Perhaps a year ago I'd found "Aish Hatora" online which is a school for Jews towering over the Kotel Plaza (Western Wall of the Temple Mount). I found its history quite intriguing and discovered in the process that it had arguably the best closeup views of the Western Wall and Temple Mount area there are. So, I hit the pavement at 9 o'clock, arrived about 9:30, and spent a total of 70 minutes on the roof, exploring the building, briefly attending one of their classes (encouraged by the front desk guy), and then asking him a few questions about various things as well. I'll tell you about that in a moment but here are two pictures (out of the 70 I shot) to give you an idea of the view:
The face of Aish HaTorah this day was one of the most talented "P. R." guys I think I've ever met. This is a compliment, not a criticism in any way. He reminded me a great deal of Saul Rubinek whom you may remember played the part of "Donny Douglas" on the sitcom "Frasier" (Nyles Crane's rival for Daphne's hand in marriage). Anyway, this most personable man was well chosen to represent Jewry to a Gentile like myself. I was treated like a visiting head of state, even watching a movie played for me (alone) in a fairly large theater they have on site.
But to the point, here was a man who could authoritatively answer my favorite two questions for those claiming to be Jews: 1) How do you define "Jew"?, and 2) What tribe are you from? His answers were quite succinct: 1) "Jews are Jews based on their mother's genealogy, not their father's lineage" and 2) "There's no way to know since we don't have the genealogies any more".
So, on behalf of all Bible students who know that a Jew must be a direct descendant from Abraham, I asked him the obviously third question, "Well, how do you know your mother is a Jew at all if there aren't any genealogical records?" To which he responded exactly like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof as played by Topol: "Tradition". He added two things to this that I found fascinating. He said, 1) "If enough people say you are a Jew then we just accept them as one" and then he said something I'd never heard before which seems to me awfully revealing: "One of the things the Messiah will do when He comes is point out who really is a Jew as opposed to those who only think they are". Now my brethren and friends, that is just a simple admission that his claiming to be a Jew has nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible, isn't it? For all he (or any other "Jew") can tell, there's no reason to believe there is a single Jew (by Biblical definition or any other) on earth today. Yet, upon the quicksand of this hearsay and entirely unproveable tradition are based all the hopes of "Jews" today!
Aish HaTorah also has an excellent model of Herod's Temple on that same roof.
I took 20 photos of this model, one of which follows:
I left Aish HaTorah boisterously singing in my heart, "Tradition! TRADITION!"
I passed the heat of the day (11 am to 4 pm) at the Hospice working on blog and "office stuff".
Then, at 4 o'clock, I set out for the Jaffa (or Joppa) Gate and the Northern Ramparts Walk. This starts with the western wall of the Old City (north of the Jaffa Gate), turns east along the northern wall itself, and then normally turns south again and gives you terrific views of the eastern Old City wall, the "Golden" Gate, Kidron Valley, and Mount of Olives. I'd seen all of this in 2011, but, perhaps due to Ramadan, this route was considerably shorter today, blocked by an iron gate on the rampart located close to the city's "Herod's Gate" and thus prohibiting any view of the Kidron and Olivet at all. This was quite disappointing.
However, 300,000 Muslims worked their way into the city for Ramadan's evening activities so here's what the Damascus Gate plaza (and bridge to the Gate itself) looked like at 5:24 pm on this day. Similar crowds fill the main streets at various times throughout the day, making all travel grueling.
The evening of this day was again devoted to "office work" in my room at the Hospice, which is the rightmost set of double arches in the following photo:
Total walking distance for the day: 3.7 miles
Go with God and God will be good
Larry H
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