Ramat/Samuel's Tomb

We are going to the Knesset first thing this morning.  We will go to the tomb of Samuel first, and then to the Knesset.

We are turning now to go up to Ramat.  The name of Joseph of Aramathea indicates that he was from Ramat.

It's very chilly this morning.   The clouds are pretty black overhead.  It very much looks like rain.  

The rain has begun.  This ends several weeks of drought for Israel.  

The hillsides that we are driving through now are a combination of green grass and rocks.  This is somewhat barren.  There are trees here, but all in all in looks like parts of southern Idaho, except that over to the side we can see a lot of hills, each with a city on it.  Almost all of the cities here are built on hills.

We are approaching our destination.  This is probably the real location of the tomb of Samuel.  We are very high up here, much higher than Jerusalem.  We will overlook Gibeon in a moment.

David got us into trouble here.  We climbed down stairs to the tomb area.  The women were cleaning the tomb area and not very happy when we entered.  We noticed that David stayed upstairs and avoided a tongue lashing.

We have climbed to the roof of the building.  From here we can overlook Gibeon.  In the distance we can see some tall antennae at Ramallah where Yasser Arafat is holed up.

On the roof we have an Israeli soldier with binoculars looking out in each direction.  At the gate here we also saw another soldier.  We are in the middle of some intense times at the moment.  The Israeli army went into Ramallah last night, and a couple of Israeli soldiers were killed at Gaza.

The Knesset

We had to leave our cameras and the recorder in the bus, so I have no pictures.  I do have a brochure, but that's all.

We had to pass through a security check point with armed guards to enter the Knesset.  Although they checked everyone carefully, it seemed to me that there were several security holes.

The Knesset was not in session, so we were able to sit in the press gallery, close to the floor.  Members' seating is arranged in the shape of a giant menorah.

The fourth floor of the building houses an exhibit of tapestries and mosaics created by Marc Chagall, depicting Jewish history.

Yad VaShem

One and one-half million children were killed in the Holocaust.  We are in a garden which is a memorial to the children.  This was donated by the Spiegels, of catalog fame.  They lost a 2 1/2 year-old son, Uziel, actually saw him killed, in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The inside of the building is quite amazing.  They read aloud the names of each of the children, where they were from, and their ages.  This takes 22 months.  As you walk through the building it is all very dark.  Visitors walk through a narrow mirrored passageway.  The walls are several layers of translucent mirrors.  There are  candles behind the walls, so that you have the impression of millions of candles shining in the dark.  It's very beautiful--very impressive.

There is a sculpture of a man holding several children, located outside the memorial.  The man is Janusz Korczak, who was known for several books he wrote on learning disabilities.  He voluntarily went to Treblinka with children who were taken from his orphanage, dying there along with the children. His history is given on the Yad VaShem website.

Next to the Children's Memorial there is a tree-lined pathway.  This is the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, which remembers gentiles in many countries who sacrificed to help Jews escape the Nazis.  Each tree is planted in the name of one of the persons being honored.

The Holocaust Museum itself is very depressing.  There are hundreds of photos of ghetto and death camp scenes.  People starved and mutilated almost beyond recognition.  Stacks of bodies.  The humiliations were worse than the physical abuse.  It's hard to realize that anyone could commit such atrocities, yet these went on for years.  In some of the pictures, soldiers are smiling, apparently pleased with what they did.  In our country, apparently, many people were more concerned about the possible flood of immigrants, than they were about helping.  The museum has Anti-Semitic documents and quotations bearing the names of prominent Americans.

Mt. Hertzel

Hertzel's grave is here.  He is considered a prophet in Israel, because he predicted the existence of this country 50 years before it came to be.

There are many Israeli heroes, soldiers and government officials buried here.  It's equivalent to our Arlington Cemetery.  Golda Meier is buried here.

Holyland Hotel

This is a work of scholars which took several years to build.  It is based on ancient documents as much as possible.  David pointed out one error--the entrance to the temple shows only two openings, whereas we saw yesterday that there were three.