Shabbat Shalom

One thing learned I learned in the past 24 hours. Jews know how to party. Last night was special because we were allowed to stay in the city after dark. On Fridays one of the biggest clashes of religions, in I think the entire world, occurs in the Old City. Muslims gather on Friday afternoon for their holy day at the Dome of the Rock to pray and hear from their religious leader. As they are finishing up and leaving the Dome of the Rock, the Jews are coming to the Western/Wailing Wall to welcome in Shabbat. Because of these religious clashes we have are only allowed into the city after 3 o'clock and have to be home by sundown on Fridays. Yesterday however we went as a group to watch the Jewish people welcome in Shabbat. Just on Thursday I had gone to the utra-orthodox neighborhood and seen the solemness of the Jewish lifestyle. Last week I had been to the Western Wall and all I had seen was a lot of people praying and reading prayer books. So naturally I assumed that the welcoming in of Shabbat would be a very quiet and reverent thing. WRONG. 


The group of girls I was with and I got into the square right next to the Western Wall about an hour early and at first we were correct. People had slowly started to gather and were praying. I even went down and put a prayer into the wall!! (one thing on the bucket list checked off!) But all of the sudden we could here this great noise and saw this mass of people coming down these stairs towards the square. This crowd of soldiers, orthodox jews, regular people, and everyone you could think of in between was singing out Shabbat Shalom! The crowd finally came into the square and stopped to form a circle and started clapping and singing songs in Hebrew. After a while the group moved down in front of the wall. Men and women are separated in front of the wall, but I could stand up above the men's side and see what was going on. It looked like a giant party! Everyone was clapping and singing and jumping up and down. The best part was watching the boys from our center join in and pretend they knew what they were singing. Whoever said that orthodox jews aren't friendly have never been to the Western Wall on Shabbat! They welcomed everyone into their circles. The women's side was a little more subdued but they tried their hardest to sing as well. The energy in the area was electrifying and infectionious. Our buses came around 6 to take us back to the center, but I could have stayed all night just people watching!
That night in the center we used all of our energy from being in the old city to play a massive game of sardines in the center and finishing off with watching Prince of Egypt in the forum to get us excited for going to Egypt this week.


Today was another amazing Sabbath Saturday (it feels so weird to say that!) I enjoyed sacrament meeting but am not sure how much I got out of it because the view is distracting. After church we went as a group down to the Garden Tomb. The Garden Tomb is the competing site for where Christ's tomb is and Galgotha. I enjoyed this site much more than Church of the Holy Seplacur. The church reminds me of all the churches we saw in Italy. It is very ornate and feels very dark. I almost forget the church is supposed to be a remembrance of Christ. The Garden just seemed to radiate that it was special place. When you first walk in you are surrounded by greenery and birds are chirping. It is much more like the place I've always imagined that Christ would be resurrected; a peaceful garden with the sun shining. We started by taking a tour of the Garden. The guide showed us the cliff face where they that Christ was crucified on top of and then showed us the tomb. The tomb is much, much smaller than I every expected. All the pictures I've ever seen of the resurrection always show a giant stone over an entrance to a cave-like place. The tomb however was small and you had to duck to enter in the doorway. After the tour our group sat together and sang some hymns. The spirit in the Garden was amazing. I don't really care if that was a true site or not; what matters is the miracle of Christ being resurrected and what that means for mankind. After some reflection time we headed back to the center for dinner. Even as I sit here now I'm still on a spiritual high from the Garden. I  feel so lucky to be able to visit this place, and can't help but think how quickly the next 13 Shabbats will go by. I better just enjoy every single one, because I don't church anywhere else can live up to church in the Holy Land.