Picspam: from kodesh to chol (or: from holiness to sand. I swear this pun makes sense in Hebrew.)
I am dead on my feet, or rather on my ass as I am sitting down. But I had fun today! I was not actually expecting that a day that started with this:
--would end with this:
...but life takes you places.
Picspam and stories under cut; I wrote a lot down from the Jerusalem tour to help me remember it later.
The idea of my extended family going on some kind of tour together has been brewing for a while now -- we only see each other on birthdays and holidays, which okay, is kind of a lot, but it's never just to hang out -- so my mom took initiative and organized a tour in the Old City. No traffic on Friday morning, so the drive took exactly half an hour. The weather was sunny and not too hot, and the Old City looked beautiful.
I didn't actually take too many photos; mostly because last year I went to the Old City and took like, oh, 80,000 photos, so I pretty much have enough for life. And then I came back and made a picspam post of that trip, plus there's a photo gallery, so I figured I'd spare you all this time. It looks the same.
The great thing about this tour was that it took me to places I'd never been before. The Old City is a walled-in square kilometer of endless possibilities, but when I'm there I'm usually accompanying tourists, and we go to the same Don't Miss spots. Which I love, but this time, there was a guide, and some surprises.
1. The Greek Catholic Patriarchate. It's a church built below a hotel -- or maybe a hotel built over a church -- and it was quiet, uncrowded, out of the way, with absolutely gorgeous artwork.
Every single wall and column was covered in colorful frescoes and icons. Gorgeous.
2. Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I've been there a bunch of times, but this was my first time there with a guide, and I finally got to understand where everything happened: where is Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, where his body was prepared for burial, where the tomb itself is, et cetera et cetera. The structure itself is one of the most complex churches I've ever been in, chapels and inner churches and dozens of different caverns and staircases flowing into one another on more than one geographic level, the deepest part of the church underground and carved in stone, and no symmetry in the architecture at all. It's beautiful and exciting and fun to explore, and even better when I actually know the facts of what happened where. Obviously.
Two cool things in the church I'd never heard of before: (a) behind the Sepulcture itself is a small, mostly empty (of people) chapel. A low opening in one of the stone walls leads to a tiny complex of chambers hewn in rock -- a Jewish burial tomb, according to our guide, dating back to the Second Temple days (ie +- 2000 years ago). The complex was only discovered recently (in the 19th century), perhaps reinforcing the idea that the location of Christ's hypothesized tomb wasn't entirely accidental.
(b) The Ladder. Today, control over the Church of the Holy Sepulcture is split between the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syrian churches. The status quo regarding who controls what in the church was established in the 18th-19th centuries, and it is incredibly, incredibly delicate -- any violation can lead to violent clashes, and I do mean ANY violation. It is simultaneously tragic and hilarious that examples of this include the fight that broke out over who was responsible for the first, wider step on the front stairway -- the fight over which church would have the privilege of sweeping it went all the way up to the Pope -- or the one that broke out when a Coptic monk moved his chair to the shade, clearly a hostile invasion of Ethiopian territory, and I am not even joking, even though it sounds like it's straight from the Discworld.
Best of all, there's The Ladder: balanced on one of the windowsills over the main entrance ot the church is a COMPLETELY RANDOM LADDER. There are all sorts of legends/explanations for why it was placed there, but bottom line is, it was placed there and cannot be moved because of the status quo. This ladder has been leaning on that ledge for OVER 150 YEARS. There are photos. It is still there. I would love to have thought of this as plot for a fic, but I couldn't make something like this up if I tried.
3. The Ethiopian Church. I'd always thought the church was this small little cavern by the Holy Sepulcture, and never given it much notice. Turns out that was only the exit. The church itself isn't very big, but behind its entrance (from the Christian marketplace) is this gorgeous little complex owned by the Coptic church, just this kind of flat rooftop plaza with a couple of buildings around it and a couple of domes jutting up from the floor, because it's a roof.
The really interesting thing was to hear the shared origins of -- well, Jews and Ethiopians, according to legend, which I'd never heard before. The Bible tells the story of the Queen of Sheba hearing of Solomon's wisdom and journeying to Jerusalem to test him with riddles and exchange with him gifts. The Ethiopian version of the story is much spicier -- literally, even. The Kebra Negast says that Solomon threw a banquet in her honor and served spicy food, to induce her thirst. They ate and drank until night time, and by then it was too dark for her to return to the palace he'd given her (which is btw the location of the rooftop plaza I'm talking about), so he invited her to spend the night over, because obviously the only spare bed in Solomon's entire palace was the other one in his room. She asks him not to take her by force, and in return he asks her not to take anything of his by force. And the Queen says, sure, and then she wakes up in the middle of the night, and wants to take a drink of water from the jug that he's oh-so-conveniently set between their beds, except apparently Solomon considers the water, being so valuable, as his possession, meaning she broke her oath. And then he takes her to bed, and when she returns to Sheba she's pregnant with his child, and all the line of Kings of Ethiopia are his descendants.
Okay, so it might read like a combination PWP/telenovella/horrifying-rape-story, but at least it shows that Solomon had character, and maybe he wasn't as lame as [my favorite interpretations of] the Bible makes him out to be. And also it's a really cool story to know.
Okay, so if you're not tired about hearing Old City crap yet I AM MAJORLY IMPRESSED WITH YOU, but in any case I should wrap the subject up.
We went up on a rooftop to see the view:
...it was really more impressive than that, both in domes and churches and really rundown roofs. Then we had a hummus lunch (= hummus-pita-salad-fries-falafel) at Abu Shukri's (it's famous! we have famous hummusias here, which is like pizzerias but with hummus), and then saw the view from the Austrian Hospice, where I took the photo from the top of this post and remembered sharing an apple strudel there with
bironic,
kass and
lomedet last summer. And then the Via Doloroza up through the marketplace, and back to the car. I usually stop by the Kotel in the Jewish Quarter when I'm in the Old City to leave a note in the wall, but my family was ready to go home; the only one who stayed was my cousin, who wanted to show his 5-year-old son the Kotel for the first time. They are sweet.
OKAY, done with Jerusalem! on to Tel Aviv, which is less words, more pics, yay.
We arrived home around 4PM, and half an hour later I left for Tel Aviv, where I joined
marina and miarr at the post-Tel Aviv Pride Parade beach party, at Gordon Beach. The photo at the top of the post was the first thing I saw: hundreds of people, and music, and flags, and sand and sea. YAY. Also, yay for both of the girls being too wiped out from their day to drag me to do something ridiculous like dancing or whatever, thank god -- we just sat on some beach chairs and talked.
I just want to say that I really loved the random white-horse-riding security. Like, yesterday night
marina calls me at like 1AM and tells me, "I just want you to know that the last thing I expected to see strolling down a Tel Aviv street at 1AM -- or at all, really -- is a horse. And yet, here is it." I guess the whole city was preparing for the cavalry's arrival.
Giant Xena! \o/
The Dan hotel, which actually always looks like this; I just love how it looks dressed up for the occasion.
At about 18:30, as the sun was beginning to set, five weddings took place on the main stage, which was designed as a chuppah, three lesbian couples and two male. In the above photo you can see the Tel Aviv mayor giving an introduction, and Ivri Lider (♥) ready to play a song as the couples climb the stage, and Gal Uchovsky (writer/producer of Walk on Water, The Bubble, etc) preparing to perform the ceremonies. I didn't understand what exactly was the legal meaning of the ceremony; it seemed to me that it meant more, legally, than just a ceremony, and they got some kind of certificates afterwards, I'm just not sure what. Gay marriage isn't legal in Israel in the same way that any civil marriage isn't legal -- if you're Jewish, you have to have an Orthodox Jewish wedding, or get married abroad and then come back and it'll be acknowledged (if I'm getting the details wrong, someone please let me know). Anyway, I'm not trying to take away from the significance of the beach weddings; I'm just curious about their further, legal, implications, if any.
In any case, what I SHOULD have said, really, was that it was lovely, and sweet, and the crowd cheered like hell. Here's the huppah, back-lit by the slowly setting sun:
...and then the sun really began to set, and you know me and sunsets, so forgive me my indulgence:
(Look at the last one! There's a seeeeeaaaaagulllll!)
Oh, wait, HOW COULD I FORGET:
Okay, done now. Almost! I promised a kitten. After the sun had set (and the party was over), we left for dinner at a place that specializes in breakfasts, served 24/7. Eggs florentine, champagne, and coffee -- a delightful ending to a fun and tiring day. And by then, all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep like this cat was at the neighboring table to us:
...and, it being 6AM, this is what I am going to do right now. (And Seriously, if you've read 50% of the text in this entry -- douze points to thee, and tahnk you.)
***Explanation of the blahdi-blah subject line pun: kodesh = holiness (aka Jerusalem), chol = secular (aka Tel Aviv). Chol also = sand (aka the thing I'm pretty sure has not entirely washed off of my skin, but here's to hoping).
comments on Dreamwidth.
--would end with this:
...but life takes you places.
Picspam and stories under cut; I wrote a lot down from the Jerusalem tour to help me remember it later.
The idea of my extended family going on some kind of tour together has been brewing for a while now -- we only see each other on birthdays and holidays, which okay, is kind of a lot, but it's never just to hang out -- so my mom took initiative and organized a tour in the Old City. No traffic on Friday morning, so the drive took exactly half an hour. The weather was sunny and not too hot, and the Old City looked beautiful.
I didn't actually take too many photos; mostly because last year I went to the Old City and took like, oh, 80,000 photos, so I pretty much have enough for life. And then I came back and made a picspam post of that trip, plus there's a photo gallery, so I figured I'd spare you all this time. It looks the same.
The great thing about this tour was that it took me to places I'd never been before. The Old City is a walled-in square kilometer of endless possibilities, but when I'm there I'm usually accompanying tourists, and we go to the same Don't Miss spots. Which I love, but this time, there was a guide, and some surprises.
1. The Greek Catholic Patriarchate. It's a church built below a hotel -- or maybe a hotel built over a church -- and it was quiet, uncrowded, out of the way, with absolutely gorgeous artwork.
Every single wall and column was covered in colorful frescoes and icons. Gorgeous.
2. Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I've been there a bunch of times, but this was my first time there with a guide, and I finally got to understand where everything happened: where is Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, where his body was prepared for burial, where the tomb itself is, et cetera et cetera. The structure itself is one of the most complex churches I've ever been in, chapels and inner churches and dozens of different caverns and staircases flowing into one another on more than one geographic level, the deepest part of the church underground and carved in stone, and no symmetry in the architecture at all. It's beautiful and exciting and fun to explore, and even better when I actually know the facts of what happened where. Obviously.
Two cool things in the church I'd never heard of before: (a) behind the Sepulcture itself is a small, mostly empty (of people) chapel. A low opening in one of the stone walls leads to a tiny complex of chambers hewn in rock -- a Jewish burial tomb, according to our guide, dating back to the Second Temple days (ie +- 2000 years ago). The complex was only discovered recently (in the 19th century), perhaps reinforcing the idea that the location of Christ's hypothesized tomb wasn't entirely accidental.
(b) The Ladder. Today, control over the Church of the Holy Sepulcture is split between the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syrian churches. The status quo regarding who controls what in the church was established in the 18th-19th centuries, and it is incredibly, incredibly delicate -- any violation can lead to violent clashes, and I do mean ANY violation. It is simultaneously tragic and hilarious that examples of this include the fight that broke out over who was responsible for the first, wider step on the front stairway -- the fight over which church would have the privilege of sweeping it went all the way up to the Pope -- or the one that broke out when a Coptic monk moved his chair to the shade, clearly a hostile invasion of Ethiopian territory, and I am not even joking, even though it sounds like it's straight from the Discworld.
Best of all, there's The Ladder: balanced on one of the windowsills over the main entrance ot the church is a COMPLETELY RANDOM LADDER. There are all sorts of legends/explanations for why it was placed there, but bottom line is, it was placed there and cannot be moved because of the status quo. This ladder has been leaning on that ledge for OVER 150 YEARS. There are photos. It is still there. I would love to have thought of this as plot for a fic, but I couldn't make something like this up if I tried.
3. The Ethiopian Church. I'd always thought the church was this small little cavern by the Holy Sepulcture, and never given it much notice. Turns out that was only the exit. The church itself isn't very big, but behind its entrance (from the Christian marketplace) is this gorgeous little complex owned by the Coptic church, just this kind of flat rooftop plaza with a couple of buildings around it and a couple of domes jutting up from the floor, because it's a roof.
The really interesting thing was to hear the shared origins of -- well, Jews and Ethiopians, according to legend, which I'd never heard before. The Bible tells the story of the Queen of Sheba hearing of Solomon's wisdom and journeying to Jerusalem to test him with riddles and exchange with him gifts. The Ethiopian version of the story is much spicier -- literally, even. The Kebra Negast says that Solomon threw a banquet in her honor and served spicy food, to induce her thirst. They ate and drank until night time, and by then it was too dark for her to return to the palace he'd given her (which is btw the location of the rooftop plaza I'm talking about), so he invited her to spend the night over, because obviously the only spare bed in Solomon's entire palace was the other one in his room. She asks him not to take her by force, and in return he asks her not to take anything of his by force. And the Queen says, sure, and then she wakes up in the middle of the night, and wants to take a drink of water from the jug that he's oh-so-conveniently set between their beds, except apparently Solomon considers the water, being so valuable, as his possession, meaning she broke her oath. And then he takes her to bed, and when she returns to Sheba she's pregnant with his child, and all the line of Kings of Ethiopia are his descendants.
Okay, so it might read like a combination PWP/telenovella/horrifying-rape-story, but at least it shows that Solomon had character, and maybe he wasn't as lame as [my favorite interpretations of] the Bible makes him out to be. And also it's a really cool story to know.
Okay, so if you're not tired about hearing Old City crap yet I AM MAJORLY IMPRESSED WITH YOU, but in any case I should wrap the subject up.
We went up on a rooftop to see the view:
...it was really more impressive than that, both in domes and churches and really rundown roofs. Then we had a hummus lunch (= hummus-pita-salad-fries-falafel) at Abu Shukri's (it's famous! we have famous hummusias here, which is like pizzerias but with hummus), and then saw the view from the Austrian Hospice, where I took the photo from the top of this post and remembered sharing an apple strudel there with
bironic,
kass and
lomedet last summer. And then the Via Doloroza up through the marketplace, and back to the car. I usually stop by the Kotel in the Jewish Quarter when I'm in the Old City to leave a note in the wall, but my family was ready to go home; the only one who stayed was my cousin, who wanted to show his 5-year-old son the Kotel for the first time. They are sweet.
OKAY, done with Jerusalem! on to Tel Aviv, which is less words, more pics, yay.
We arrived home around 4PM, and half an hour later I left for Tel Aviv, where I joined
marina and miarr at the post-Tel Aviv Pride Parade beach party, at Gordon Beach. The photo at the top of the post was the first thing I saw: hundreds of people, and music, and flags, and sand and sea. YAY. Also, yay for both of the girls being too wiped out from their day to drag me to do something ridiculous like dancing or whatever, thank god -- we just sat on some beach chairs and talked.
I just want to say that I really loved the random white-horse-riding security. Like, yesterday night
marina calls me at like 1AM and tells me, "I just want you to know that the last thing I expected to see strolling down a Tel Aviv street at 1AM -- or at all, really -- is a horse. And yet, here is it." I guess the whole city was preparing for the cavalry's arrival.
Giant Xena! \o/
The Dan hotel, which actually always looks like this; I just love how it looks dressed up for the occasion.
At about 18:30, as the sun was beginning to set, five weddings took place on the main stage, which was designed as a chuppah, three lesbian couples and two male. In the above photo you can see the Tel Aviv mayor giving an introduction, and Ivri Lider (♥) ready to play a song as the couples climb the stage, and Gal Uchovsky (writer/producer of Walk on Water, The Bubble, etc) preparing to perform the ceremonies. I didn't understand what exactly was the legal meaning of the ceremony; it seemed to me that it meant more, legally, than just a ceremony, and they got some kind of certificates afterwards, I'm just not sure what. Gay marriage isn't legal in Israel in the same way that any civil marriage isn't legal -- if you're Jewish, you have to have an Orthodox Jewish wedding, or get married abroad and then come back and it'll be acknowledged (if I'm getting the details wrong, someone please let me know). Anyway, I'm not trying to take away from the significance of the beach weddings; I'm just curious about their further, legal, implications, if any.
In any case, what I SHOULD have said, really, was that it was lovely, and sweet, and the crowd cheered like hell. Here's the huppah, back-lit by the slowly setting sun:
...and then the sun really began to set, and you know me and sunsets, so forgive me my indulgence:
(Look at the last one! There's a seeeeeaaaaagulllll!)
Oh, wait, HOW COULD I FORGET:
Okay, done now. Almost! I promised a kitten. After the sun had set (and the party was over), we left for dinner at a place that specializes in breakfasts, served 24/7. Eggs florentine, champagne, and coffee -- a delightful ending to a fun and tiring day. And by then, all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep like this cat was at the neighboring table to us:
...and, it being 6AM, this is what I am going to do right now. (And Seriously, if you've read 50% of the text in this entry -- douze points to thee, and tahnk you.)
***Explanation of the blahdi-blah subject line pun: kodesh = holiness (aka Jerusalem), chol = secular (aka Tel Aviv). Chol also = sand (aka the thing I'm pretty sure has not entirely washed off of my skin, but here's to hoping).
comments on Dreamwidth.