Day 9 - Jerusalem, Bethlehem

Thursday, May 5th, took us, first, to a few locations in-and-around Jerusalem:  the Garden of Gethsemane (where Jesus is said to have prayed with his disciples), the apparent location of the Last Supper, a large-scale outdoor map of Jerusalem in 66 CE (fantastic!), and the Dead Sea Scrolls (which date to somewhere between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE) and the Aleppo Codex (10th century CE) – both amazing to see and the stories of how they were found and how they made it to the museum is equally amazing. The two containers that the first scrolls were found in by Bedouin herdsmen are nicknamed Laurel and Hardy.
 
From there, we headed into the West Bank for lunch at the home of a Christian family followed by a visit, in Bethlehem, to the Church of the Nativity, a basilica from the 6th century that sits over a cave believed to be the place where Jesus was born.
 
The family whose home we visited was deeply warm and hospitable, and they served us homemade mezze, couscous, a kind of beef stew, and local wine.  The mother, Faten (she is named after Omar Sharif’s wife), was raised in Germany before her parents returned to the West Bank, talked to us about her family – we met her husband (who was working in their kitchen most of the time), four of her grandchildren, and one of her sons, who was our tour guide in Bethlehem.  Overall, in the West Bank, Christians only make up about 2% of the population.
 
Bethlehem is no longer “oh little town,” as its population sits at around 25,000, and it is jammed with stores and traffic.  Of course, the souvenir shops, which probably have been there for 2,000 years, are vibrant.
 
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