83rd Birthday

Sunday, December 22nd

This post is for you, Grandma.

6:30 am. Hanni and I slept very well tonight, alone in our big room. After a pleasant shower, we go to breakfast. From half past 7, there is a buffet in the hostel: all sorts of dips, labneh, cheese, raw vegetables, olives, eggs, cereal & much more. So we can fill our stomachs well before we get ready to go out and leave the hostel. We are already on our way to the market when we suddenly realize that today is Sunday and also the 4th Advent. There will surely be a nice church service in Jerusalem today.

So we go back to the hostel to ask where we can get more information, but they can't give us any precise information either, so we decide to venture into the Old Town on our own. We will surely find something here. And we find it faster than expected: right after the Jaffa Gate, we see a sign on a gate that says "Christ Church" and leads to a courtyard. We also read that the service starts at 9:30 am. It is now 9:35 am. Perfect.

Through the courtyard, we enter the church, where the priest is standing at the front and making an announcement in English. Judging by his accent, he is from the USA. Later I will find out that Christ Church is an evangelical church that was originally known as the "Jewish Protestant Church." The name comes from the fact that Christ Church wanted to pay tribute to the spiritual heritage of Judaism from the very beginning and therefore celebrates the Jewish roots in the liturgy with Hebrew verses and songs. With this knowledge, it becomes clear to me why, among other things, the 9-armed Chanukah menorah and the Jewish star can be seen in the church, and one of the churchgoers wears a kippah.

Christ Church is also internationally oriented - the entire liturgy is held in English. To the right of the altar, there is a screen on which the texts of all the songs played by the small band are projected: a woman at a small piano and two people singing along. And they are really great songs that the band plays, and they are sung out loud by the church community. The sermon is given by a woman who works in a psychosocial institution for pregnant women and who finds very beautiful words. After two hours, we leave the church, uplifted. That was a really good start to our day.

Afterwards, we really make our way to the Mahane Yehuda Market, which is located near our hostel. A food market that looks a bit different from my beloved market in Amman. It is covered, the ground is tiled and everything is unusually clean. The selection is huge: pastries and sweets of all kinds, halva, nuts, dried fruits, fruit, spices, olives, and much more. There are both Arab and Israeli stands, and each one is more appealing than the other. We could spend money at every stand here, but for now we decide on some nuts, bread, and sweets.

Afterwards, we once again visit the Old Town, where we buy a few small things. I notice here that I feel most comfortable in the Muslim quarter with Arabic-speaking people around me. In Sha Alla, I finally have the opportunity to immerse myself intensively in the language again after the exams. It is half past 3 when we meet Sophia and her parents at the Jaffa Gate. They arrived in Jerusalem today and we will continue our journey from Jerusalem together. We have agreed to watch the sunset from the Mount of Olives together.

We leave the Old Town through the Dung Gate near the Western Wall and initially head to the neighboring mountain, where a huge Jewish cemetery is already bathed in the beautiful evening sun. After climbing some stairs, we reach the observation platform on the Mount of Olives, where several other people have already gathered to admire Jerusalem from above. As always, the evening sky turns yellow, orange, red, and blue with the setting sun, giving the Old Town with the domes of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque something magical, whose walls are now additionally illuminated by warm lamps at the beginning of twilight. A truly beautiful view of a beautiful city.

We then walk through the romantic alleys of the Old Town back to our accommodations, where we briefly stop at a square near our hostel. Yesterday, we noticed 9 huge structures there that are built in the shape of candles. At first, I thought it had something to do with Christmas, but now I realize that the candles symbolize the Jewish Hanukkah menorah. Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, is celebrated once a year in memory of the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The festival lasts 8 days, with one more candle being lit each day. Tonight is the first night of this year's Hanukkah festival, so the first candle (apart from the one in the middle) is "lit" on the large, fictitious Hanukkah menorah here. We now see that each of the candle structures on the square is a small stage. There are 3 musicians sitting on the illuminated structure today, playing music. The cold evening air is probably the reason why there are not many spectators, but it is truly a wonderful ending to our day.

From today's sermon: We have to be gentle, even if we have been hurt.