Newsletter #20 - late July 2000

Well, now that we're back from Germany, let's see if we can catch up on the news a little bit.

You may have been hearing about the Camp David peace talks in the news. The Christian leaders in Jerusalem's Old City were concerned about the possibility of the Christian religious sites being transferred to Arab jurisdiction. We found that in Nazareth and Bethlehem and Jericho, the Arabs seem to encourage Christian tourism, because of the money it brings into their communities. However, the Muslims also seem inclined to place mosques adjacent to the Christian holy sites. The muezzins then broadcast very loud calls to worship and prayers several times a day from the minarets. The newspaper here reported that a muezzin deliberately interrupted and drowned out the Pope when he was speaking earlier this year in Nazareth. The Moslems also placed a cemetery in front of the Eastern (Golden) Gate of Jerusalem's Old City, hoping to prevent the Jewish and Christian Messiah from making a triumphal entry through it, as prophesied by the Bible. This is because a Jewish priest (a "cohen," from the Biblical tribe of Levi) is not allowed to visit a cemetery, or to be near a dead body. Of course, this doesn't present a problem for those who believe Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is descended from the Biblical tribe of Judah, not Levi!

My mother is very happy now that she has sold her Connecticut home and moved into a retirement cottage in Durham, NC. She lives just a few miles from my sister, who is catsitting for us while we're in Israel. Now that the two cats have lived with my sister for a year, they get along much better with each other! I wonder what THAT means.

Kevin and I are sponsoring a new family in my office. They will arrive shortly from Atlanta. The highest personnel turnover is during the summer, when school lets out. So, there are quite a few new faces in the office! Some of the people who are leaving, stayed for the maximum five years allowed, and would have stayed longer if permitted. I now have a new boss. This is his second tour in Israel.

Our beach has re-opened after being closed for some time, due to a sewage leak. The last time we went, some men were riding beautiful Arabian horses along the beach.

Labor strikes still occasionally occur. One afternoon the buses suddenly stopped running, and my assistant was stranded. He ended up walking home. Another time, the truckers went on strike and left their rigs in the middle of the highways, which made for an interesting rush hour.

Kevin is still waiting on his security clearance to start work at the Embassy in Tel Aviv. He, along with some other Embassy folks, are making a welcome video for the Embassy. Kevin was assigned to photograph the airport, but most of it is off-limits for security reasons. One of the team members works as an Inspector General. His wife is back in the US, working for Voice of America radio.

We continue to experience problems with our mail. There have been several occasions when items were stolen, missent to the wrong place, lost (including a large certified envelope), or delayed. The Postmaster in the Israel APO says that we're the only Embassy family having these problems. Hmmmm.

We turtle-sat our neighbors' Greek tortoise for a while. The two neighbors (the ones beside and below us) finally opened their California-based Coffee Bean franchise in Herzlia Pituach, and it is very nice. Before it opened, they had several sharp disagreements about running the business. One time another neighbor even called the police! But for now all is calm, all is mild.

At the church we regularly attend, we've been able to hear some of our favorite recording artists in person - Carol Cantrell, and Roy and Mary Kendall. Once we were visited by a group of Arab Christians, who taught us some Arabic songs, accompanied by traditional Arabic instruments. We also had speakers from the Brownville, FL revival movement. The Spanish church where Kevin volunteers has invited us to their new facility several times for special services and "kabalat Shabbat" (Friday night) dinners.

Kevin and I went on a walking tour of modern Tel Aviv. We toured the Bialik House, which is now a museum honoring Israel's poet laureate. During a recent visit to Jerusalem's Old City, Kevin purchased himself a blue-and-white kipa (Jewish skullcap) and a matching tallit (prayer shawl).

On a hill off the highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is the 3000-year-old tomb of the Prophet Samuel, located in the basement of what appears to be an old mosque in the midst of an archeological dig. Samuel was the last judge of Israel, who anointed Kings Saul and David because the Jews of that day wanted a king, like all the other ethnic groups had. This is a very holy site where Jews come to pray - men on one side of the tomb, women on the other. We also saw some Muslim visitors, so perhaps they revere Samuel also. The view of Jerusalem from the roof is neat, but the stairway is very long, and only wide enough for one person at a time!

We visited the Israel Museum in Jerusalem for a special international floral exhibit. The museum is very close to the Knesset, the center of government. They also had a temporary exhibit on the Yemenite Jews, who are known for their metalworking and embroidery. (I have seen some examples of the embroidery - it looks just as good on the back side as it does on the front.) This may be why they are tolerated in a Moslem country. They have undergone persecution at various periods, living in ghettos, or were prohibited from having taller houses than the Arabs.

The museum also includes the Shrine of the Book, a mushroom-shaped white building containing originals of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's constructed like an underground cave. You walk into a dimly-lit exhibit hall containing scrolls under glass. You press buttons to illuminate the scrolls. This helps to preserve them, as they are 2000 years old. Afterward we ate matzoh sandwiches in the nearby Wohl Rose Garden.

To complement our visit to the Shrine of the Book, Kevin and I visited the actual site where the scrolls were discovered back in the 1940's, Qumran, located above the west shore of the Dead Sea. The jars containing the ancient parchments were accidentally discovered by young Arab shepherds looking for a lost critter. It is a hot, barren, mountainous area peppered with caves. The most important scrolls contain books of the Old Testament as copied by a group of religious ascetics called the Essenes, who went off into the desert before the time of Christ to form a strict religious community. John the Baptist may have been an Essene. The men apparently lived in the area caves, and raised their own food. They built stone buildings for communal eating and copying the scrolls, ruins of which can be seen below the caves. There were also remains of water cisterns, troughs for transporting water, and a lookout tower. The translated scrolls demonstrate that the Bible's Old Testament that we use today, has been almost exactly the same for past 2000 years!

That's all for now, yom tov (good day)!

K&E <><