Good morning! My brother just sent me pictures of what they did last Saturday in Israel. Wow, it was a big day!
They started at Masada. You’ve probably heard about it as the place where some Jewish people stayed for years until the Roman soldiers found a way to get to the top of the mountain. I did not know that, before that, it was one of King Herod’s palaces. We talked about him earlier. He was a good architect but not a very nice king!
Some of my brother’s group actually climbed all the way to the top. I thought: well, they’re smarter than the Roman soldiers, but I guess it helped that they didn’t have people on top throwing things at them!
My brother and some other of his friends took the cable car. It’s quite a view! You can even see the Dead Sea in the distance.
In its heyday, the top of the mountain was quite a place. King Herod spared no expense. Here is what is called a Columbarium. My brother always thought that that was a place where they buried people, but it actually gets its name from the Latin word for “dove”, and this is where they kept all the doves, in little niches. I think they did more than just eat them.
This sure is a dry place! I would probably get really hot with my fur coat! This side looks down on where the Roman soldiers began making a huge ramp to get up to the top and use a battering ram. I’ve heard of a greased pig, so that may be something similar, with batter instead of oil. Anyway, the ram did the trick and, sadly, the Romans were able to bust through.
Now, you may wonder how the Jewish people got water to the top of the mountain. I know I sure did! Ran, the guide, with the help of Ben, showed how the aqueducts channeled water during the rainy season, which only lasted a couple of weeks. Very clever!
Oh, and a shout-out to the donkeys, who helped get the water the rest of the way up! Then, once it was on top, the Masada brethren built a huge cistern, which could last them for two or three years. That’s a lot of water! Here’s the group inside the cistern.
Brethren and cistern. Too funny!
King Herod had built several terraces on the side of the mountain. My brother’s group decided to not try to climb down to them.
The Masada folks had so much water that they even built a spa. They had a steam room and a cold plunge. I know that that’s my brother’s favorite part of working out!
After the group came back down the mountain, they went to En Gedi, which is a nice spring and waterfall. This is where David found King Saul asleep in a cave. David also stayed in some of the caves, himself. I think he also wrote a few songs about the place. It sure looks refreshing!
After lunch, the group went to Qumran. It’s a place of more caves, and some water, too. A few years ago, a shepherd boy was tending his flock. One of the sheep went into a cave and the shepherd threw a rock to try to get it to come out. When he did, he heard the sound of breaking pottery. When he went inside, he found a big pot that contained some scrolls – those are the things we talked about earlier that people used to read before they had telephones or books.
As it ends up, there were hundreds of scrolls stored in the caves, and they went back hundreds of years. It really helped people understand that the Bible writers knew what they were talking about!
Those steps above lead down to some Mikvas. I think we talked about them yesterday. A group of monks that wrote the scrolls used to take the name of God so seriously that they used to take a bath before they wrote the name of God on a scroll. If you’ve read the Bible, you know that could be a lot of baths!
Here’s a picture of the Qumran caves.
The next stop was the Dead Sea. It is the lowest place on earth! My brother said the air was really hot! The Dead Sea is between 6 and 10 times saltier than the ocean, and that means that people can float on it without even trying. In fact, my brother said that he had to try hard to keep his feet underwater!
My brother really likes that song “Friends in Low Places”. Well, I guess this is the right place!
Our friend Jim tells a story about the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Both of them are fed by the Jordan River. The Sea of Galilee takes water in from the Jordan River and then the River leaves it on the other side. The Sea of Galilee is very pretty, as we saw in some pictures earlier in the trip, and a lot of fish like to live there, too. But the Dead Sea is kind of selfish. It takes in the water of the River Jordan but then doesn’t let any of it go. The sun has to work overtime evaporating the water, which makes the remaining water saltier and saltier, until nothing can live there. In fact, my brother didn’t take his phone down to the Dead Sea because the water could corrode it. So, here’s a little movie, shot from a distance.
I think I’m going to try to be more like the Sea of Galilee!
Love, Winston