This morning we headed to the City of David established over 3000 years ago when King David of Israel conquered Jerusalem and made it his headquarters. The city was a strategic choice because of its Gihon Spring (which still provides water to this day) and the location’s naturally strong position of defence. It was also central to the tribes of Israel – an ideal spot for unification. The City of David lies just outside the southern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem. King David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem cementing it as a spiritual centre.
To thwart the Assyrian invaders of water, Hezekiah – King of Judah some time after David – diverted the water from the Gihon Spring through a tunnel to the Shiloah Pool between the city’s southern walls. Zaev led us through one such tunnel between the walls and ending at the newly uncovered Shiloah Pool. It was an amazing feat of engineering – with two groups of tunnellers working towards each other and ultimately meeting in the middle.
On our walk back up to the Old City we learned of the carob tree, the role of its seed in defining the carat as a measure of weight for rare gems and gold. We learned about the olive tree and its fruit and how to determine the quality of olive oil (check that the acidity levels are low – 0.2 – 0.5 is good).
The Western Wall (often called Wailing Wall) is divided into two sections to separate the genders. People go there to pray and shove little bits of paper with their wishes into the wall’s cracks. Then they back away from the wall slowly, usually praying the whole time.
After another very filling lunch we headed to The Israel Museum where we spent quite a bit of time absorbing information about the city of Jerusalem as Zaev led us around a giant model of the city. The grounds of the museum contain a Rodin sculpture as well as an Ai Weiwei installation.
From here we travelled to the Holocaust Museum. Before entering the museum of horrors we visited the Children’s Memorial. 1.5 million children were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The memorial is a testament to ‘lest we forget’. So is the rest of the museum – designed by the architect Moshe Safdie. It is a concrete structure made up of triangular sections that seem to cut through the landscape. It is incredible what we humans do to each other.
I chose to skip the light show tonight because I was tired and I wanted to write this up before I forgot the details. Jan went so I will get her to fill me in tomorrow on the road to Jordan.