A few days ago I had a really good Palestinian dinner. There were the typical arab salads but the hummus was better than normal. The rest of the food was great too, but best of all, taboon! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafa . There used to be a restaurant at the entrance to Bethlehem that had excellent taboon bread and I fell in love. It may be that it's crunchy but whatever it is, give me some with some hummus and other arab salads on it and I'm a happy guy. I never used to order a main dish because that, considered an appetizer, was my target. I briefly thought of that restaurant as we entered the city and again as I ate the wonderful meal a few hours later. The restaurant is closed now--probably it just moved because it was really close to the border with Jerusalem. The border held my attention much longer than the beloved simple pleasure of taboon with hummus.
As we approached Bethlehem, we were confronted with the separation barrier and an airport like checkpoint. When I was here in 2003, the construction of this wall / fence was the hot topic but was only beginning to be built. Now, it's an accepted, though by many despised, aspect of the landscape (I'll express opinions relating to the wall soon on my opinion blog). Since the wall is a poli
tical reality I haven't witnessed previously, and since it was a controversy I followed years ago, I'm interested in taking a few excursions to see where it divides the Palestinian from Israel and Jewish settlements. The graffiti is a nice touch for a tourist who might otherwise lose interest of the architecturally plain, okay, aesthetically ruinous, wall and we had the taxi driver stop a couple hundred meters after starting to let us take pictures of more art work as we returned to confront it as it winded around the city. As we arrived at Beit Sahur, we had a clear view a Jerusalem suburb (Israeli perspective) / settlement (Palestinian perspective, largely agreed to by the international community), the building of which, was a five star controvery issue from a previous era--Har Homa. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE0DB1531F930A25752C1A96E958260. The project is still being expanded but it has come a long way since the tree clearing started around a decade ago.
The visit was on a Saturday afternoon--Sabbath as practiced by Mormons in Israel for what I understand to be practical reasons. I had been at church a couple of hours before but the though didn't even cross my mind that perhaps I should have thoughts centered on Jesus as I approached the city of his birth. The layer of visual aids for political discussions didn't dominate the day, however. I am interested in Byzantine history and the church of the Nativity is an architecturally exceptional Byzantine edifice (I'll blog about that later, too). Of course the special feature is that this is understood to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ. You walk down the stairs from the main level of the old style church with icons, hanging lamps--basically lots of stuff that's hard for a westerner without a specialized education in the stuff to understand--and you're in a pretty simple 'cave' room where the birth is said to have taken place. A birth--deity entering the mess that we know of as life and a couple taking on responsibilities considerably beyond the awe of generic parenthood. A few short decades later and then a short and exceptionally controversial ministry leading up to the most significant of all events commemorated by another small secluded place enshrouded within another noisy, dark, and hard to comprehend, originally, Byzantine church.
As we approached Bethlehem, we were confronted with the separation barrier and an airport like checkpoint. When I was here in 2003, the construction of this wall / fence was the hot topic but was only beginning to be built. Now, it's an accepted, though by many despised, aspect of the landscape (I'll express opinions relating to the wall soon on my opinion blog). Since the wall is a poli
tical reality I haven't witnessed previously, and since it was a controversy I followed years ago, I'm interested in taking a few excursions to see where it divides the Palestinian from Israel and Jewish settlements. The graffiti is a nice touch for a tourist who might otherwise lose interest of the architecturally plain, okay, aesthetically ruinous, wall and we had the taxi driver stop a couple hundred meters after starting to let us take pictures of more art work as we returned to confront it as it winded around the city. As we arrived at Beit Sahur, we had a clear view a Jerusalem suburb (Israeli perspective) / settlement (Palestinian perspective, largely agreed to by the international community), the building of which, was a five star controvery issue from a previous era--Har Homa. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE0DB1531F930A25752C1A96E958260. The project is still being expanded but it has come a long way since the tree clearing started around a decade ago.The visit was on a Saturday afternoon--Sabbath as practiced by Mormons in Israel for what I understand to be practical reasons. I had been at church a couple of hours before but the though didn't even cross my mind that perhaps I should have thoughts centered on Jesus as I approached the city of his birth. The layer of visual aids for political discussions didn't dominate the day, however. I am interested in Byzantine history and the church of the Nativity is an architecturally exceptional Byzantine edifice (I'll blog about that later, too). Of course the special feature is that this is understood to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ. You walk down the stairs from the main level of the old style church with icons, hanging lamps--basically lots of stuff that's hard for a westerner without a specialized education in the stuff to understand--and you're in a pretty simple 'cave' room where the birth is said to have taken place. A birth--deity entering the mess that we know of as life and a couple taking on responsibilities considerably beyond the awe of generic parenthood. A few short decades later and then a short and exceptionally controversial ministry leading up to the most significant of all events commemorated by another small secluded place enshrouded within another noisy, dark, and hard to comprehend, originally, Byzantine church.
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