Mazel Tov!!

Ramparts Walk

Around the city walls there is a small slightly frightening raised walk way that you can pay about 8 shekels and walk around the whole old city. The day we went as a small group it was so cold and windy and started to rain at the end but it was still super cool! We stopped at the lookout above Jaffa gate and ate lunch overlooking the city and had an excellent view of the Dome over the Rock. Whilst eating lunch the prayer call rung out from every mosque in sight. It was deafening but I think that the prayer call is one of the coolest (maybe not at 5 in the morning) sounds to hear! While we were walking on the rampart we ran into some older ladies from Europe who were all traveling together. They asked us to sing America’s National Anthem. She stopped us once we got to, “…o’er the ramparts we watched…” She got so excited about us singing about ramparts while we were on a rampart, cute huh?

Free Day

This past Monday we had a free day and I wondered around the city making our way to the Shook. The walk to the Shook only takes about 40 minutes but we turned it into a 2 hour walk to it. Along the way we met these high school kids whose teacher “had a stomach ache” so they were out of school making a movie. They asked Dan in our group to do some back flips (he was showing off earlier in the park and they saw him) and to take pictures with us. Only one of them really spoke English the rest of them would just laugh every time we talked. They were hilarious!

We found the Shook after a few pit stops and just wondered. The Shook is a big outdoor market that is kind of like a flea market but classy. It reminded of some of the streets in the old city but cleaner and more variety. They had big tea stores with all the herbal tea out in big containers, bread stores, restaurants, candy shops, lots and lots of vegetables and fruit stands, and clothing stores.

Seder Meal

This week was our Jewish cultural week. My last post was all about the Yad Veshim the holocaust museum that we went to and we ended to the week with a Seder meal! It was about 3 hours long with lots of singing! It was fun! I am still constantly amazed here about how open the devotion the different faiths have to their strong beliefs.

Actually I lied the last thing to end the Jewish week was going out to Synagogue last night. It’s a school and a synagogue that was started by families that couldn’t find a school they thought suitable for their kids. The ones that I met who started the place were from America, but I don’t think all of them were. The lady that talked to us about the history of the synagogue and school was fascinating! She came here after being a principle in California for 17 or 19 years with her husband because they wanted to contribute the building up a Jewish nation. They school was founded and she is a very open and innovative teacher it sounded like. The school was the first to bring in Autistic children into a regular school and incorporate them fully. Before these kids were brought into these schools they were sent to an institution for all handicaps both mental and physical and given no advantageous attention to further growth or learning. Basically at these school they did not have a teacher assigned to the autistic children but had children helping children and the results they saw in the school was phenomenal. She said that when the kids have an adult with him as an aid sometimes they are shown too much “mercy” by the adult and therefore sometimes do not grow. When another child is leading them the child encourage them to stretch themselves and grow. They implemented the program throughout Israel she said. Some of the children they took in are now prominent lawyers, physicians, and business owners in the community. They first started the program in the early 80’s I believe.

The other story she told us that I just though was amazing, but really had nothing to do with but had relevance in her life because the story cam full circle for her a few days before and she had being thinking about it and wanted to share. She said that one morning 31 years ago she went outside the school to make sure all the children had made it in when she heard what she though was a baby cry. She asked the secretary if she heard the noise too and she did but thought it was a cat. She went out further and decided it was definitely the cries of a new infant. She followed the cry to the field right by the school and found a brand new baby with the umbilical cord still attached with ants and cats around him. She picked him and took him inside to clean him off and called the police. They came and took the baby and after a few days she called them to find out what happened. The police did not who the mother was but thought she must had been a student from Hebrew University (the dorms are right next to this synagogue/school) and also though she was American because the skirt that the baby was wrapped in was an American brand. That’s all they could deduce I guess from what they had. Fast-forward 31 years and earlier that week she received a call from a man asking who the principle was 31 years ago. She told him that it was her and asked he wanted to know. He told her that he was that baby she found and asked if he could come meet her talk with her. He brought his wife and kids with him to meet her. He told her that he had been adopted and was named Shy which means present or gift in Hebrew. He expressed to her why his mother had thrown her away and she had a really neat perspective on that. She said that she never thought that his mother had never thrown him away but left him in a place where she knew he would be found and have a better chance. Any way I thought it was a really touching story!!