Another Weekend in Israel

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post! The days seem to go buy so fast!

On Friday, we ended the week with communion, and recited Hebrew blessings as we did so. My roommate and I took it easy Friday night, on the grounds that we had worked hard all week. So, no studying on Friday night!

Yesterday, we went to the Narkis Street Congregation in Jerusalem. It was fun to participate in a Bible study there. I've never been to a Bible study where people were quoting or referring to Hebrew, Greek, modern commentators, and ancient rabbinical commentators like Rashi. I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore! You can check out the website for the church here.

From there, we went into the Old City. (As an aside, I've been pretty good about exercising regularly since I've been here. Yesterday was a day off, so I "only" walked about 5 miles throughout the day!) We went to the Western Wall, a portion of the wall of the Temple dating back to the time of Christ. Since it was Shabbat, we couldn't take pictures there, but we were able to go pray at the wall and watch the Talmud scholars and others come and go.

After that we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a church built over the traditional sites of Jesus' crucifixion and burial (and, therefore, the resurrection). As a Westerner, it was hard for me to fully appreciate the site (I thought this the last time I was there as well), since it is covered over with a church. Though the site was once outside the city walls, it is now in the midst of the city and the hill is contained within the church building. On top of that, the church itself is very elaborate in its decoration, which is fitting to commemorate the significant events that took place there, but it is hard to me to fully appreciate.

Today was spent studying. We are working on Ruth 2 and Numbers 25 tomorrow, so I read through those and made sure I understood what was going on with the Hebrew in them. We are also memorizing the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) in Hebrew, so I worked on that as well. Here is a recording of it being recited (not by me!). I'm looking forward to diving in to another week, and continuing to make progress!