Another Shabbat In Israel

Saturday's here in Israel are Shabbat, also known as the Sabbath. This is a holy day set apart for the Jewish people for rest. Among many other things no one is allowed to cook, press elevator numbers, change the television station, switch on or off a light. There are ways to get around these rules, such as turning your TV on to the station of your choice the day before sunset, and leaving it on until sunset the following day.

But here at IBEX Shabbat is the day we go to church. We attend a small congregation of believers in Jerusalem called Jerusalem Assembly. The pastor, Meno, will speak for a couple of minuets in Hebrew and then someone will translate into English, while others in the back speak in Russian. It's REALLY hard to pay attention. By the time the English part of the message gets around I have already forgotten what the last point was. And the service lasts for 2 and half hours! I counted 7 of us IBEX students asleep yesterday.

After this the bus will drop whichever students want to stay in Jerusalem for the day off by Jaffa Gate, where it meets us again at 4pm to go back to the Moshav. These are really fun times, because you don't have a schedule of things you have to see, or are racing to keep up with Todd (our professor who takes on field trips). You just get to hang out with great friends!

This Shabbat we decided that we would visit a Protestant Cemetery which our professor Randy told us about. Now since it's Shabbat alot of things are closed (The normal work day here is Sun-Friday) Randy told us however that if the desk to JUC (Jerusalem University College, who controls access to the cemetery) was open you could sweet talk your way in, since they do not let anyone in without a reservation. Or if the desk was close, as it is on Shabbat, there was a whole in the fence where you could sneak in.

So after a little exploring, and many wrong turns we finally found the road which we thought led to the gate. But in order to get there we had to walk up this really steep hill with barb wire, then slide down the side of the slope, then climb back up the hill. Finally we made it to where the whole was. There was, thankfully, a strategically placed chair (from others before us) which we used to prop ourselves up and then climb through, on our knees a small opening in the barb wire fence. It was intense, to say the least.

The cemetery, however, was well worth it. It was, by far, the coolest cemetery I have ever seen in my life. The graves were all in English because it is a protestant cemetery (alot of the people buried there were British, but had come to work in Israel. Many of them were Excavators who found alot of the sites we know of today). The dates on tombs ranged from 1820 at the earliest to 1999 at the latest. The whole place was horribly overgrown and un cared for, which added to its coolness! Some of graves had even been dug up and there was just an empty plot. As we were looking around and taking pictures it started pouring. How cool is it to be in a super old Cemetery in Jerusalem that you snuck into and it starts pouring! I could have died! (no pun intended)

This, by far is the coolest thing I have done here!