lights and pottage

On Tuesday (June 17) we got to go into the Old City at night. This is normally against the rules because of security reasons and the Old City pretty much shuts down at night so there isn't anything to see anyway. But this night we received special permission to go into the city at night in order to go to the Festival of Light and oh it was a sight to see! The city is magical all on it's own but it was spectacular at night with all the lights up! We ran around the city like a bunch of crazies pumped up on excitement!  

It was also cool because this week I was reading in 1 Nephi 4 which is when Nephi returns to the city at night. "And it was by night; and I caused that they should hide themselves without the walls. And after they had hid themselves I, Nephi, crept into the city." It was pretty cool to be thinking about the fact that this was the city that Nephi crept into at night and we were just wandering the streets of this city at night too. Luckily there was no Laban to slay! :) 

For our field trip this week we headed to Neot Kedumim on Wednesday (June 18). Neot Kedumin is a biblical landscape and nature preserve. It is an attempt to recreate the physical setting of the Bible. We drew water from a well, herded sheep, smashed hyssop and cooked lunch over a fire. Our lunch included making pottage, like what Esau sold Jacob his birthright for! 

I love sheep.... oh wait, I don't even like animals. I refused to touch them. 

Dax and Seth. Our two Jews with the 700 year old Torah! 

Warning- this week is finals. so you probably won't hear from me but there probably won't be anything to write about anyway!

Now this is what I call summer

This past week was just filled with water! A trip to Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean, a hike through Hezekiah's tunnel and a day of snorkeling in the coral reef of the Red Sea at Eilat!
Last Monday for our free day about half of us in the program rented buses and took the hour ride to Tel Aviv to visit the beach! And oh how I loved Tel Aviv!!!! It is a stark contrast to Jerusalem. I love Jerusalem but it was nice to be in a big modern city. Jerusalem is modern but it still feels old school while Tel Aviv is hip and modern. And it's located right on the Mediterranean Sea so it was gorgeous. We spent the morning at the beach for a few hours then a few of us went to find a seafood restaurant that one of our professors had suggested. The waiter immediately brought us out twenty different salads for dipping our pita bread in and we were all in heaven! The seafood was delicious and we left happy (even if the waiters did try to rip us off on the check). We walked around the city for a bit and found some cute art and jewelry shops as well as some ice cream. Then we headed back to the sea :) By the time we headed back to Jerusalem we were all fried  and looking like red lobsters but it was oh so worth it! It was such a fun and relaxing day.

Tuesday night we took a little study break to head to West Jerusalem to get some YUMMY waffles :)

Wednesday morning we had a few hours in between some classes so a few of us headed out to visit some sights on the Mount of Olives. We saw the Russian Church of Ascension, Tombs of the Prophets, Mosques of Ascension and the Pater Noster, (Church memorializing where Christ gave the Lord's Prayer).

 Last Thursday we toured the City of David, including Hezekiah's tunnel! This tunnel was built to hide and safeguard Jerusalem's water supply in preparation of the Assyrian siege in 701 BC. Now it's a really cool tunnel that you can walk through but you are walking through water the whole way and some times the water level is up to your thighs. It was really fun, especially when we turned out our lights for a bit a walked in the pitch black darkness!

 Also on our field trip we saw the Pool of Siloam, which is the setting of John 9 and this Bible video. Watch the video here! In this story Christ puts mud on the blind man's eyes and tells him to go was in the pool of Siloam and the man is healed. When he returned to his friends he was unrecognizable because he had partaken of the living water of Christ. He had allowed Christ to change him and it is our opportunity in this life to allow Christ to change us!

After the field trip a few of us headed into the city to visit the Citadel/Jaffa Museum!

On Sunday we took a trip down to Eilat to go snorkeling and we had eilat of fun :) The bus ride was long and bumpy but well worth the view. From Eilat you can see four countries- you are sitting in Israel and surrounded by Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Now that is pretty legit! I love my life :)
I also have a super awesome friend with an underwater camera :)

just me pretending I can part the Red Sea.... yeah I'm not as cool as Moses

Remembering the Holocaust

On June 8th we had our field trip to Yad Veshem which is on Mt. Herzel, meaning Mount of Remembrance. The words Yad Vashem mean "a name and a memorial" and are taken from a passage in Isaiah. This is to memorialize and remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. It is always a sobering experience to visit a Holocaust memorial but it is something that needs to be remembered. There were several different moments when my mind was just consumed in thoughts of unbelief and shock at everything that had occurred. We also had our Israel/Jewish History Professor with us as our guide. Mr. Yarden did a great job in leading the discussions and explaining the meaning behind all the memorials. 

The three pictures below depict two reliefs that stand next to each other in a plaza. They are meant to represent the two different attitudes that the Jews had to the Holocaust. The first is the attitude of being like a sheep to the slaughter, having a passive outlook and willingly submitting without a fight. The second represents the Warsaw uprising where the Jews fought back and had an aggressive attitude towards what was happening to them. 

It is extremely powerfully to have the two strikingly different reliefs next to one another! 

The next memorial we saw was The Children's Memorial that memorializes the 1.5 million children that died. There are two parts to the memorial. You first walk into a dark room that has the faces of different children that died during this time then you continue into an even darker room. In the center of the room is three candles surrounded by mirrors and this creates the impression of millions of candles, like millions of stars in the firmament. As you walk through the dark room, children's names are being said as well as their ages and the camp at which they were killed.

We couldn't take pictures in the memorial so this is off the internet

We also visited the sights of Mt. Herzl, which includes the grave of Theodor Herzl himself. He is considered the father of modern Zionism and the founder of the State of Israel.

Last Wednesday night we also had a very special forum. We were extremely blessed to hear from Elias Feinsilberg, who is a Holocaust survivor. He doesn't know English but he spoke Spanish and a few of the students translated. It was really neat to be able to hear and understand him in Spanish. He shared his Holocaust experiences with us. I'll add his brief biography at the bottom of this post if you would like to read more about his experiences.
The thing that stood out to me is his positive attitude. He experienced all this horrific things in his life yet is one of the nicest guys. He was constantly thinking of other people and how to bless them.  He just radiate joy and love!!!

Elias Feinzilberg is front row in the suspenders. 

The Holocaust is something I will never fully understand but hope to continue to learn from!

ELIAS FEINZILBERG
Born in Lodz, Poland October 22, 1917
Family: 5 sisters, 2 brothers, mother and father
September 1, 1939 - start of WWII
A few days later the Nazis arrived in Lodz. Around April or May 1940 the entire family was forced to leave their home to live in the Lodz Ghetto.
I spent a few months in the ghetto. The conditions were horrible. Lack of food and daily essentials were a way of life. People died of disease and starvation.
Chaim Rumkowski, who managed the ghetto, asked for 400 strong men as volunteers to work for the Germans. I believed that if you didn't volunteer they still would take you. So I volunteered. First group of 200 left October 13, 1940. The second group, which I was part of, left October 16, 1940. Rumkowski said that we would get paid for the work, but obviously we never received any remuneration whatsoever.
I worked for two years building roads under extremely difficult conditions. The area was surrounded by barbwire and SS guards.
At the beginning of January 1943 I volunteered to work in a farm. They needed 63 men. SS guards were supposed to pick us up but didn’t show up. We were given a letter with special permission to travel and we went by ourselves to Berlin. Gestapo members stopped us at the train station wanting to know what we were doing. After showing them the letter that said that we were volunteers to work in a farm, they pointed the way where to go. It was all a trick and we ended going to Wittenberge, a concentration camp.
In Wittenberge I worked 9 months unloading cargo ships. I got sick and they sent me back to the Lodz Ghetto. This was around September or October 1943. The first thing I did was look for my family. From the neighbors I learned that my father had died in 1941 from hunger. In 1942 my mother, 5 sisters and one brother were taken to Chelmno, Poland (extermination camp). Almost certainly all were murdered there along with at least other 180,000 Jews. They were placed in special cars where they were gassed to death and their bodies burned. Only a handful of people managed to survive by escaping. If they had not escaped we would not know what happened in Chelmno.
I was alone and went to work making ear muffs for the Germans. At least I was fed a small bowl of soup a day. On my way to work I was taken by the SS in a small open wagon driven by two horses. I asked the driver to let me escape and he said he

couldn’t because right behind was the SS guards. But it was dark and I jumped and escaped.
Later on, once again, I was sent to another concentration camp Bilkeno-Auschwitz in Poland. It was so horrible that I thought this was the end. I was there for some time before they asked for volunteers for work. In order to survive I volunteered but they didn’t want to take me. I went to the side where the guards couldn’t see me and I hit my face in order to gain some color (as my complexion had become a sickly white). I got in line again and they accepted me and gave me a tattoo on my left forearm with the number B-1259. I was sent to Jaworzno, about 30 kilometers from Auschwitz. There I worked in the coal mines.
The English bombed the area. We were evacuated and the SS made us walk for two weeks surviving on only two small potatoes in the evening. No water or liquids provided. This was around December, 1944. During this two week walk many people died either from hunger, exhaustion or killed by the SS. They were left behind in the snow.
When we arrived at Gross-Rosen they gave us soup. Later we were put inside open train wagons that took us to Buchenwald, a very large Concentration Camp. I was there for a few months. There was very little food. We were provided with a small slice of bread and watery soup. People died every day. You could see literally mountains of dead people. There was no place to sleep, I slept on the floor.
One day they called the identification number tattooed on my arm in order to be transported by train inside wagons used for transporting cows. With a group of people we were transported to Bisingen near Stuttgart, Germany. I worked in Bisingen making oil by burning flowers where the oil would go inside pipelines.
Later on, after the SS took my shoes and left me barefoot, a group of us were sent to Dachau, Germany. I saw a mountain of dead people and I took the shoes from a dead person.
About 5,000 of us were placed in closed train wagons which had about 50 people and two SS guards inside each wagon. We were being sent to Tirol in the Austrian Alps. The SS gave each person a large empty potato sack, the purpose of the sack, we learned later, was for the person to climb into the sack for the SS to seal and then throw into the river where we would drown.
Because Tirol is in very high terrain the train couldn’t quite make it to the top. So they disconnected half of the wagons. I was in the wagons left behind. This was about the end of April 1945. Three days later the train came back. As the German train got close to Tirol the SS discovered that the Americans were there. They connected all the wagons to the train and took us back to Dachau. Prior to arriving in Dachau the Germans discovered that the Americans had liberated Dachau. We stayed in the train between Dachau and Tirol still guarded by the SS. Two days prior to being liberated a large truck from the Red Cross arrived with supplies. They gave us a package of food

and quietly, so that the SS could not hear, told us we were going to be freed. I thought to myself, how can I be free if I’m still being guarded by the SS and had to return to the train.
The next day night, May 1, 1945, the Americans came in with tanks and liberated us. A group of us found a home near the train tracks where we slept for 3 days in a row. I ate the whole package of food given to us by the Red Cross and ended up with terrible diarrhea.
Later, black American soldiers in army trucks took us to Feldafing, an American military camp. It was the first time I had ever seen a black person.
In Feldafing I worked in the kitchen serving food. That is where I met my wife, which I married in the camp on July 3, 1946.
We traveled by cargo boat to Guatemala (I had an uncle that lived there). We lived in Guatemala for 22 years and raised a family of 2 boys and one girl. In Nov. 6,1969 we moved to Jerusalem, Israel where I presently reside.
To date I’ve been blessed with seven grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren. 

Weeks 5 and 6

To be honest with y'all..... it's been 2 weeks filled with school. Last week I was playing catch up with school work after being in Turkey for a week then this week we had midterms. So I really haven't been out much and I'm starting to get a little stir crazy! Thankfully we have had 2 field trips, Arab culture night and a free day to save me from insanity!!!!

Last Monday, May 26, we took a half day field trip to Jericho, the world's oldest city- or so they say. :)

On this field trip we saw the Quruntul Monastery, which is literally just built into the hillside. I'm glad I didn't have to build that! And it's in the middle of the desert. This monastery was built to commemorate the event when the devil tempted Jesus following his forty-day fast, as well as other scriptural events.

 While we were at Jericho we discussed Matthew 4 when Satan tempted Christ after his forty day fast. The big thing that we discussed is how Christ had an eternal perspective. When we focus on the now it keeps us from the eternal but Christ can see past the right now. Also, Satan is trying to create disunity between Christ and the Father but seeing God's perspective brings unity and Christ was able to see that perspective!

 The tower in the picture below is considered to be the oldest man-made structure in the world. They date it back to 8,000 BC! Now that is old!

I did make it out into the city one day last week but it Jerusalem Day which brought some political unrest in the city. We weren't allowed to go into the Old City so we decided to head over to West Jerusalem to visit the Biblical Zoo!!! Yeah, it was just a normal zoo but it does have a model of Noah's ark! It was fun to see all the animals but my favorite part was the sculpture garden. hahah. They had really amazing statues covered in mosaics! they were so pretty! 

Thursday night we had a very cultural evening! We had Arab Culture Night! There is a merchant in town that loves us BYU students and let us all borrow Arab dresses so we could all look amazing for the night! 

The evening began with 2 of the sheikhs from the Al-Aqsa Mosque coming to do the call to prayer for us. They also demonstrated their prayers and answered prayers. It was so strange to meet the men whose voices we heard ring out throughout the city daily! 

Then we ate a MASSIVE feast! We have a buffet dinner every night but this was the buffet dinners to end them all! 

and then they expected us to dance. hahaha. We did some traditional Arab dancing and man was it hard. We struggled big time but we had fun doing it :) 

I kind of love my professors!!! a lot.

Sunday for free day I went out to the city and just explored. I was the third wheel to the engaged couple. It was great :) We went to the Rockefeller Museam, Zedekiah's Cave, the Olive Wood Street, a lady's house where she excavated her basement and the Lithotrotos. By the end of the day I was exhausted but it was a great day! 

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of most of it. haha. whoops. 

A famous statue from the Rockefeller

The excavated basement

the cavern of the lithotrotos

 The SHEPHELAH!!!! That may be the most said word among our professors. I think it's just because it's a fun word to say :) shephelah. shephelah. shephelah. shephelah. see it's great fun.

Where this is where we spent our day on Monday for the field trip. We explored the tels and valleys of the shephelah. The Shephelah is the low hill country of Judea. This is the home of Samson and David and the location for many Bible stories. One fun part of the day is when my group was on top of one tel and the other group was on top of a tel 11 miles away and we sent signals to each other using mirrors! It was crazy cool. The idea originated from a shard of pottery that said, "And let [my lord] know that we are watching for the signals of Lachish, according to all the indications which my lord hath given, for we cannot see [the signal fires of] Azekah." Well we couldn't light fires to send signals but the mirrors worked great!

A lush tree in the middle of the desert. It's called the ghost tree.

underground cavern for birds

We explored massive underground passageways

Harry Potter anybody????

Bell caves! They had AMAZING acoustic so we sang hymns :) 

 My favorite part of the day was our visit to the Valley of Elah where David defeated Goliath. Our professor talked about the story and how we can apply it to our lives. He talked about how David was able to defeat Goliath because he had the Lord on his side. And when we have the Lord on our side we can defeat the Goliaths in our lives. We will all have our own Goliaths whether we have already faced one, currently facing one or going to face one.

I'm real good at slingshots.

So that's the last two weeks for me :) besides studying for hours for midterms!!!