The Encounter Chapel at Magdala

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The woman in Mark 5:24-34 believed she would be healed of her bleeding if she could only "touch the hem of his garment"  [some think this means the ritual fringe on the bottom of his garment, such as Orthodox Jews wear till today].
She had courage and touched and was immediately healed by Jesus, the New Testament says.
This mural-sized painting of the famous scene is in the lower chapel of Duc in Altum, below the Boat Chapel and the Women's Atrium that we visited in previous posts.

(Remember that my photos here can be greatly enlarged with a click or two.)

The Magdala Center brochure describes The Encounter Chapel:

The basement chapel makes use of original stones found in the excavations of the road and marketplaces near the port.  This interdenominational place of prayer is modeled after the synagogue plan with its 6 columns, colorful walls and placement of stones.
The chapel features a beautiful mural-sized painting of the encounter between Jesus and the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:25). 

The stone benches along the walls are also like in the ancient synagogue of Migdal.

The one and only window looks out on the Sea of Galilee.

And the window creates the shadow of the cross.

Mother Teresa, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, adds her prayerful presence to the special place.
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There is more about the chapel at the website:
http://www.magdala.org/visit/duc-in-altum/encounter-chapel/

To all the Christian readers, Holy Week blessings and happy Easter wishes from me, your Jewish friend here at Jerusalem Hills Daily Photo.
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(Linking to inSPIRED Sunday, Monday Murals, and Our World Tuesday.)
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Rishon's old synagogue then and now

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As we saw in the previous post, Rishon LeZion was founded in 1882 by Jews who came from the Russian Empire to farm the land of Israel. 
Here is another mural on a wall in present-day Rishon, now a city.

Here is that same old synagogue, presently undergoing restoration.
It's going to be really nice. 

The airbrushed paintings were made by Hillel Lazarov who has a school for teaching mural making. 

(Linking to Monday Mural meme.)
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Murals like historical photos

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Finally, some murals to contribute to Monday Murals meme. 
These were on sidewalk level of a tall building in Rishon LeZion, now our fourth biggest city.
Rishon was founded in 1882 by Jews who came from the Russian Empire to farm the land of Israel. 

Here is the same old water tower in real life.

See the bell tower in back of the orchestra?   
Not many farmers could afford clocks or watches back then, so they relied on the bell-ringer to signal the times of day (or to warn of emergencies). 

Here is the same bell today, in front of the old synagogue and next to the history museum. 
You can ring it! 
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Village murals on Austria's National Day

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I had to go all the way from Israel to Pinkafeld, a village in Austria, to find something to post for Monday Murals.

Here they are.

In 1697 Pinkafeld had 1,500 inhabitants.
Now there are 4,545.

I'll show you the nice village in the coming posts.

Best wishes to Austria today on her National Day.

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What Lifts You, at Bondi beach

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Not a great photo but I had to shoot fast (and into the sun)  because a constant line of tourists was waiting to get their picture taken posing with the wings.
(Clicking a few times to enlarge helps a bit.) 
It is found along the line of murals at beautiful Bondi beach, Australia.
(Was it only ten days ago that I was there, in Sydney . . . ?)

Apparently these #whatliftsyou angel wings by Kelsey Montague are appearing in cities all over the world. 
Mashable talks about What Lifts You as "The intersection of street art and social media."
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(Linking to Monday Mural at Oakland Daily Photo.)
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Art in ruins

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Let's peek in and see what's behind that enticing sign that warns "Caution, abandoned and shut up building."

Lots of buildings in the older neighborhoods of Tel Aviv are now roofless and have their windows blocked up.

Ah, but the mural artist Dede (whose two-headed animals we saw in last week's post)
has given life to the crumbling wall!

The walls have ears (as the old saying goes), but now they have eyes too.
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(Linking to Monday Murals, Our World Tuesday, and signs, signs.)
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Two heads are better than one.

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Having spent the weekend in the BIG city Tel Aviv, I finally have some street art to contribute to Monday Murals.
Click a few times to see the big picture. 

On his website Dede shares other examples of his "WildLife."

Here's more about him from the same website:

Dede 

Is a Tel-Aviv-based conceptual artist who utilizes various mediums to communicate within the public arena. He has been displaying his art on the streets of Tel-Aviv and other cities worldwide since 2006.
A self-proclaimed ‘urban tourist’, Dede strolls through the dynamic urban environment, complementing it with creations that focus on the absurdity of the urban existence. Dede’s creations aim to promote reexamination of personal and societal conventions. His art revolves around issues of identity, belonging, loneliness, alienation, and the consequent desire to escape reality, either physically or spiritually.
Dede’s art presents the viewer with a dilemma and/or its solution in an ironic and complex way. His public creations present citizens with art that is devoid of the mediation and meddling of galleries or curators.
Influences on Dede’s art include the environment, architecture, art, rhythm, sound, politics, and passersby. It is dependent on impulsiveness, fate and mood. It is spontaneous and entails unrelated ideas that enmesh to form new content.

The thought, idea and message always arise before the production of the piece, and dictate the chosen medium. The urban landscape is part of the creation process as is the final chosen location. As such, the urban environment serves as Dede’s home and is used as a backdrop as well as an integral part of his art.

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(Linking also to Camera Critters.)

Thousands of Chabad rabbis take a group selfie!

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It is not often I find something for the Monday Murals meme, so I was extra happy to discover the Rebbe painted on rolling shutters protecting the entrance to a store in Beer Sheva's old section.

The Rebbe is the late great Rabbi Menachem Shneerson, scholar, teacher, leader, and the pioneer of Jewish outreach.
The head of Chabad-Lubavitch movement died in 1994 in New York,  but many of his devoted followers believe he was, and still is, the Moshiach, the messiah.

In the 1950s the Lubavitcher Rebbe, from headquarters in Brooklyn,  started sending out young rabbis and their wives to cities and towns all over America and the world, even the remotest places like Kathmandu.
These idealistic couples open Chabad Houses and offer worship, classes, support, and love to Jews who are far from being observant.
They are called in Hebrew shluchim, literally, those who are sent out.

This week 4,200 of these rabbis are in New York for their International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries.
Don't miss these amazing photos of how they take a huge group selfie!
It was taken with a particularly large lens that was held up with a 5-meter-long stick carried by two men.

And equally impressive are these pictures of how the 4,200  pose for the more orderly and formal  annual photo.
They even launched a helicopter-drone to take a video of the mass photo shoot!
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UPDATE: This  in today's Times of Israel says it so well:   Thank you Chabad.  Very worth a read.
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(Also linking to Our World Tuesday.)

Angels

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This tile art (which joins the Monday Mural meme) is on the outer wall of a government agency in Beer Sheva.
If you click to enlarge the photo, you might recognize the story from Genesis 18.
"Three men" come to visit Abraham and Sarah in their tent at the Oaks of Mamre, but they turn out to be angels in disguise.

On the wall, below the company name,  it says Machoz Hadarom, meaning the Southern District, i.e. the Negev.
With the hundreds of rockets falling here in the south now,  I'm wondering if the Iron Dome  might just  be sort of a modern version of protecting angels in the sky . . . .
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(See an earlier post telling how the medieval Russian icon "The Hospitality of Abraham" gradually became the icon "Holy Trinity.")
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Not what you think

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I passed this door and wondered what or who was inside.
Maybe I didn't want to know.
All I knew was that the painting would be good for Monday Mural meme. 

Lest you get the wrong idea, that I wander around in the seedy spots of  the older Beer Sheva neighborhoods,  let me defend myself.
Our tour was quickly following our guide down the street to visit some synagogues.
Eighteen synagogues are concentrated on this one street, and within a few square kilometers there are 33 !

The Hebrew writing on the wall here is "Tirtsale," the diminutive form of the women's name Tirtsa.
I thought I would end the post here and let you react to the mystery place. 
But curiosity is killing me.

Oi, would you believe, there is a Facebook page for Tirtsale!
And photos there show the painted woman wearing a dark purple sweater!
It is a tiny shop for vintage clothes and stuff -- "special things for special women, collected with great love from all over the world."
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(Linking also to Our World Tuesday  and  Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.  And for ABC Wednesday,  V is for vintage and voluptuous.)
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"Donkeys -- Making happy people"

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"Donkeys - Making happy people"

On the side wall of a building on Beer Sheva's main street.

Turns out that the place is a pub.
The Donkeys Bar Facebook page has 1,234 likes.

A painting for Monday Mural meme.
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Another mural under the road

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One more for Monday Murals.

Doesn't he look a bit like our blog-friend Rob who blogged Barcelona and now photographs Amsterdam? 

The face is in the same run-off water tunnel under the road in Meitar where the grandkids and I found this rat.
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Life under the bridge

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Finally! -- a mural to contribute to Monday Murals!
And it turned out to be just a few minutes from where my kids were renting a house in Meitar. 

I was expecting the little tunnel under where the street crosses the wadi to be dirty (from the rare flow of heavy rain in the streambed).
Or maybe there would be bugs or scorpions or MICE . . . .

But no!
Instead we found that other people had been there before us, people with paint and brushes. 

A strange grandmother, you say, to take her visiting grandkids and venture  into an unknown, unused tunnel?
Well, as Vonnegut said, "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

We made it fun by shouting and waiting for the echo to return.
Dean, Eyal, and Libby, artists themselves, enjoyed examining the artwork on the walls. 

And there was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
We exited onto the stone-paved bed of the wadi and went on to explore the desert in her winter green.
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Too bad the family had to return to Australia a few weeks ago.
I wish them exciting adventures down under.
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(Linking also to Our World Tuesday.)

A messianic mural in the making

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You don't really expect to see much new when you visit a small cemetery begun at the end of the 19th century; so when I stopped in to the Alliance Church International Cemetery in Jerusalem's German Colony in November, I could hardly believe my eyes.

A grand mural painting was underway!

Most days the tall gate is locked on this place of final repose of Christians, Messianic Jews, internationals, and people refused burial elsewhere.
I took advantage of an open moment when a woman came out; the gardener allowed me in and when I asked him about the mural, he said that was the artist who just left.

Back home, I found their website which explains it thus:

[In 2009 a Wisconsin woman, Patricia Solveson,] announced to us how the Lord laid it on her heart to donate her talents to the cemetery. As the Lord would provide, she would put together an assisting work team and periodically visit Jerusalem to paint a biblical mural on our "unfinished" cement walls. The mural would begin with Genesis and continue through Revelation and tell the prophetic story of "God's Sacrificial, Salvation Lamb".

This webpage, with photos, interprets each Bible scene of the mural in a messianic way.
They call it "The Jerusalem 'Wall of Life' ministry project."

Tall enough to need a scaffold.

Here you see how part of the 300-foot wall is being prepped for painting.
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"Over the years, neighboring construction projects have caused some of our historic stone walls to be destroyed and replaced with unsightly, unfinished cement walls," the website explains.

It seems like artist Pat couldn't wait, got ahead of herself and skipped over to the end of the Christian scriptures to what looks like her favorite scene, Revelation 1:13:
"and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest."
This portrait is not yet finished.
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In future posts I'll tell more about the interesting history of this place and of those buried here.
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I want to contribute this post to some new memes--Monday Mural and Taphophile Tragics (for those who like to wander through graveyards), and also to our old favorite Our World Tuesday.
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Not only for stamps and mail

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Jerusalem's Central Post Office on Jaffa Road was designed and built by the British during the Mandate period and was opened in 1938. The most (and maybe only) interesting element of the exterior is the black basalt, brought from the Golan Heights, at the base.
By the way, the fancy kiosk you see outside is for the sale of Israel's national lottery tickets.

While waiting for your number to be automatically called for postal services, you can people-watch . . .

e.g. take a stealth shot of this Coptic priest or one of the many monks and nuns who come in.
(The Old City is just down the block.)

Or you can admire the chandeliers and the lovely marble of the counter and the floor.

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(Please click and enlarge to see the details in the photos. )

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But best of all you can study the 90 foot/27.5 meter epic mural, painted by Avraham Ofek!

President Peres commissioned the work in 1972 when he was Minister of Transport and Communications.

The Return to Zion begins with a leader (looking like Herzl) pointing the way upward to Zion and urging the frightened Jews to make aliyah. He is inspired by the ghosts of the past over his shoulder. Revival.

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Act II (sorry, not shown here) is their welcome and absorption by a group of young Israeli pioneers. But you can see some sabra cactus growing near the rock.
A native-born Israeli is known as a Sabra (thorns on the outside but is sweet and soft in the inside).

Next are scenes from the Promised Land. Here above, a house in Jerusalem, two people studying while the upstairs neighbors also dwell in peace and safety.

A rural settlement (moshav or kibbutz?), a family with their cow. Houses dotting the landscape.

The final act of this idealistic "painted movie" finds men and women working side by side picking fruit, in equality.

And in the construction crew both Arabs and Jews work together to build the house.
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You can tell that the artist grew to manhood in a kibbutz (after immigrating, on his own, from Bulgaria at age 14, in 1949). Back then the kibbutz ideals were the communal spirit, cultivating the barren land, brotherhood, and equality of all the land's inhabitants.

At the center of the mural is the walled Old City, reaching the top of the Post Office wall and even climbing upward onto the ceiling, in witness to the spiritual elevation of Jerusalem.

I love that idea!

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Hope you enjoyed your tour. For more guiding in places all around our globe, please visit That's My World Tuesday. Shalom, go in peace!

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