Day 3 - July 8th

Jerusalem

The Holy City! My only concern besides being up to all the walking necessary to take in the whole city is that is lives up to expectations.

We start off by visiting the Machane Yehuda Market. It is before the Sabbath so it is very crowded with religious Jews buying food and other stuff before sundown. Kind of an organized madness. The market is hundreds of booths with just about every food imaginable - meat, poultry, vegetable, nuts and my favorite - a stand that only sold halavah. Around 2 dozen different types. Not just Joya brand - marble, vanilla and chocolate coated.

We then took a walk through the Me'ah Sharim section of Jerusalem. The streets are fairly empty due to the upcoming Sabbath. It is a very orthodox section of the City. My friend and I walking through wearing shorts and t-shirts are the "weird" looking ones. It is also very run down. Anyone that thinks the Jews are ruling the world should take a walk through this neighborhood.

The Western Wall - after walking through metal detectors (again welcome to life in Israel), I see the Wall. It is everything that I expected it to be. I actually feel intimidated by it. I feel as if I do not know how to properly pray at the Wall.

I start to timidly walk down to the Wall. Luckily there is a Lubbavitcher tent and I go over and wrap tefillin with a young man. I tell him that I visit Rabbi Levi Baumgarten's Mitzvah Tank every Monday in NY and he tells me that he knows him. I am now starting to feel more comfortable.
I then walk down to the Wall. I touch the Wall. A myriad of thoughts are running through my mind. Everything from history to personal thoughts of friends and family - alive and dead. It is a very powerful feeling. I do not think words can do justice to how I felt. I make up my own prayer in English for friends, family and Israel and kiss the Wall. Kissing the Wall was even more powerful than touching it. While I did not break down crying like I thought I might do, I have an amazingly spiritual feeling.

We go to an informal Shabbos (Sabbath) dinner at my friend's cousin's house. I feel at home. One funny note for today. Three people at the dinner speak Hebrew and English. The Chinese man speaks Hebrew and Chinese but not English and me - only English, no conversational Hebrew . Even when the conversation is in Hebrew, I feed off the emotion of the conversation.

General Observations
1. Cars are always dirty - covered with dust. It is a desert.
2. There are a lot of black people here. Besides the Ethiopian Jews that were rescued through Operations Moses, Joshua & Solomon, there are maybe 50,000 Muslim refugees from Darfur. They are illegal aliens but the government here overlooks them for humanitarian reasons. Remember that for the most part the world turned a blind eye to the genocide in Darfur but Israel took in the Muslim victims.