(The streets of the Old City are locked up and quiet at 6:00 a.m.)
The optional trip to Masada day. I was torn on this one. Having been to Masada twice, it is amazing and awesome, but having the day to just be in the Old City of Jerusalem also held some allure. Having the time to do the ramparts walk on the Old City walls yesterday made the decision a lot easier - I'm in for the trip.
Started the day by getting up and going to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for morning prayer at 6:00 a.m. Again enjoyed great singing by priests who were conducting a worship service near the Tomb.
(Church of the Holy Sepulcher is majestic in the morning.)
We left about 8:00 a.m. for the Dead Sea. Great drive through the Judean wilderness. It can look in places like the lunar landscape. Passed several encampments of Bedouin shepherds. The trip takes about an hour from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and the drop from one to the other is significant as the Dead Sea is 1300 feet below sea level - the lowest place on earth. At it's deepest spot the Dead Sea is 1200 feet deep. As the name suggests it's chock full of salt and other minerals and is dead, dead, dead. We drove along the Dead Sea to get to Masada, a giant rock - really giant - on top of which Herod built a spectacular palace - because he could, and on top of which Jewish zealots made a final stand against Roman soldiers - because they had to. The Roman siege lasted three years at the end of which the Zealots (with the exception of just two or three) committed suicide. You can still see remains of Herod's rockin' palace and of the Roman encampments down on the ground along with the ramp they built to try and storm the place. There is also a Synagogue up here that the Jewish zealots used and a Byzantine church. Awesome stuff.
(view from Masada where the cable car let's you out)
(remains of front portion of Herod's multi-tiered Palace - below is where the Roman's who were laying siege to Masada would have been and in the distance the blue is the Dead Sea)
(Me at Masada. Go Reds!)
(Temptation Restaurant. Really. See Zacchaeus tree in the middle.)
(Market outside of the Temptation Restaurant in Jericho.)
After lunch we went back towards the Dead Sea to the site of the Qumran Community. Qumran was the place where a splinter Jewish group called the Essenes lived in a communal environment, removed from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. They saw themselves as Children of Light and outsiders as Children of Darkness. They spent a good bit of their time making copies of scrolls of Scripture which when they saw that they were going to be attacked by Roman soldiers they hid. A Palestinian shepherd boy found a scroll of theirs in a cave where they hid it which led to the discoveries of many more scrolls which we know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are in many instances some of our best, earliest manuscripts of Scripture.
(One of the caves where the Essenes hid their scrolls - what we know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this same area, in caves like this David hid with his men in the days when Saul was searching for him to kill him. When you see the terrain you can imagine how hard it would be to find someone who knew the area and didn't want to be found.)
The day wound up with folks who wanted to floating in the Dead Sea, which I've never seen the charm in, so I watched and also found a coffee bar that had passable latte from a machine.
(folks checking out the Dead Sea - our guide, Rula, told us that it would make us ten years younger - so the tips of my fingers on my right hand should be feeling very youthful)
The countryside and the amazing views from Masada were superb - making the trip was the right choice.
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