Day 07 - Mount Herzl, Judean Wilderness, Bethlehem, Yad Vashem

Our seventh day in Israel began with a lovely morning on the hotel balcony overlooking Jerusalem. We were given a devotion, and then we were off to our first site.

Our first site was a place called Mount Herzl. It is named after the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl. On that mountain, we met a jeweler who is known as the “Lord of the Rings.” He sells lovely customized jewelry. While we were shopping, several of us got pooped on by birds! Oh the adventures one has when traveling around.

The rest of the day consisted of traveling around the West Bank. The first thing we saw there was the Herodium. Built by King Herod, this magnificent palace stands on a hill that overlooks the Judean wilderness. You can see the Dead Sea far off in the distance. This palace is the only structure that Herod named after himself. Considering the fact that he is thought to be one of the greatest architects of Judea, having built many great structures, this is significant. He named the place after himself because the hill was the place where Herod had his first victory as a military general. The palace is filled with beautiful murals and other works of art. It also boasted a massive pool that was surrounded by trees (a great relief in such a hot desert). However, despite the palace’s beauty, as the king approached the end of his life, he ordered it to be destroyed and turned into a mausoleum for himself. He was buried there upon his death.

After seeing this spectacular palace of ruins, we headed to Bethlehem. Most famous for being the place where Jesus was born, there is a large square (called Manger Square) and church (the Church of the Nativity) there. The church is one of the oldest active churches in the Holy Land. The first one on the site was built in 325 A.D. This church was destroyed, but it was rebuilt in 540 A.D. This is the church that stands there today. One has to appreciate the inspiration that the Bible has given to so many artists, including the architects of this church. It is ostentatious and gaudy to some, but it is a symbol of the effect that Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection has had on people all throughout the last two centuries. There are two main sites within the church: the birthing cave and the place of the manger. While (most likely) not the true sites of the events they stand for, they are good representations of what the setting would have looked like.
Close by is a Christian store called Johnny’s. We all had fun shopping in there, supporting our family in Christ who are increasingly becoming a minority in this land.

After Mount Herzl and before the West Bank, we went to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. It is called Yad Vashem. It is difficult to put into words what it was like being there today. Sobering. Heartbreaking. Unreal. It is even harder to wrap your mind around what happened in Europe before and during the years of World War II. The antisemitic laws, the pogroms, the ghettoes, the concentration camps, the death camps. Dachau. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek. Sobibor. Treblinka. Mauthausen. Countless others. The complete and total national acceptance of hatred of the Jews is unspeakable, unimaginable. A hatred that became the driving force behind the deaths of approximately 6,000,000 Jews (along with countless others) is not something that can be fully understood.
This museum posed a question for us as Christians. The general scape of the population of Europe during these years was thus: 6-7% were Nazi supporters and collaborators, 93% passive observers, and 0.01% stood up to the wickedness and risked their lives to save others. 0.01 percent. That is it. They are recognized by Israel as “the righteous among the nations.” What is disturbing now is the lack of knowledge of the Holocaust. Many—too many—people do not even know what the Holocaust is. Many more do not fully understand the atrocities of the Shoah. History forgotten is history repeated. The world does not seem to have learned its lesson. So who will we be? Who will YOU be? Will you be a passive observer of evil (making you therefore complicit)? Will you join the forces of wickedness? Or will you be one of the few that stands up and says, “no more.” Will you share the tragedies of history with others, in order that they may not make the same mistakes again? What will you do to stand up for righteousness? Pressing questions in such a disturbed and twisted age. As the words in Dachau concentration camp say so simply, yet so eloquently: DO NOT FORGET. Stand up for the innocent. Help the helpless. Do not allow evil to prevail.

Tomorrow we begin our tour of the Holy City—the jewel of Israel, the pride of this nation—Jerusalem.