Spiderdama in the Jerusalem Hills!

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Blog-friend visitors, all the way from Norway!
Spiderdama and Spiderdan flew to Israel with the whole family!
And they were brave enough to drive in Passover holiday traffic to come visit me.
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Levi tested the bench in the grotto where John the Baptist might have lived.

Petter drank the living waters flowing from a spring inside the mountain.
St. John might have baptized with this water.
In Arabic it is called Ain el Habis, the spring of the hermit.
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Here by the monastery fish pond you can see them all--
Tania, Dan, Malin, Petter, and Levi.
The kids are so bright and pleasant, and their English is great.
It was a pleasure to meet the family for the first, and hopefully not the last, time.
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Tania and Dan like to climb cliffs and walls.
At my request they even started "bouldering" up the rusticated stones of a 900-year-old Crusader house! You HAVE TO see that photo!
It and many more great pictures of Israel, Norway, Russia, and now even the Jerusalem Hills, are over at Tania's blog, Spiderdama.
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Shalom and thanks to my new friends!
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Celebrating newness of life

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Peace and Easter joy to my Christian friends out there!
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A painting by a local artist friend.

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For pictures of glorious light, opened tombs, and the Holy Sepulchre, you are welcome to click on my label "Easter."
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The Psalm-bloggers are contributing Easter posts today to Robert at Daily Athens. You are invited to link yours too.
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May you all enjoy your holy day as we Jews prepare for tonight and tomorrow, the holiday of Shevi'i shel Pesach, the 7th and final day of Passover.
Chag sameach!
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The hills are alive . . .

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It's only April 6 and Israel has already received more than the whole average amount of rainfall for April.
The wildflowers on the sides of our hill are obliterating the narrow paths.
The honey bees are having a field day too.
In fact, just after I snapped this picture of a friend walking down to her house, I heard a buzzing over my head.
Oh no! I turned back and ran through the thick flowers as fast as I could, which was not very fast but fast enough to get rid of the bee.
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There's nothing quite like spring.
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For the Japanese

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Our hearts and prayers are with the people of Japan on this day of disasters.
And for friends like Kay of Musings who wait for the tsunami to hit Hawaii as they wait for word from relatives in Sendai and Tokyo.

( If you wonder why a Japanese Zen Buddhist temple bell hangs in a Jerusalem park, please see here.)
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Volunteers under the vault

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Fun with "V" today for ABC Wednesday.
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Very old vaulted ceiling being made whiter.

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Volunteer friends from Arkansas spent half their vacation in Israel scraping, schpachteling, sanding, and painting.

The three of us did the work for neighbor friends last summer.
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Volunteers Mark, Kristine, and Dina make the V for Victory sign.

Victorious under the now-white vault!
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Rain helps end the fire

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In the week since last That's My World Tuesday Israel has been through trying times.
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We are mourning the loss of 42 men and women in the service of their country; all burned because a bus was engulfed just after the forest fire started on Thursday.
Some 250 housing units burned either totally or partially.
50,000 dunams (12,500 acres) of the Mt. Carmel forest, 5 million trees, were on fire.

Photo: Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson

The good part is that many nations came to Israel's aid.
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In the photo, in orange and blue, are just some of the fire fighting aircraft crews that came from ten countries.
Israeli pilots accompanied them in every sortie over the flames.
In 82 hours the fire was stopped.
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Yesterday and today 4 Israel Air Force bases held ceremonies for the departure of the international teams. IAF medals were presented to 192 foreign crewmen, and all the delegations received a certificate of gratitude from the commander of the IAF.
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But before leaving, they were taken around the country to visit the holy places.
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The water-dropping planes that Turkey graciously sent us flew up to Lebanon to battle the fires that are burning the majestic cedars.

The other good news is that for the first time in 8 months RAIN started falling all over Israel last night! Just in time to cool down the smouldering ground in the Carmel range.

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Above you see the welcome clouds over Jerusalem at 4:18 pm today, as seen from my village.

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The Boston Globe has incredible images of our fire online today, including the airplanes.

WARNING: On Photo 6 they give you a choice whether to open it; please PLEASE skip that difficult one.

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Thank God it is over.

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Giving thanks

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A blessed Thanksgiving to all the Americans!
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In whatever country we are, let us give thanks for the food on our table and for the friends at the table.
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A new blog is born!

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Meet my Australian artist/photographer friend Lucy, the Wildgoose, who tomorrow sets out on the 1,000 kilometer Bibbelmun Track through southwestern Australia.

She will reach the great trail's end (God willing!) only the week before Christmas.

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Lucy opened a brand new blog today and I invite YOU to follow her!

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While walking the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, Lucy found this Spanish saying in a logbook: "El turista exige; el peregrino agradece," meaning, "The tourist demands; the pilgrim gives thanks."

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That was nine years ago, but that idea stayed with Lucy.

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To quote her new blog:

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" I’m walking the [Bibbelmun] track as a reflective, embodied practice as part of my Honours thesis in sustainability. Its working title is: Pilgrimage and the Alchemy of Transformation – Finding a way from Entitlement to Gratitude.

. . . So I’m playing at being a pilgrim, and finding a way from entitlement to gratitude."

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Lucy hopes that what she learns and writes will help us all walk more softly on our troubled planet, through adopting an attitude of gratitude.

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Lechi leshalom, go to peace, friend.

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Drawing water with grace

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Continuing the topic of world water shortage, I'd like to draw your attention to a short video of a beautiful and smiling woman drawing water--so gracefully--from a well in Senegal.
The Heifer Blog posted it for Blog Action Day.
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Heifer International is a great organization that gives livestock, training, and hope to needy families around the world.

Heifer Ranch volunteers, ca. 1997
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You can see from this photo what fun it is to be a volunteer at the Learning Center at Heifer Ranch .

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I worked and lived with young folks like these at the Ranch in Arkansas from 1996 to 2002 (that's me on the right).

The kids did mostly guiding and experiential education work with the thousands of visitors who come through the ranch every year.

I got to take care of livestock and teach young work-campers how we do chores, and sometimes I worked in the organic gardens.

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You too can contribute to Heifer's noble work, with gifts of your time or your money.

Christmas, Chanuka, birthdays are coming. Give the gift of hope, buy an animal or a share of an animal, through the unique gift catalog.

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A Torah's wanderings

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For the Simchat Torah holiday today, when we dance and sing with the Torah scrolls and rewind them back to Genesis 1, here is a very old scroll with a dramatic history.
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The deerskin on which it is written is unusually dark. Normally a Torah is a light tan color.

The Jewish museum at Hechal Shlomo in Jerusalem, where it is now housed, tells this story:

This Torah scroll was written in Spanish script, probably before 1492, by an excellent scribe on deerskin.
It wandered to Germany. There the Jewish congregation of Krautheim repaired it and added a piece of parchment with the missing chapter, written in Ashkenazic script.
The scroll survived a flood, the Gestapo, and bombings of the house in whose attic is was hidden during World War II.
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The middle photo on the right shows the old Jewish hospital in Karlsruhe where it was hidden.

If you enlarge this photo you can see where the two pieces were stitched together.
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This post is especially for my good friend Angelika, a teacher in Karlsruhe.
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Jackal jaws

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Jackal jaws!
Perfect for J-Day at ABC Wednesday.
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My American friends Mark and Kristine Schnarr were staying in a house near mine for a month this summer.
From the second floor terrace Kristine sighted this jackal early one morning and with her good zoom she got these two great photos.
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Good job, Kristine!!

You can see other posts about jackals here (although my shots are not as close-up as Kristine's).
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If you have never heard the resounding chorus of groups of jovial jackals, listen to the audio here and enjoy!
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Fuel for faith's flame

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When next you see a flame of faith lighting the darkness,

give a thought to my friends who freed up time to fill flasks of fuel for the vigil lamps.

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Fondly posted for F-day at ABC Wednesday.

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Mega mister

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Israel is starting our 4th straight week of ridiculous temperatures averaging ten degrees C above the normal.
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At Yardenit, near the Sea of Galilee, it was well above 43 C or 109 F in the shade; so the management turned on a big mister fan for the poor tourists.
I think that's what you call it.
It made shpritzim in a huge wind.

Blogger friend Robin* started a meme called Summer Stock Sunday.
The theme is activities and memories of summer.
I think the hottest August in recorded history is what we Israelis will remember about the summer of 2010.
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Wish I had that huge misting fan at home . . .
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*Robin and her family drove up to visit my village last April. That was a sweltering day too, but fun to meet them for the first time.
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Inn reflections

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Friends Kristine and Mark and I looked for a modest place to stay for one night in Tiberias last month.

The pilgrim inn that we found was built in 1907 by ANSMI, the Associazione Nazionale per Soccorrere i Missionari Italiani.
For its first decades the building served as a school for children.
Since 2001 it has been the Oasis San Francesco, and now Oasis Emmanuel, run by the Emmanuel Community which is part of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

Kristine popped out of her room at 7:00 p.m.
She and her door are reflected in the full length mirror.
The big wardrobe looked so old and mysterious that I dared not open it, fearing I would be pulled through into Narnia. ;)

I did, however, take a look BEHIND the wardrobe and found--no, not a lion--but a nest!

So THAT'S why the pigeon was pacing nervously by the rail, waiting for us to go away.
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At 6:55 a.m. the already-risen sun, playing with clouds, was turning the Sea of Galilee silver.

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As the non-native-English webpage of the Oasis so charmingly says,

"The simplicity of the rooms is compensated for the eyesight overlooking the lake and Golan Heights."

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I was happy to find these reflections for our growing group at James' Weekend Reflections.

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Shabbat shalom.

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Listening and learning

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Kristine and Mark didn't notice they were covered in little checkerboard shadows that were just right for Shadow Shot Sunday.
My visiting friends were too engrossed in listening to the audio guide.

This is what they were looking at and hearing about--the Holyland model of Jerusalem as it may have looked in the year 66 C.E.

The model now resides at the Israel Museum.

The museum's white Shrine of the Book, of Dead Sea scrolls fame, is visible just behind the model.

The square building on the left horizon is Israel's Knesset

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Please click to read about the model.

Visitors stand and gaze in wonder at the size and majesty of the Second Temple.

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Yearning for Yarmouth

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For ABC Wednesday Y-Day, let's see some old pics from Yarmouth!
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Tel Yarmouth is an Early Bronze Age site--that means from more that 4,000 years ago.
The tel is in central Israel, not far from Beit Shemesh.

This photo is taken from the Yarmouth Facebook group's album.

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Sometimes, when they needed a photo of an important find in situ, right away, we volunteers (and some staff) would line up in a human wall and "make shade" over the object.

The best time for the expedition's photographer, though, would be right before sunrise.

Here the volunteers, most of them from France, wait for the Bedouin paid workers to put up the shade netting.

In my first season with the Yarmouth group, in 1993, we slept in big tents in the forest next to Emmaus, near Latrun.

In my 2006 and 2007 seasons, we were housed in spartan kibbutz housing.

Everything I needed was on, under, above, or next to my bunk bed.

Sleeping in the quiet forest was more fun. The bells of the Trappist monks at Latrun monastery were my alarm clock for 4:00 a.m. rising.

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The Yarmouth tradition was to have a nice glass of arak with ice after a hot day's work at the dig.

It was my first--and last--time to drink arak.

You never know what you're going to learn at a dig. :) It tastes quite good, actually.

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St. Peter's fish

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Here's lookin' at ya.

St. Peter's fish, grilled!

So good!

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Its nose points just north of the famous fish restaurant at Kibbutz Ein Gev where we dined yesterday, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

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A "paned" look inside the walls

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For James' "Weekend Reflections"--part of the garden of the Sisters of Zion reflected in some waiting window panes.

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Inside Ein Kerem's big walled monastery, Notre Dame de Sion, are many lovingly-tended gardens and orchards.

A peaceful quiet place much prayed in.
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Lebanese Restaurant in Ein Kerem

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When I do paid work in archaeology my fellow laborers speak Arabic all day.
So I learned that foochara is what we say when nice potsherds are uncovered and have to be collected.
But when the restaurant chef recommended a meal of meat and vegetables and foochara, I said "What?!"
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When it came out of the oven and onto the table, I finally understood that foochara can also mean an unbroken clay pot.
Aha!

The waiter's T-shirt says (in Hebrew) "Abu Shukri's Lebanese Restaurant."
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Ein Kerem has plenty of fancy restaurants but this rustic one has the best food, and that is where I took my two visiting American friends.

This was my first time to have masachan, another great Lebanese dish made in the oven.

Two chicken legs and vegetables on a special brown pita and spiced, I think, with sumac.

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Note the special issue Coke cans for the World Cup.

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Two bloggers meet

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The Shabbat before last, one of my blog-friends became a RLF, a real life friend!
Robin and her husband and their two kids drove half way across the country (45 minutes) to come up to the Hills of Jerusalem to visit me.

Robin is the photographer and author of her always-interesting blog "Around The Island."

At the local monastery, sweet Maya drank cold water emerging straight from the rock.
Ein el-Habis is most likely the spring that John the Baptist also drank from.

Itai and Maya took a seat next to the friars' new aviary.
The bench is new as well.
 You just have to weld some scrap metal posts, saw some wood and attach it, and voila--a bench that cost nothing.

Thanks for your visit, Robin. I had a great time with you and your family.

It's really fun to know you all in person now!

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The one other blogger-friend who became a RLF is Ann of "Sydney Meanderings."
A year ago she took me on "a wander" through her wonderful city. Thanks Ann!
That seems so far away now and like such a long time ago.
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I wonder who the next will be . . .
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