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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Australia's first saint lived with a Jewish family

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 A new statue has come into being since last I was in Australia, and a new saint too.

The larger-than-life statues were installed next to Sydney's St. Mary's Cathedral in October 2010, just a few days before the canonization of St. Mary MacKillop.
You can enlarge the photos with a few clicks to see the detail better. 

 

The artwork was commissioned by Cardinal George Pell.

 The sculptor, Louis Laumen, said (here) that the Cardinal wanted the sculpture of Mary MacKillop to include children in recognition not only of her love of young people but of the many schools she founded throughout New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Victoria so that all children no matter how poor could receive an education.

Mary Helen MacKillop (1842-1909) founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), a congregation of religious sisters that established a number of schools and welfare institutions throughout Australasia, with an emphasis on education for the rural poor.

I once visited her tomb and little museum in North Sydney years ago and was impressed how brave she was.
Her story even includes a time that she was unjustly excommunicated and interestingly, Wikipedia adds that "Forbidden to have contact with anyone in the church, MacKillop lived with a Jewish family and was also sheltered by Jesuit priests."

She is Australia's first (and so far only) saint. 
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(Linking to inSPIRED Sunday.)
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St. John Paul II's first feast day

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On St. John Paul II's first feast day (today, Oct. 22), we remember his visit to Israel in the year 2000.

The historic message in the note the Pope placed in the Western Wall  (now enshrined at Yad Vashem).

Photo by Grzegorz Galazka

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL (Anti-Defamation League)  National Director and a Holocaust survivor from Poland, wrote this about the recently-canonized Polish pope:

The canonization of Pope John XXIII, the father of Vatican II, and Pope John Paul II, who denounced anti-Semitism as “sin against God and humanity” and who was the first pope to visit the Great Synagogue of Rome since the time of Peter, formalizes and celebrates the courageous leadership of these two holy men who were determined to set the church on the right path toward better relations with other faiths.

For us in the Jewish community, Popes John Paul II and John XXIII have already been saints for a long time.  

They are towering men whose visionary leadership and groundbreaking reforms transformed Jewish-Catholic relations and reversed two thousand painful years of church-based anti-Semitism.

Click on the photo to read what John Paul was feeling about the Holy Land as he stood on Mt. Nebo (in Jordan) and gazed at the promised land, as did Moses from the same mountain.
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Good reading:
Israel welcomes visit by Pope John Paul II  (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
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Visit to Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority: A Pilgrimage of Prayer, Hope, and Reconciliation  (ADL)
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Moses, John Paul, and Benedict on Mt. Nebo  (this blog)
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First feast day today for St. John XXIII

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Today is the first-ever Catholic feast day for newly-canonized Pope St. John XXIII.

He was pope from 1958 to 1963, and Israeli flags were lowered to half mast when he died.
Last year, for the 50th anniversary of his death, Jerusalem hosted a wonderful conference which brought together top scholars and high-ranking clergy from Israel and the world.
You can enlarge the photos 2x and perhaps you will recognize the names and faces of some of the speakers.

International Conference: Honoring the memory of Pope John XXIII
The Shoah, the Jewish People & the State of Israel

Day long conference covering topics such as: Roncalli and the Shoah, Roncalli and the Establishment of the State of Israel, John XXIII, Vatican II and Nostra Aetate, and The Legacy of John XXIII for Catholic-Jewish Relations – Europe & the World

See the program of the seminar here, including a video of President Peres' thoughts on "The Good Pope," as Roncalli was popularly known.

 

The large audience got to see the hour-long prize-winning Israeli film "I Am Joseph, Your Brother."

 (Read more about the time the Pope first spoke that  Biblical verse to his Jewish guests.)

The movie's website begins

During the 1960s, Pope John XXIII met with a delegation of Jews and said, "I am Joseph Your Brother" marking the beginning of a new relationship between Jews and Catholics. Inspired by the visit of Pope John Paul II to Israel in 2000, I am Joseph, Your Brother assesses and reflects on the changes that have occurred in the often difficult and turbulent relationship that has existed for centuries between Jews and Christians, Judaism and Catholicism, and more recently, between the State of Israel and the Vatican.

Some of the pearls I remember well from that day:

When the Church assigned Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli to several Eastern European countries during World War II,  he was able to save up to 100,000 Jews from the hands of the Nazis, mostly through what some call "Operation Baptism."

One speaker predicted that when history gets straightened out, Israel may someday have streets named for Pope John XXIII and he will finally be included in Yad Vashem's Righteous of the Nations.

On June 3,  the official day of his death, our Knessent last year  held a special session on Roncalli.

A woods has been named for him in the Galilee, near Mt. Precipice.

It was this pope who convened the Second Vatican Council from which came Nostra Aetate. 
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I must say, in the last decades Catholic-Jewish relations have come a long way, in both directions.
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The Saint of the Day website gives these hopeful last words from Saint John XXIII:

On his deathbed he said: “It is not that the gospel has changed; it is that we have begun to understand it better. Those who have lived as long as I have…were enabled to compare different cultures and traditions, and know that the moment has come to discern the signs of the times, to seize the opportunity and to look far ahead.” 

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Feast your eyes on a Rembrandt

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It's not every day that I see a Rembrandt!
This is St. Peter in Prison (The Apostle Peter Kneeling) , 1631.
It hangs in the Israel Museum.
I have been saving it to post today, June 29, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

(Make sure to click on the picture and then once again.)

Today's liturgical feast is in honor of the martyrdom in Rome of the apostles Peter and Paul.
According to my Ministry of Tourism calendar the main celebration in Israel is in Jaffa, Tiberias, and Capernaum.

Our painting, however, is a scene of Peter's earlier arrest--in Jerusalem.

The Israel Museum writes

About that time Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John . . . and . . . he proceeded to arrest Peter also. . . . And when he had seized him, he put him in prison.
(The Acts of the Apostles 12:1–4)

Rembrandt’s painting shows the apostle Peter in his prison cell in Jerusalem following his arrest. A shaft of soft, golden light falls on him from an unseen source, leaving large parts of the painting in total obscurity.
The saint’s attribute is clearly visible, however: two large metal keys signifying the keys to the kingdom of Heaven bestowed on him by Jesus, which in this situation suggest the irony of his jailed state.
St. Peter kneels, his gnarled hands (the hands of the fisherman he once was) clasped in prayer but also in despair, his lined face expressing an old man’s desolation. He cannot know that the Angel of God – perhaps foreshadowed in the mysterious source of light – will soon appear to bring about his miraculous escape.

The simple humanity of Peter is emphasized, and yet the radiance that encircles his face like a kind of halo conveys his sanctity.
This different interpretation of a familiar subject exemplifies Rembrandt’s genius at portraying states of mind and spiritual qualities through the language of light and shadow.
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St. Thérèse's relics on pilgrimage in Israel

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But in death, parts of her are making a world tour.
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On the poster you can see the long list of cities in Israel her relics will visit in a 2-week period.
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This Catholic custom of veneration of relics is strange to Jews, so of course I was curious and went to the Old City to find Theresa, The Little Flower.

Alas, the guard at the Latin Patriarchate told me I was two hours too late, that "she" had just left and was on the way to Haifa.

To console me, he showed me in to the empty cathedral.

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I had the whole place to myself! Blessed silence and solitude.

The stained-glass-filtered sunlight gave some pews and the pulpit a rainbow touch.

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I found one remaining copy of the welcoming ceremony at Jaffa Gate, the procession, and the Solemn Vespers at the church.

I sat on a multi-colored pew and read the pages, pretending to understand the Latin.

I thought about young (dead at 24) Theresa and her Little Way which teaches us to do little things with great love.

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So this post was a tour of something I did not see, for That's My World Tuesday

However, the Latin Patriarchate website has short videos of the welcomes given to the reliquary at Ben-Gurion Airport and in Jerusalem (and also articles about the saint).

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"Understanding Theresa's Relics" helps, e.g. "It is a fact that when people stand in the presence of her mortal remains or have some contact with her poor relics, . . . God, who received through her humanity so many signs of love, is pleased in turn to manifest his love through her bodily remains."

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This newspaper includes the fact that one set of her relics was taken into space in the Discovery.

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And Wikipedia has the whole story of Theresa, from 1873 to 1897.

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A funny T-shirt

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June 13 is the feast day of St. Anthony, "Doctor of the Church, Wonder Worker, Professor of Miracles."
That explains why I saw this small T-shirt for sale a few days ago at the gift shop of the big Franciscan church in Ein Kerem.

Apparently in the early 1200s Antonio had a vision of the child Jesus.

Since the 17th century he is most often portrayed in art holding the infant, but not quite like on this funny T-shirt, I'm sure.

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Pax et bonum, peace and all good, to you and all at That's My World.

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St. Stephen's Day and church

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On the day after happy Christmas comes the sad story of Saint Stephen's Day.
Stephen was stoned to death in the year 34 or 35, probably just outside the Damascus Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Dominicans purchased the land in 1884, did excavations, and then built the new basilica of St. Stephen, Protomartyr.

In French its name is Saint Etienne.

I read here that "The original church was built by the Empress Eudocia at the end of the fifth century to house the relics of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and the adjoining monastery complex was so large that by the beginning of the sixth century it housed close to 10,000 monks."
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Well, there are Dominican monks there at the Priory today, but not ten thousand!

On an ancient column the freres inscribed the Roman numerals for 460, the year of the original Byzantine church over which the modern one was built and re-dedicated in 1900 (MCM).

Also home to the famed Ecole Biblique et Archeologique Francaise, this is a beautiful and quiet place of prayer and of study.

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(See an earlier post about their First Temple period burial complexes. )

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UPDATE: I woke up this morning worrying. -- Surely there could not have been 10,000 monks living here, as in my quotation!

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So further research revealed this:

"The walled monastic compound was the largest of all church structures in or around Jerusalem for over a century, larger even than the precincts of the Golgotha complex. Evagrius described the site as "a vast temenos [sacred enclosure], remarkable for its proportions and for its beauty." Cyril of Scythopolis referred to the compound as a "diocese" due to its size, and wrote that the grounds were large enough to house the 10,000 who gathered for a monastic revolt in 516 to protest the Emperor's opposition to the Council of Chalcedon."

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This is from a remarkable project called

The Byzantine St. Stephen's Project, A Biocultural Reconstruction of Urban Monasticism.

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Another source explains that "10,000 seems to be a literary exaggeration. Based on the archaeological record, the entire population of monks in the Judean desert was estimated to be 3,000. . . . Many medieval pilgrims, impressed by the numerous caverns in the Kidron cliffs, claimed that the number of monks in the past was 10,000. . . ."

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Saints and Hansen's in Hawaii and Jerusalem

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Mazal tov! Congratulations to Hawaii. Their first saint was canonized in Rome this morning by Pope Benedict XVI.
Father Damien came to Hawaii in 1864. Saint Damien spent many years ministering to the leper colony on Molokai.
But no one tells his story more movingly than Cloudia at Comfort Spiral in her post today.

Nineteenth century Jerusalem also had what were then (mistakenly) called lepers, and they were housed behind this meter-thick stone wall in Talbieh.
Talbieh was not the prestigious neighborhood it is today. It was on the pale of settlement, subject to attacks by bands of robbers.
This one little gate was therefore the only entrance to the compound.

Jesus Hilfe (the Jesus Help Asylum) was established in 1887 by the city's Protestant community.
(Another source says that Jesus Hilfe was the name of the builder.)
It was designed by Conrad Schick, a German missionary and self-taught architect.
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The Herrenhut Brotherhood of the Moravian Church ran the facility between 1887 and 1950. Staff came from Europe to care for the patients, who were mostly Moslems, although there were some Christians and a few Jews. The German Deaconess sisters were devoted to treating the suffering ones.

Rabbi Aryeh Levin (1886-1969) was our Jewish version of a saint. He is called The Tsadik (the saintly one) of Jerusalem.

He was one of the few brave enough to set foot inside the hospital.
He voluntarily came to visit the sick regularly, it is said, and especially on Rosh Hashana when he would blow the shofar.

Each floor had access to its own toilet via a bridge.
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A cure did not exist back then, so care of the patients was based on the accepted principles of hygiene, fresh air, proper nourishment, physical activity, and spiritual support.

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Norwegian Dr. Gerhard Hansen identified the leprosy bacillus in 1879. Since then the disease has been known by the less ominous name of "Hansen's Disease."

In 1948, following the establishment of the State of Israel and the division of Jerusalem between Jordan and Israel, the asylum found itself on the Israeli side of the city. Some of the patients and staff left, moving to an asylum in the Arab village of Silwan.

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In 1950 the Moravian Church sold the entire compound to the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Ministry of Health took over the running of the place and renamed it the Hansen Government Hospital.

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With the development of an effective cure for Hansen's Disease, patients were gradually rehabilitated and discharged. The last in-patients left the hospital in 2000.

As you can see in the photo, the mezuzah is gone from the doorpost and most of the buildings are abandoned.

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Part of the site now serves as an outpatient clinic and learning center for the disease, the incidence of which has dropped significantly.  [See update below!]

Rivka Regev, the daughter of the hospital’s veteran general physician, lives in the compound to this day.

In the old days, the inhabitants tended a vegetable garden, fruit trees, and some livestock for their own needs.
The biblically inspired garden had a system of wells, channels, and four big cisterns.

 See the new plantings?!

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Volunteers from Israel and abroad, supported by the Society for the Protection of Nature, hope to "restore the old garden, to cultivate a biblically-ecologically organic sound garden of healing herbs and to invite the community to participate in maintaining the garden through educational activities for school children, the elderly and people with special needs."
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Rivka Regev is the living spirit behind the vision of reclaiming the wilderness.

Schick's elegant architectural treasure appears on the list of buildings intended for preservation under the auspices of the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites.

Nothing seems to be moving in that direction yet, but let us hope and pray that "Jesus Hilfe" will be saved.

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2 good articles about Hansen's Hospital:

From the Jerusalem Municipality

Leprosy, the Jew and the World

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Links about St. Damien: Catholic News Service

Damien Blog with video of today's Canonization Mass

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UPDATE: "In 2009, the Unit became the responsibility of Hadassah Hospital ... and the Hansen Hospital has moved to another historic building - Hadassah's  Beit Habriut at 24 Strauss Street. Following a government decision in May 2009, the Hansen Hospital compound - designated for preservation - was transferred to the Jerusalem Municipality Culture and Art activities in November of 2011."
See more at Hadassah's article. 

Guided tours are available and there are photographic exhibitions inside.
In fact,  photographers who first went in and recorded their impressions with much feeling are the ones who brought public attention to the building's plight and moved it closer toward preservation.
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Here is more about the artifacts now on display.

And the most comprehensive and entertaining telling of the Hansen's story is at this blog:
http://israelightly.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/the-hansen-compound-from-leper-hospital-to-multimedia-art-center/
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Gruetzi ! Raise a glass!

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March Theme Day for the friends over at City Daily Photo is Glass. So let me join their fun, albeit unofficially, by jumping back to a former life outside of Israel, just for today.

After a strenuous hike up the Alps on a hot summer day, the reward was one bottle of cold local beer at the upper station of the cablecar. Curious why a beer label would show a pilgrim with a halo, I shlepped the empty back to the chalet and found in the owners' bookcase a history book of the place.

Sure enough, there he was! Fridolin was a missionary who, it is said, converted the people of Glarus to Christianity in the 6th century.
Real or fictitious, Fridolin remains the patron saint of Glarus. Since 1388 (the battle of Nafels) he has appeared on their flag.

St. Fridolin is the only saint to be depicted on a Swiss canton banner, and I'm pretty sure the only saint to appear on a beer bottle.

Let's raise a GLASS to him and to my good years in Switzerland!
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Bless the donkeys

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Today is the Catholic feast day of Francis of Assisi. He lived from 1181 until Oct. 4, 1226 and was the founder of the monastic order which bears his name. This painting of him is in the Franciscan monastery near my village.

St. Francis is the patron saint of animals. He spoke to animals as "brother wolf" and "sister bird," preached to the animals, saw all of creation as inherently good, and was exceptional in his emphasis on the obligation of all animal life toward praising the Creator.

In many countries pets are taken to church on this day to be blessed.
I have never heard of it being done in Israel, so permit me to take you to Australia instead for just this one post.
During the month that I lived as a volunteer at the Good Samaritan Donkey Sanctuary in New South Wales, a priest came to dedicate the new statue of St. Francis in the garden.

He then entered the barn and shpritzed the water (did the asperges ceremony) on about a hundred of these dear donkeys.

I found a Jewish website that says, "Even though we Jews do not have patron saints, we do have a similar concept to a saint’s feast day in the hillula. A hillula, though it originally referred to a celebration such as a wedding feast, was later adapted to annual rejoicing on the anniversary of the death of an important Rabbi."

They suggest making a hillula for Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of Eretz Israel, who saw "a vital symbiosis, both ecologically and theologically, between human and non-human animals" that would include a yearly blessing of the pets as follows:

Blessed are You, Holy Source,
Maker of all living creatures.
On the fifth and sixth days of creation,
You called forth fish in the sea,
birds in the air and animals on the land.
You inspired us to call all animals brothers and sisters.
We ask You to bless these animals
By the power of Your love,
enable them to live fully in praise to Your Name
May we always praise You
for all Your beauty in creation.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, in all your creatures!
. . . (adapted from Catholic prayer for Blessing Animals)
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