First of all classes.
Yesterday we have four. It was rough as all of them but OT are 2 hours long, so I went to 7 hours of school. It was rough.
For Old Testement I have Dr. Belnap. He is the youngest faculty member here and he has four kids that we sometimes see running around the center. His youngest is four, and I am really secretly jealous that they get to spend two years of their childhood in Jerusalem. Like really, how amazing that would be. The interesting thing is that they really have fairly normal lives here. Like their two daughters go to dance in West Jerusalem, they go to this Jewish school I think. But anyway, I absolutely love Dr. Belnap's classes. So far we have talked about the creation and the Fall. The students have nicknamed his class temple prep because it he blows all of our minds about what our divine nature is and how the Fall worked and how it fits into our progression. It was phenomenal and makes me want to go to the temple so bad. I am so exited to start the whole process and get my mission call. My papers are in and I am beyond ecstatic!! My mission call could possibly be assigned today! I can't wait.
For Ancient Near Eastern Studies I have Dr. Seely. He is the funniest man, very adorable professorish. Like he refers to himself in third person all the time. And he LOVES this land and all the geography, archeology, history, etc. The other day he said that us sleeping on the bus on the way to all the places we go on field trips is "For Dr. Seely, this is like going to your wedding and then sleeping through the honeymoon". It was so funny.
For my Palestine class the teachers name is Bashir Bashir, and he is super funny. Like we were asking him questions about himself and he had the best comebacks. Someone asked him if he was married and he said "No, but I have heard about the beautiful mormon women so if you have any proposals . . ." The whole class busted up. He is a non practicing Muslim, and mostly just teachers at Hebrew University here, along with teaching us. It really is so amazing that I get to have this experience to get to learn from such amazing teachers from such different backgrounds as me. I didn't know how I would feel about this class, but so far I absolutely love it.
For my Israel class I have Ophir Yarden. This class was good, but frankly by this point I was just exhausted so I fell asleep a little bit. But I loved the parts I got out of it. We talked about how Judaism has many definitions: a people, a family group, a religion, etc.
Ok, now to Sunday. On Sunday I went all over the Jewish Quarter. This is the nicest area of the city and it is so cool to walk around. I didn't realize this, but apparently there aren't usually a million Israeli flags flying everywhere but it is Israeli Independence day on May 6th, so they have them all out for that. I am glad I got a bunch of pictures before they took them all down.
Sites in the Jewish Quarter I went to . . .
Ok, I went to the Temple Institute which was amazing. The temple institute is a group of Jews that have started making the proper clothing and instruments so that when they are able to (basically the temple mount become available for building---the temple mount being where the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque now stand)---they will be ready to build the next temple. It was amazing to learn all about the First Temple (Solomon's temple) and the second temple (Herod's Temple---this was the one that Jesus would have been in) and all of the ordinances preformed there. It makes me want to have my mission call so bad!!! And to be able to go through the temple. Like really, I probably think about my mission call every ten minutes. It is so distracting. I just want to have it. But anyway, the lady there I am sure gets hammered with hard questions, but she really was an amazing tour guide and had a good answer for all of the questions asked. I am starting to really fall in love with the people here, both the Israelis and the Palestinians. I love watching them worship because there is something about watching them try their best to come unto God that really brings the spirit. If there is one thing that I will leave here with no doubt of it will be that God loves ALL of his children and he loves when they come close to him if whatever way they know.
The other amazing place I went was the Hurva synagogue. "Hurva" in Hebrew means destruction so it is literally called the synagogue of destruction. It is very new, and the most fancy synagogue in Jerusalem. I think it opened in 2010 or something. But it was exquisite, and the history of it is amazing. The thing has been knocked down three times in history. It certainly shows the struggle over the holy land that has been going on for hundreds of years. But at the top of it is this gorgeous overlook of the city.
We also went to a little museum of Jewish culture that showed little parts of what a Jewish house would look like in the 1800's. We went into a room they call the "birth room" and there was this little bed in it. On the plaque it said that back then, the Jews were very very poor and there were only six beds between the whole community, so you could rent a bed for 40 days while your wife had a baby and recuperated if you were rich enough. Also in that room were a bunch of amulets and a suitcase with an eye on it. Apparently 4 of 5 kids died before the age of 5 there, and they thought the babies were cursed, so they had a lot of superstitious things they did.
Lastly, we went to this place called four synagogues. It was a large synagogue that was comprised of four synagogues that had gotten combined. At the time they were built there was a law that the synagogues could not be as tall as the (Muslim) minarets built, so they would build the synagogues bottom three feet underground so they wouldn't be as tall as the minarets but would still be the required size. It was cool because there were four big rooms and each one had a different style that is was built in. There was also a little cave thing called Elijah’s cave off the side of one of the rooms. Aperantly in the days where there were very little Jews in the city, they were trying to do a ritual on one of their holidays, and they needed one more man to be able to do it. They were distraught, and unable to worship correctly until a man showed up and helped them complete their group of four so that they could follow their religion and complete the ritual. At the end of the ritual, the man walked off and disappeared and they realized that this was a miracle, and that Elijah had come down to help them complete their ritual. So they have a special little spot for him, if he ever came back.
Some random door we found
Elijah's Chair
Inside of the 4 Synagogues
I had Dr Belnap for Old Testament as well. Chaos and Cosmos!
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