Walk through the Old City

This morning we are headed into the Old City of Jerusalem. Our first stop was to peek inside Dormition Abbey, which is on Mount Zion right next to my JUC campus. This is one of those churches that has a huge cuppola (dome) that makes the acoustics (and echo of your voice) so beautiful, so much that anyone can sing and it sounds wonderful:)  Edith and I sang a song in there (I Love you Lord, and I lift my voice...), and then this priest got up and sang a beautiful song in Latin, he was just worshiping the Lord.

Outside Dormition Abbey, here's Maureen an Edith next to the statue of King David. It's on this site they have the "Tomb of King David".

We came across this small holocaust museum. It was the original holocaust memorial prior to the building of the huge Yad Vashem memorial that most tourists go to.

We saw many reminders of the horrors of the holocaust in there, but this was the most memorable. Here is a shirt made out of a Torah scroll. The germans forced a Jewish tailor to make this shirt out of their beloved Torah scroll, and they wore it as a mockery to the the Jews. It is of course an abomination to the Jews to cut and destroy the Torah like this. Well, the sign says that the Jewish tailor had the last word...because the passages of the scripture that he used to make this shirt were all the ones with curses on them, for example from Deuteronomy...the curses that would happen if they didn't obey the commandments, etc. So the german soldier was wearing the curses of God as they mocked the Jews. That tailor had chutzpa:)

Now inside the Old City, I snapped this picture of the outer walls as we were walking down to  certain place on the wall that Edith wanted to pray at.

Here we are on the wall, looking down over the City of David. When David first conquered Jerusalem, the city of David was on this slope going down from the Temple Mount. It was likely down there to be close to the Gihon Spring, their source of water.

This is a place on the outerwalls that you can reach without climbing, here we are praying for the City of David, which today is a huge Arab neighborhood called Silwan.

Along came two IDF soldiers that we began to speak with. One said he was from Ashdod, the city we had just visited on the Mediterranean coast! When asked where they were stationed in the IDF, one said he was like 'Hamas' but on the Israeli side, meaning like  special forces. We told those boys that we pray for the IDF, and for them, they were pretty amazed and touched to meet American women who took such an interest in their mission and their safety.

 Lunchtime!! We are eating falafels, which are one of my favorites!!  A falafel is made of deep fried balls of mashed up and seasoned chickpeas, stuffed in a pita, then you pile all kinds of veggies and sauces on top of it...Yummy!!

 We went to this artist's gallery in the "Cardo", an area in the Jewish Quarter. This Jewish man painted the picture above their heads, depicting the Western Wall, with the 'new Jerusalem' appearing above it, just beautiful.  He talked and talked about all the colors and beauty that he sees as an artist in Jerusalem.

Another day in Jerusalem, just too incredibly awesome!!