Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel

Picnic area in the Reserve where we finally had lunch after many hours of walking and exploring. The people in the picture are our tour group,

The pictures in this post are from "The Biblical Landscape Reserve" We spent the whole day Sunday with a guide touring the over 600 acres. The objective of this project is restoration to Biblical times from Scriptural description of the areas. They are restoring to how they were during the different time periods.

Since it was the time of Sukkot that had a large display of a variety of Sukkas. Some met the Biblical definition of a proper Sukka and others did not. There were signs to explain the problem with the incorrect structures. According to Jewish tradition they need to be a certain size or larger at least three sided have to be freestanding, they must be a portable structure and many other requirements.

An actual cistern for water storage. The area was laid out so that all the rain fall would run into the water storage area. This is an actual cistern from the time of Abraham. There are many references to cisterns in the early Scriptures. There are many cisterns in the hills of Israel that are continually being discovered. Some will still hold water.

If you would like to know more about the Neot Kedumin (Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel) check out their web site http://www.n-k.org.il/public/english/index.htm and click on virtual tour. Also go to their newsletter for more pictures and information. It was a very fascinating day with so much information about the land and the scriptures describing the areas we were looking at.

More of Sukkah

There are more pictures in earlier post in October. There are three post for today. And i will get a little more posted later today or tomorrow.

We had two Sukkah's, the larger on the main floor balcony was used for the evening meal. Here it is set up for another excellent meal.
The view was breath taking no matter where we looked.





It is almost dinner time and the tables are all setup in the Sukkah.



Carla and one of the other guest decorating the small sukkah on the lower level.
A birds-eye-view of the lower level sukkah. The ladies had a lot of fun cutting out decorations and attaching them to the walls of the enclosure.

Preparing for Sukkot

Since I am still trying to learn how to put these together you need to look at the pictures from the bottom up. We were In Israel for the Biblical holiday of Sukkot (Lev 23:33-44) This set of pictures show the building and decoration of the booth (sukah). We had our evening meal in the Sukkah every evening. The ladies had a lot of fun with the decorating.

The flight in and guest house

The bus is a major source of transportation in Israel. Here is the local bus stop, on Friday morning some of the people decided to go to the next town to look around. Since there was no return trip they had to tramp (hitchhike) back. They had a great adventure and found that tramping was very easy.



The guest house is a ten bedroom house with two kitchens one for meat, on the main floor; and the other for Dairy on the lower floor. The top floor is a two bedroom suite for the owner. Murry (the owner of the guest house and a Doctor from South Africa) was also a guest on the tour and was just another member of the gang as we traveled.




The open area in the guest house where we spent some of our free time discussing that days adventures and the plans for the next day.



A view from the balcony out over the landscape from Nevey Menachen, the community we were staying in.



The accommodations at the guest house made it feel almost like being home, very family oriented. This is a picture of our room.

View of inside of the plane. The flight in was only eleven hours from Atlanta , the return on the other hand was 14 1/2 hours. I am ready to return,but there has to be a faster way.

We are home

Just wanted to let everyone know we are home. A lot of jet lag. It was 48 hours between getting up in Israel and going to bed in Arizona. The water bed never has looked so good as it did last night. I am very glad that I did not work today, but it is back to the grind tomorrow.

Since I forgot to take the spare battery and charger for the camera I am patiently waiting for others in our group to email me their pictures. At that time I will post pictures of all the places we went.

I will send an email to alert everyone that pictures have been posted.

Long Days

We are very sorry that we are not keeping up with the post. We leave very early and are not back to the house for the evening meal till after seven most nights. By the time we eat and discuss the day it is just too late to try and put sentences together for an accurate post of the day. I promise that once we are back into the states we will post a lot of pictures and narrative to the ten days.

Jeursalem

Monday, October 5th was an exciting day with lots of changes. The plan was a bus ride into Jerusalem to the western wall and other sites in the city.

Yes the bus ride was as planned, until we arrived in Jerusalem. As we approached the city the police informed the bus driver that the road he wanted to use was closed. A call to the Rabbi, who was to meet us in the western part of Jerusalem, did not help as the bus driver was not willing to take the route he suggested. The end result, we disembarked close to the “dung gate” on the Eastern side of Jerusalem. From there we went to the site of the Garden tomb and relaxed in the garden, waiting on our tour guide to come to the Eastern side of the city. This gave us the opportunity to visit the tomb which probably was Yeshua’s tomb.

From there we went into Zedekiah’s cave. Actually a massive underground stone quarry under the city. A huge area, we only went through a small part. Alhe stone was cut out without the use of metal objects or all our modern stone cutting equipment. The Rabbi told us that the stones were cut out by placing pieces of dry wood in the cracks and then soaking the wood. The expanding wood caused the sections to break loose so they could be rolled to the surface to build the buildings.

From there we entered the “dung gate”, this is all on the East side of Jerusalem, and walked through the old city of Jerusalem. Most of this area is inhabited by the Muslims and filled with their shops. The most amazing part of walking in this area was discovering the Jewish Yeshivas right in the heart of the Muslim areas that have been reclaimed for the Jews. We walked the “Via De la Rosa” as a part of the areas we traveled in what was almost like an underground city.

At one point we were in an area that placed us beside a very secluded part of the Western wall, not visited by many and were able to discuss, pray and observe a great deal without anyone around. Just our group of 16 with the Rabbi as our teacher. This was a very special time, to be at the western wall, without all the hectic activity normally associated with the western wall. We also went to the public area of the Western Wall, masses of people wedging in to get to the wall for prayer, to touch, to leave a prayer or just to say they were there. The Rabbi took the men into a study area by the wall where students were studying Torah.

Even though we spent most of the day in heavy Muslim areas at no time did we feel unsafe. Yes, the IDF was everywhere, but they too seemed very relaxed.

Our final adventure of the day was to observe the discoveries of the old City of David and looking across the valley to the Mount of Olives and down the Kidron Valley. It was a very full day.

Today, Sunday, we spent 8 1/2 hours touring and learning in "The Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel" The reserve is a very large park devoted to planting vegetation to match what was there at the time of the Bible. As we moved through the different areas the guide read Scriptures that explained what would have been there and she pointed out the trees that were described in the Biblical verses.

Other areas we discussed were cisterns and their importance in ancient biblical context, Other aspects of the early Hebrew life, the importance of the foliage, water and seasons all were brought out through Scripture verses.
There was just so much information both about the foliage and landscape and Scriptures that I feel as though I had a brain fry from two directions.

Due to technological challenges I will not be posting pictures for a few days. I trust that the problem will be solved with in a day or two. If it cannot be solved I will post pictures once we return to the states.

Tommorrow, Monday we will go to Jerusalem for the day. The areas we will visit depend on traffic and waiting time for the historic areas.

More Pictures

I am still getting an understanding of putting pictures into this system so all the pictures are first. It may get better as the days go on. Jim

Trip to Israel

Where to start! We left Las Vegas 9/30 at around 1:30 Pm for Atlanta, everything was on schedule, a good flight with excellent take off and landing. We made our way through Atlanta terminal finding our departure gate with ease 15 minutes before the plane from Las Vegas was to land. There was a good tail wind and it only took 3 hours for a 4 hour flight.

We found the right gate and just as I looked to see the departure time, it said 11:35, I rechecked the ticket and it said 10:35. I looked again and as I looked at the screen it changed again to 1:00 am. That was the beginning of a long wait for the true departure.

The blessing of the wait was finding two ladies of like mind that we share info with. Carla was cold, very good air conditioning, and borrowed a jacket from one of the ladies until we were ready to board the plane.

At 11:45 we started to go through security and the boarding process. Because of the destination everything was very high security, a complete re screening of everything and a very slow boarding process for over 400 people.

Our landing in Israel was very smooth and the trek through the terminal building to the Passport check area was very easy. They very efficiently processed the people and next stop was finding luggage. Just like Vegas and every other airport, wait and watch for just the right moment to grab, and then discover it was the wrong bag. Throw it back and try again. I was fortunate that I only grabbed the right two bags and off to the taxi.

Taxi, was a great area of caution as the price needed to be determined and also to make sure the driver knew where we were going. The dispatcher, who spoke the best English looked with a puzzled face when Carla told her the name of the town. Then one of the drivers spoke up and said he knew the area. Whit the help of our maps and three calls to the guest house we arrived in very good time at a rate less than we were told to expect. All in all a very good experience, God was really in total control of the whole adventure.

Lunch is cooking as I type and it is a day to just relax and prepare for Shabbot and the beginning of Succot. With the first day of the feast and Shabbot being the same day the volunteer staff is very busy with all the last minute details, building the sukkah.

I am attaching a photo of the inside of the plane and a sunset from the plane along with some of the guest house and the community.

I trust that this finds everyone excited about the high holiday