Bush was apparently unmoved by the fact that Olmert is being investigated for bribery for the fifth time and is probably facing indictment soon. Just about everyone in Israel thinks he is a crook.

Bush stayed again at the King David Hotel, which is very close to the Hebrew Union College. As I walked to HUC one day last week, I noticed this sign set up along the road:

Nevermind the legions of great Texans who have a legitimate claim to being the greatest since Davy Crockett. (I'm thinking specifically of Willie Nelson, ZZ Top and Dan Rather, in that order.) What really tickled me is the fact that Davy Crockett is not a Texan. He was born in Tennessee and spent most of his life there, eventually representing the state in the House of Representatives. It was only after his re-election bid failed that he made good on this declaration: "You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas," arriving just in time to die at the Battle of the Alamo.

(Sorry for the long delay between posts. I took at day trip up north last Monday and will post those pictures soon.)

Jordan Redux

Last week my friend Rodney and I took a trip to Jordan for a few days. Each of us had been once before: I with Emily during her visit and Rodney with a tour group a couple of years ago. Since Rodney is here under a tourist visa, he has to leave and reenter Israel every three months to renew it, and I was wanting to visit some sites in Jordan that Em and I had missed, so the Thursday before last we caught a ride with some friends to the border crossing at Beth Shean. After crossing into Jordan, we met with the car and driver we had arranged for the day and off we went. Our first site was Jerash, which is an enormous ancient city with Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine ruins. Here is a view of the Roman period forum (it is elliptical, which was kind of cool) that leads to the main street, or Cardo: Down the Cardo on the left was the entrance to the Byzantine cathedral. This church had been a Roman temple that was converted. Here am I coming up the first set of steps that lead to the church:
There are two theaters in Jerash, one at either end of the city. This one is at the far end of the city and is the better preserved of the two: After visiting that theater we made our way back to the entrance and came upon a reenactment in progress in the Hippodrome. Alas, it was not free, and Rodney and I agreed that a thirty minute show was not worth 12 Jordanian Dinars (= $17). We snuck off this picture before some employees explained the "no pay, no photos" policy:
Fortunately other entertainment was awaiting us in Jerash's second theater. These guys were really rocking. Shortly after this photo was taken, however, a mustachioed German tourist, who was wearing a wet bathcloth under his cap, came out and started dancing around them. The German seemed unaware of the awkward scene he was creating because he continued merrily without any encouragement from his friends (or us).
From Jerash we drove south through Amman and stopped at Nebo, the site where Moses is said to have beheld the Promised Land before he died (Deuteronomy 34:1-4):

And here is the wonderful view from Nebo. It drops steeply into the Jordan Valley, and we could see the northern edge of the Dead Sea:
Our final stop on this first day was the Christian town of Madaba, which is famous for its mosaic map of the Holy Land. It dates to the 6th century CE and is part of the floor of St. George's Church. Unfortunately, only a fraction of it has survived, as this plan shows:
But the surviving portions have provided an invaluable resource for understanding the Christian landscape in the the Holy Land during the Byzantine period. The most famous section is this depiction of Jerusalem, which shows, among other things, the Holy Sepulchre, the Damascus Gate and Holy Zion:
Madaba was a really charming town and easy to walk, so we took our time and enjoyed some of the local coffee. Here's me and then Rodney starting off the day:

Then it was on to Amman. The capital of Jordan is a booming metropolis (5.5 million people) and also has a few ancient sites. Here, for example, is the Roman theater, which is large but not as well preserved as the ones in Jerash. Here I am trying to work off last night's ice cream:
From here you can climb up to the ancient citadel, which is quite a hike. Along the way we encountered a man facing a group of children such that his back was to us. Just as we were passing I noticed that he was wearing a mask -- then a second later he turned to me, shook my hand and started to growl:
Yes, it was frightening. This picture was taken only after I stopped hyperventilating and we all shared a laugh. ("Ha ha ha. Thank you. That was funny.") The children, of course, had been laughing all along. Nothing like some wholesome fun at the expense of unassuming tourists.

The adrenaline rush of fright was just what we needed to power to the top of the citadel, where there is a Roman temple and a museum. This was a sign that was posted just inside the museum. Who could explain such a strange sign?
Then we walked back down the hill and found a local restaurant for some dinner. Here we had some kebabs
and of course hot tea:

After a night in Amman at the American Center of Oriental Research, which is kind of a sister institute to the Albright, we took a taxi back down to Madaba, where we had arranged for transport to Petra along the King's Highway. There's two ways to move north-south in Jordan: the Desert Highway, which is a straight shot on a plateau, or the King's Highway, which snakes up and down and through the wadi ("valley") system of streams that empty into the Dead Sea. The King's Highway is an ancient trade route that brought spices and other luxury goods from Arabia into ancient Near East, so it was cool to ride along it to get a sense of ancient traveling and also because it affords some breathtaking views. Riding along with us from Madaba to Petra was an Italian couple, whom you see here beside our minibus:
Here's a shot of Rodney and me at one of the two major wadis that we crossed. (This one is Wadi Mujib.) And for the record, yes, I did wear the same shirt and pants everyday, as did Rodney -- by this point we were both smelling pretty ripe.
Also at this lookout was a German group, who were traveling in the "Rotel" you see here ("Das Rollende Hotel"!). By day they ride in the bus and by night they insert themselves into private compartments in the back -- touring has never been so efficient. Leave it to the Germans!
At last we made it to Petra. As a way of introduction to this famous site, here's a selection of quotes from the official brochure they give you in the visitor's center:

"Petra reeks of foreign and local cultural influences. The city was throbbing with life..."

"Three days are needed for honest exploratory coverage."

"This remote dead city is one of the great archaeological treasures in the world, undoubtedly."

First up is the Siq. This narrow passage leads to the "Treasury," which was made famous by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:

One climb Emily and I didn't make last November was to the High Place of Sacrifice, which is a perch that looks over the whole city. Its name comes from sacrifice table and altar that are on top of the ridge. The animal would be slaughtered in this circle where the blood would drain down, and then they would clean the animal using water from the cistern you also see here. Of course after the Samaritan Passover, I had plenty of mental images to reconstruct the scene here:

It turns out that on a sunny day this same cistern is the only place to find some shade, as this bedouin teenager showed us. Unless someone showed interest in her merchandise, she was just chilling in the cistern, legs flopped out, hitting up her friends on the cellie. (I don't understand Arabic, but she was probably telling her friends, "Y'all get up here; I'm stuck in the freakin' sacrifice cistern!") By the way, the altar for burnt offering is just to the right of the sacrifice site.
Here is the view from the High Place:
Of course we also made our way up to the Monastery. One nice thing about this time of year in Petra is all the flowers that were blooming:
After such a long walk up, the lookout from the Monastery made a nice place to showcase my beached whale impression:
Some of the other highlights included the Great Temple of Petra, seen here; it was only discovered in the early 1990's and is a huge sacred complex:

Our last adventure in Petra was to hike through an auxiliary wadi. Water that should flow into the Siq was diverted into this wadi, which proved to be even more narrow than the Siq and just as steep. This rerouting was actually an ancient innovation by the Nabataeans living in Petra.
The lowlight of the trip definitely came on our last evening when I ate something that didn't agree with my stomach. After some close calls with street vendors this year I guess I was due for a good old-fashioned stomach bug; this one woke me up every hour after midnight our last night. It was therefore with great trepidation that at 6 am I boarded the three-hour bus back to Amman. When we made a pit stop halfway through (as you see us here) I couldn't believe my good fortune...
Until I saw the rest stop bathroom. I was relieved all the same and made it back to Amman without incident. (Although no caffeine till 1 pm that day gave me a wicked headache, which was exacerbated by the blaring Arabic music the driver played.) From there I caught a cab to the border, crossed back to Israel and took another bus back to the Damascus Gate. Then I happily walked backed to comfort of my own room!

Samaritan Passover

As many of you know, this past weekend marked the beginning of the Jewish Passover, or Pesach. Exodus chapter 12 describes how God instructed His people, who were enslaved in Egypt, to gather in their homes, and each household should sacrifice a lamb, whose blood they should put on the lintel, so that God will know to "pass over" that house, when his "destroyer" comes to kill all the first-borns in Egypt (verse 23). For the seven days after the passover feast, they are to eat only unleavened bread as a way to remember the haste with which they fled Egypt (verse 39).

When the Temple still stood in Jerusalem, this feast would be celebrated as it is prescribed in the Torah: each family would sacrifice a lamb and eat it that evening. But after the Temple was destroyed (first by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, then again by the Romans in 70 CE), sacrifices could no longer be offered, and so Jews celebrated the Passover with a Seder dinner, during which the story of their deliverance from Egypt is recounted with the symbolic meal.

The Passover just described is basically what most Jews in Israel and the Diaspora celebrated this past weekend, but there is a group of Jews who still carry out the biblical Passover, sacrifice and all. These are the Samaritans, who for centuries have maintained their own Jewish community around Mount Gerizim, which they consider to be God's holy mountain. The Samaritans' origins go to 722 BCE, when the Assyrians conquered the northern half of Israel, deported many of its residents and replaced them with foreigners who merged with the Israelites left behind. The Jews in Jerusalem were suspicious of this mixed population, and later after these southern Jews had themselves been deported (to Babylon) and returned to the Holy Land, they were all the more displeased to find that the Samaritans had fashioned themselves as the keepers of Israel's religious traditions.

The Samaritans were thus marginalized but still persisted, even building their own temple on Mount Gerizim, which they believe to be the site of the binding of Isaac (Gen 22) and also of Joshua's twelve memorial stones (Josh 4:20-24). They also regard only the Torah sacred scripture. The emnity continued between the Jerusalem Jews and the Samaritans, such that the Gerizim temple was destroyed in 128 BCE, but the latter continued to worship. In several places the New Testament attests their prevalence but also their "outsider" status. When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, she asks, "'How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?'" (John 4:9). Then just to clarify things, the gospel writer add: "For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Similarly, in Luke , it is a Samaritan (of all people) who stops to help the beaten man (Luke 10:33).

All this introduction leads me to the point that the Samaritans have persisted to this day, and they continue their Passover sacrifices as they have for centuries -- except nowadays fanny-pack-wearing tourists show up to take pictures, which they post on blogs with an oversimplified summary of a centuries-old religious tradition. (Yes me!...minus the fanny-pack, of course.) The spectacle was described by Fr. Murphy-O'Connor (whom you may remember for his sensual description of Mt. Tabor from "Day Four [cont.] and Five" of Emily's visit) thus: "Unfortunately crowds of tourists tend to turn a dignified ceremony into a rather vulgar circus." Who can turn down a vulgar circus? Certainly not me; so my friend Rodney and I hopped on a bus organized by the Ecole Biblique (see blog post from 12 Oct 2007) and made our way to Gerizim.

Mount Gerizim itself is located in the middle of the West Bank and looks directly over the city of Nablus, which lies in the valley between Gerizim and Mount Ebal. Here is a view of Nablus and Ebal from the top of Gerizim:

The sacrifices used to take place on the summit of Mt. Gerizim, where the Samaritans had built their temple, but they were displaced from the peak when a Byzantine church was built there. The ruins of that church, which was octagonal and dedicated to Mary the Mother of God, are still preserved as you can see here:And here's is yours truly among the ruins atop Gerizim:Nowadays the sacrifices happens in a small village just below the peak, which you see here:

Now to the main event. Here is the pavilion where the sacrifices -- about 35-40 sheep in all -- took place. This picture was taken before the festivities began and things got crowded. Soon after this shot was taken heads of household, each one with his sons and a sheep, gathered on either side of this channel, by which the blood will run into the fire of the main altar, which you can see in the lower right corner. Non-Samaritans were not allowed in this area during the sacrifice, so we took our seats in the chairs you see in the back.Here is the altar, where God's portion (the fat, entrails and blood) will be dedicated.The pavement beside the channel sloped up to where the priests were gathered. They were distinguishable by their vestments, and although they did not slaughter any animals (that was the job of each head of household for his family), they received a portion of each sacrifice, namely the right foreleg. Speaking of sacrifice, in the background of this picture you see some of the guests of honor: Here are some more priests in their vestments. The one in the green on the far right was the high priest:Here are some of the sheep being brought forth. All this while, the priests and the laity are chanting back and forth. Then the high priest began to chant by himself and each family held down its sheep. All of a sudden the laity begins chanting again -- rather loudly this time -- and clapping and you got the feeling that this was the moment of the slaughter. Here is the view from our seats shortly after the sheep were killed. You can already see one fire in the back had been started. At this time we saw on the ground that they were skinning the sheep. What you see in this picture is basically the entire Samaritan population that remains in the world (around 400, we guessed). Here's a warning that the next photos will include some of the dead sheep. I've kept out the really graphic ones, but some viewers still might want to skip the rest.

So once the sheep were skinned, they were put up on hooks and dressed. Each head of household cut away the fat and pulled out the entrails, which were sent to the altar to be burned as a dedication to God.Here was the man right in front of us with his sons nearby. Each time he cut off a portion for the altar, he gave it to one of his sons who took it to the altar. You could tell it was an honor to take such dedications to the altar and it really emphasized for me the familial aspect of the whole festival.And here is that altar with the buring fat and entrails rising to God. The wooden skewers you see in the background were the last step of the dressing: the gutted sheep were skewed (careful not to break any bones) and prepared for roasting and eventually feasting.Here is one of the several fire pit behind the altar where the sheep would be roasted. Already you can see them drying out the skins. One of the priests told us that they would roast the meat on the skewers until about midnight, then feast, and then around 3 am whatever had not been eaten would be thrown into the firepit to be burned, since nothing of the feast can remain until the next morning. Needless to say, it was a memorable evening. And actually it wasn't too crowded because it was one of the rare years when the Samaritan Passover and the mainstream Jewish Passover were on the same day. (Usually they're several weeks apart.) So many of the Israelis who would have been here were celebrating their Seders elsewhere.

Just some thoughts that I keep coming back to: (1) the whole evening was controlled chaos. I'm so used to solemn Western liturgies, and this was very different. Besides the sacrifices, so much else seemed to be going on: people meeting and greeting and celebrating, priests talking with dignitaries, etc. It really felt like a celebration; (2) it was interesting to see how integral the laity was in the whole evening. There were so many priests on-hand, but all the rituals were performed by the heads of household. But both were integral in the events of the evening, and even though you could identify the different groups, there was a lot of mixing; and (3) I keep thinking about how family-based the whole evening was. Fathers including their sons in every aspect of the sacrifice. (The wives and daughters were nearby but unfortunately not involved in the rites.) I wish we could have stayed longer to see how this family and community celebration continued during the feast itself.