In all seriousness...

We had two pretty serious days here in Jerusalem. First we set out for the Kotel (the western/wailing wall) where we got the opportunity to write notes to God and have personal moments of reflection and prayer. The Kotel is considered the most holy place for Jews because it is "the remains if the outer wall of what was once the Temple Mount; a site of pilgrimage and emotional and traditional meaning for Jews worldwide."


Lisa and I in front of the wall.


Lisa writing her prayers.


My note in it's crevice in the wall (the purple-ish one). Then we went to Mt Herzl. This is where the greatest Israeli leaders and military personnel are laid to rest.


Lisa laying a stone on Theodor Herzl's (the father of modern Zionism) grave. In Judaism it is customary to lay rocks on a grave rather than flowers. I'm not an expert on why but I think it has something to do with helping to bury that person.


Rows and rows of military graves. What is unique here is that soldiers and officers are buried side by side regardless of rank because each has offered the same and biggest sacrifice to their country. The following day we went to Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, which is the most visited site in Israel. It is an impressively laid out building that has much meaning in it's construction and design. It is a triangular cement hallway that gets narrower as you go through (to represent the lessening of freedoms during the holocaust) and rooms with different bits of history, documents, and accounts of the ghettos and camps on either side. It is impossible to move straight through the museum, so every visitor winds through and has exposure to each room before exiting.


Lisa and I overlooking the view from the museum. (no pictures allowed inside...)


The ceiling from the outside looking in. Before even going in, however, we were lucky enough to hear firsthand an account of the holocaust from a survivor. She wasn't even 4 years old when her mother and brothers were taken to the camps and had a fascinating story of survival from parent figure to parent figure, the ghetto to the camps and ultimately, at the age of nine, a rescue and series of events that lead her to adoption in the US where she lead a typical rest of childhood and then adulthood. She moved to Israel in the 1980s. She spoke candidly from both memory and research and we were all moved. It really made me reflect on the word "lucky" and how relative it's meaning can be. We all also feel honored to have been able to hear such a firsthand account as holocaust survivors are becoming a more and more rare group. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad