We did so darn much in Jerusalem that if I included it all in this blog post, it would go on until Christmas, so I won’t. That’s why this post is Jerusalem Miscellaneous. Why is it Miscellaneous 1. Because there will be at least a Miscellaneous 2. Why else?

Some of these were shorter or longer visits but I think that they are all worth mentioning.

Our first visit one morning was the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. It’s Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust to preserve their memories. It contains millions of documents. No photos were allowed inside, however. After our visit, we met with a Holocaust survivor named Ruth, in the 1st photo. She was one of the “hidden children” and she told us her story. My biggest takeaway from the museum was that early Fascism and Naziism were marked by book burnings, wild conspiracy theories, and raucous political rallies. Oddly enough, that all sounds recently familiar to me.

The next photo is on Mount Zion and is considered to be the ‘traditional’ site of the Last Supper. It’s at least an old medieval building that fits the bill. It’s upstairs because the animals would have been downstairs. Our guide said that there was probably no table; Jesus and the apostles would have just eaten on the floor.

One additional insight that I’ll add here is about the apostles, thanks to our guide, Noa. She mentioned Mathew 17, verse 24, which was about paying the temple tax on arrival to Capernaum. Jesus sent Peter to find the coin to pay the tax on the belly of the fish, a 4-drachma coin “that will suffice for himself and Peter.”

Noa continued that the Torah (5 Books of Moses) indicates the age of those who are required to pay the tax which appears in Exodus 30, verses 13-14. Then she asked us “what does all this mean?”

I drew a blank. Noa said that since Jesus, Peter, and all the apostles went into the temple but only Jesus and Peter had to pay the tax required of all age 20 and over, then the rest of the apostles were “TEENAGERS!” Think about that!

We left Jerusalem and drove about six miles to Abu Ghosh, an Arab-Israeli community. Our first main stop was the Grand Mosque of Abu Ghosh, as seen in the photo below. It has four minarets and is the second largest mosque in Israel. It was funded with help from the President of Chechnya and the Chechen people. The writing on the entrance way to the mosque is in Russian. Israel and Jerusalem are complicated.

We met Issa Jabar in Abu Ghosh. He was a former teacher and high school principal and the former mayor of Abu Ghosh. He knew everyone in town. After showing us around town, we went to his house for lunch. Amal, his wife, made us lunch. We had baba ghanoush, seven or eight other dishes, and two types of melons for dessert. Then he served us coffee and he explained his “philosophy of coffee.” Issa is on the left. His philosophy of coffee allows for negative answers without anyone ever having to say “No.” He gave us several examples. He was a great person and a character.

Our next stop that day was the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center. Our focus was to see the twelve beautiful Marc Chagall windows created by the artist and installed there.