Israel
-
Twenty-Five Years After 9/11
It is hard to believe that this happened twenty-five years ago. I was 55 years old, and we were living in Great Falls, Virginia. In some ways it still seems like yesterday. I first heard the news that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. The general feeling at the time was that it might have been a small plane, and that it was possibly an accident. Not long afterward, the speculation shifted to pilot error. It was only when the second jet struck the other building that everyone realized there was no accident involved. America was under attack. I recall that my wife, Mini,…
-
Guest Contribution: Visit to the Holy Land – Day 7
Transit to Egypt/Red Sea/Tabha Of the 10 days we were on the Holy Land trip, this day was one of the less productive ones as far as sightseeing was concerned. We were supposed to have been taken to the House of Bethany, home of the two women who took Christ in to their house and the famous recounting of Martha washing Christ’s feet after anointing it with expensive and sacred oil. This however had to be cancelled due to local strife between the Israeli authority and Palestinians, from what was recounted to us there was stone throwing and tear gas to dispel unruly crowds. Unfortunately this happened on the route…
-
Guest Contribution: Visit to the Holy Land – Day 6
Mount of Olives/Church of the Ascension/River Jordan/Dead Sea At the crack of dawn we were up at the hotel that we were put up, not due to any time constraints as it was in the previous days but because we wanted to explore a bit of the Palestinian side, and with Shyni’s friend and coworker mentioning that she was from Ramallah we had limited time to step out and try to get the feel of the city. As any traveller can attest, to step into just one neighborhood in any city especially in a foreign country is not really a taste of what daily living is, it was a cool…
-
Guest Contribution: Visit to the Holy Land – Day 5
Church of the Holy Sepulchre/Tomb of David/Last Supper/Western Wall As each day passed it became routine for us to start out early, as our two guides Bindu & Shehadi urged us to do so, after an early breakfast, usually by 6 or 6:30 in the morning. On this day in particular, we had a full itinerary starting with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As we combed our way through the old city of Jerusalem, with Shehadi explaining about the various quarters in the path of the Via Dolorosa (the way of suffering) where Jesus walked carrying the cross to the site of his crucifixion. One remembers that this is…
-
Guest Contribution: Visit to the Holy Land – Day 4
Cana/Bethlehem/Church of the Nativity We started our day after breakfast early as usual, on the bus the morning prayers and devotional songs were sung and chanted. Our trip for the day according to the schedule sent out to us was going to be first to Shepherd’s Field – as the name suggests it is where the shepherds “watched their flocks by night” when the birth of Jesus occurred. Many of the songs, Christmas carols, passages from the bible and our memories are closely associated with these illusory figures, the shepherds. It was a short walk from where the bus was parked and we managed to see what must have been…
-
Guest Contribution: Visit to the Holy Land – Day 3
Amman to Israel Again, an early start to our day after breakfast. Once settled in the bus, morning prayers songs were sung – our bus took us from Jordan to Israel and we started going through what would become routine on our travel security checkpoints, this one was at the Jordanian border into Israel. A TSA type of scan of all our luggage and our papers were scrutinized, with some questions thrown in to ensure that we were all part of the group. At this point we changed buses and guides, Talal the experienced guide was replaced by a younger man by the name of Shehadi a Palestinian who would…
-
Guest Contribution: Visit to the Holy Land – Day 1
Introduction by Rana: In 2013, we went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and I included several posts on our trip. Since then I have told quite a few people – mostly Indian Christians – that it was one of the more fulfilling trips that we have undertaken. My brother, Peter (Eapen Joseph Panicker) went with his wife, Shiny, and several others and used the same tour operator that we did – Royal Omania Tours in Kochi. He kept a journal of his trip to the Holy Land and he recently shared it with family and friends. He did a far better job than I did in recording the…
-
Our visit to the Holy Land – Cana and the Church of the Nativity
From Nazareth we traveled to Cana where Jesus performed his first miracle and turned water into wine at a wedding where the hosts had run short on wine. According to John 2:1-11: “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”…
-
Our visit to the Holy Land – Church of St Peter’s Primacy & Church of the Annunciation
From the Sea of Galilee we proceeded to Tabgha to the Church of St Peter’s primacy. In John 21, Jesus appears to his disciples for the third time after his resurrection on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The night before, Peter and several other disciples had sailed out on the lake to fish, but caught nothing. In the morning, a man appeared on the shore and called out to them to throw their net on the right side of the boat. Doing so, they caught so many fish they couldn’t drag the net back into the boat. At this point Peter recognizes Jesus, and promptly jumps out of…
-
Our visit to the Holy Land – site where Jesus was baptized and the Mount of Beatitudes
One thing to keep in mind when visiting the Holy Land is that some of the sites most important to Christians are based on tradition as to their location in the context of the life of Jesus Christ. Occasionally, there are differing opinions as to the correct location of a particular site. One such example of these differing opinions is where Jesus was baptized. We visited Yardenit that is viewed by some as the approximate location where Christ was baptized. There is an alternative location closer to the Dead Sea and there is no consensus as to which location is the right one. Frankly, it did not bother me. What…
-
Our visit to the Holy Land – Crossing into Israel from Jordan
We stayed one night at the Amman Airport Hotel and left the next morning by bus for Israel driving through downtown Amman just in order that we get a glimpse of the capital since the previous day we were on the outskirts of Amman while visiting Madaba and Mount Nebo. We had wanted to visit Petra – which is not part of the itinerary of this tour but we were willing to pay the extra amount involved just so that we could see it given that we were within three hours of Petra while in Amman. Unfortunately there were logistical issues in doing so and therefore it will have to…
-
Our visit to the Holy Land – Introduction & Overview
It has been months since I updated this blog so our visit to the Holy Land seems a good reason to restart the blog. We returned earlier this morning from our tour and I will try and capture the salient parts both in terms of our visit to the religious sites as well as other thoughts and observations. There is too much to cover in one single posting so I will break it out over multiple postings. A visit to the Holy Land is something that I have wanted to do for the best part of a decade. For one reason or another it never came to fruition until this…