Day 33: Saturday, May 24, Jerusalem

Since today was Shabbat, we were on our own. Most of the group went to the Shrine of the Book on the recommendation of a guy who had been to Israel before. The Shrine of the Book is part of a larger museum whose name escapes me. The Shrine houses a display of ancient Biblical texts, the crown jewels being texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The exhibit is housed in a semi-submerged building whose exposed top looks like the end cap of a scroll tube -- sort of like the onion domes of Russia. The architecture doubles as a natural cooling system for the temperature-controlled rooms below, which is very cool. It also had an exhibit on the life of the Essenes, the sect that made the Dead Sea Scroll copies.

The rest of the museum complex included an art museum, but not your typical art museum. It was entirely filled with art confiscated from Jews during WWII and included some notable artists (a Sisley, for example).

It also included a scale model of Jerusalem from approximately the time of Christ. A lot of it is guesswork, of course, but it provided a good “zoomed out” view so that I could start relating the places we had visited geographically. The place was swarming with tour groups from a Kay Arthur tour (a Christian writer who does an Israel tour). They had something like 600 people on the tour, divided into “sub-tours” of manageable size, so that they were all together for a little bit and then broke up to do things at different times before meeting back together in the evening. I’m glad I wasn’t on a group like that, though I assume the teaching was really good.

That evening I heard a steady commotion out of my hotel window, though I couldn’t see anything. I went out to walk around and have a look about 10:30pm. I walked out to a world that was as alive as it had been dead the previous night. A mostly young crowd was sitting at cafes, walking up and down the street with ice cream, going to clubs, and just generally having a good time and enjoying the nice evening. I had wandered out in a t-shirt, shorts, sandals, and a jacket against the evening chill, and I was quite underdressed. I guess I was in a hip hangout without knowing it until then. There were several buses on the street, and judging by the amount of English I heard I’m sure that some of the Birthright tours had dropped their passengers there for an evening of fun. Since the Jewish day starts at sundown, Shabbat is over (and the party begins) once the sun goes down on Saturday.