At an internet cafe in the middle of the Old City - quite a contrast of modernity in this ancient city.  I arrived back in Jerusalem Sunday morning, getting a ride from Bethlehem with the MCC couple living there, and joined them for the english service at a lutheran church in the old city.  Afterwards, I was invited to join them, MCC Jordan rep. Alan, and MCC overseers from Winnepeg, Rick and Jan Janzen, to eat kanafe (special dessert that has a white mozzerela-ish cheese on the bottom and sweet syrupy crust on top).  It was fun to have that interaction with very likable and admirable people.  And i like kanafe.

 

Sunday evening our group reconvened after our week of free travel at Ecce Homo, a convent within the old city walls, where we are staying for this week.  Began the daunting task of trying to catch up after a week of being apart and having different experiences.  The idea of trying to catch up after a whole semester seems pretty much impossible.  But I suppose we'll have to try

 

The convent is just a few blocks from the temple mount - the golden dome of the dome of the rock is a very significant portion of our view from the roof/deck/porches.  This week our focus is on learning about Judaism and Jewish culture.  It is a struggle for me to try to understand secular and traditional Judaism, which are the dominant forms of Judaism in Israel - 80% of Israeli Jews are secular.  Yet many secular Jews (who would consider themselves atheist/humanist) keep a kosher house, fast on the day of atonement, and the state collectively makes extensive use of biblical images in their humanist nationalism.  Our speaker this morning, himself an observant religious Jew, illuminated some of these parallels between the role of Judaism as a civil religion by taking us to two sacred Jewish 'mountains': First we visited Mount Moriah (the temple mount), where king David first brought the ark of the covenant to strengthen the spiritual centrality of Jerusalem for his kingdom, and then we went to Mount Herzl (in the New City of Jerusalem), where another David - David Ben Gurion - brought another sacred box, the remains of Herzl (the founder of secular zionism whose vision essentially created the modern state of Israel), also as a deliberate government move to enhance the spiritual centrality of Jerusalem.  I'm really not comfortable with civil religion - with religion being used to support political objectives.  it feels so tainted and ungenuine to me.  Yet this observant Jew felt very positively about the secular use of biblical images, glad that they at least keep practicing the culture, if not the faith.  Learning to more fully understand this dual Jewish identity that has somewhat distinct ethnic and religious components will be an ongoing process for these next several weeks.

 

On a more positive note, the speakers (most of them Jewish and of a variety of backgrounds and perspectives) have been very interesting and have been some really wonderful people.  It is very nice to have these interactions to help us have human faces for Israelis, that are distinctly different from the Israeli soldiers we encountered in the West Bank who were actively or indirectly acting in ways that dehumanized the Palestinians.  I am grateful for the new dimensions of complexity this week has given us. Friday evening (shabbat - sabbath - begins at sundown) we will go to a synagoge service and then have shabbat meal in the homes of Jewish families.  Really looking forward to that.  Monday we move on to our next home - kibbutz afikim in the Galilee, which will introduce us to another aspect of Israeli society.  Keep us in your thoughts and prayers!