Seven Years in Israel
Back in the days when people corresponded by letter, I was writing to a friend in Canada "It's crazy here in Israel! You should come. You would fit right in."
My friend didn't come but I still think he would have fit right in. He was half Jewish, better than me, a mere one-eighth Jewish, possibly. Actually, my friend may have been more Jewish if his mother had been Jewish rather than his father. Israel's Law of Return stipulates that a Jew is someone with a Jewish mother. Some branches of Judaism, however, consider the paternal line more important. And criteria are still changing. Wonder what it is now with surrogate possibilities.
Anyway, my friend would have fit right in because he was sort of an oddball, but in a good way. Although he was manly-looking, I remember him crying when a dog that was with him, and it wasn't even his own dog, got hit by a car and killed.
Living for years in Israel, with trips outside the country every once in a while to renew my tourist visa, was remarkably long for someone unable to get even temporary residency. If I had special skills it may have helped. An immigration officer at the Department of the Interior in Jerusalem told me that Israel, like Canada, was not obligated to allow just anyone to immigrate.
Seven years in Israel is without counting the week that I spent in the West Bank and the Old City prior to the war of 1967, as those areas were then a Jordanian protectorate. I was travelling with three Aussies. We had just ascended from the Dead Sea to Jerusalem and were checking out the recommended stop for travellers. Although I didn't look like a proper traveller––I was carrying a black suitcase instead of a backpack––I considered myself a traveller, not a tourist.
The popular stop for travellers at that time was Uncle Moustache's restaurant a ways inside Herod's Gate in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. After a good meal, we asked Uncle Moustache if he knew of a place where we might stay. He directed us to a nearby room which either he or his relative owned. And that's where we stayed.
If I hadn't been with the Aussies, I might have stayed at the Lutheran Hostel on the other side of the city in the Christian Quarter. I was expecting to retrieve my mail there. Months before, when I was in the Far East, family wanted to know where they could write to me. I guessed that I might be in Jerusalem in a couple of months and chose the Lutheran Hostel as my postal address. However, being young and inconsiderate, I didn't write to the Lutheran Hostel telling them that I was choosing that address. When I finally made it to the hostel, many months later, they told me that, as they didn't know who James Southern was, they had returned the letters to the senders.
On my way back to the Muslim Quarter, I skirted the Jewish Quarter, desecrated after the Jews there were defeated in 1948. I had hoped to visit the famous Wailing Wall but some Jordanian soldiers wouldn't allow me to go that direction.
The Aussies with whom I was travelling were planning on going to Israel. I would have liked to go with them but didn't want to get an Israeli stamp in my passport as I then couldn't have gone into another Arab country. So it would be a decade and a half later that I finally got to Israel.
Going to Israel would be the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I was that much older, but still single, and for me there was an attraction to living in community such as on a kibbutz (a communal farm). Thus, in 1979, I set off eastward heading for Israel. On my way I ran out of money so worked in Crete to earn enough to catch a boat to Alexandria in Egypt. Now, when I'm asked how I found Israel, I say, "Went to Egypt and turned left."
It was 1980 when I crossed the Suez Canal and bussed up to the Israeli border. The country that I had wanted to enter so many years earlier was now in sight. Passing through Egyptian and Israeli customs and immigration, however, took another couple of hours. Travellers sometimes traded books with one another so as to read while waiting, but I didn't have a book to trade. I had saved enough Egyptian pounds, however, to pay the exit fee for the privilege of leaving Egypt. Finally the ordeal was over and I was in Israel hitchhiking north with USD $5 to my name.
My first ride was with an Israeli farmer in his truck. He could speak English quite well. The only part of our conversation that I remember was him complaining about high taxes. I marvelled at the difference between the Sinai side and the Israeli side of the border. One was desert; the other was green. Fields on the Israeli side were irrigated with water brought by pipelines and conduits from northern and central Israel.
I was heading toward Haifa. The only address in Israel that I had, and immigration officials like a person to have an address, was that of a Christian guest house on Mt. Carmel, near Haifa. I planned to check that out first to see if they happened to need a volunteer. Associating with Christians might be good for me.
It took only a few rides and a few hours to get to Haifa, but then I couldn't find the guest house. As night fell, I was still on a country road at the base of Mount Carmel.
Beside the road was an orchard so I made my way there to spend the night. It was a grapefruit orchard and the trees were loaded with ripe grapefruit. Also, on the ground beneath the trees were grapefruit that had fallen off the trees. Many of those fallen grapefruit were good––I ate some of them. Because they were so ripe, they were almost sweet. If I’d known, I could have picked grapefruit from the trees. Israeli law allows a person to pick and eat fruit so long as he doesn’t carry it out of the orchard. There was a problem, however, with me eating so many grapefruit. When hitchhiking the next day, it was inconvenient having the runs.
I finally found the Christian guest house but they didn’t happen to need a volunteer. I hadn’t contacted them ahead of time to make enquiries. They told me of a kibbutz down the road that might accept me as a volunteer, so I walked down the road. It was a nice warm day and Mt. Carmel is a beautiful part of Israel.
I was walking through a park referred to as "Little Switzerland" as I was soon to learn. Off to my left was a fortress guarded by soldiers. It was a military prison. Three decades later, long after I left Israel, a forest fire devastated that whole area of Mt. Carmel. A bus carrying cadets en route to evacuate prisoners from the prison was engulfed by flames, taking 44 lives.
The kibbutz to which I had been directed was Beit Oren (Home of the Pine). The buildings were scattered amidst large pine trees. I asked someone about volunteering and was told to see Shlomo in one of the buildings. I practised saying “Shlomo” all the way to the building. Hebrew names were strange and thus difficult for me to remember.
On finding Shlomo, he told me that, ordinarily, hiring of volunteers was done through the kibbutz organization’s office in Tel Aviv. But I could stay. Later I found out that the kibbutz office didn’t accept volunteers over thirty-six years of age, and I was over thirty-six.
Volunteers get room, board, and pocket money. I was given a room and instructed when to come for meals in the dining hall and where to take my laundry to get it washed and how I might buy, with vouchers that I had been given, extras in the tuck shop.
For my first day of work, I was assigned to help an Arab stonemason. Some Arabs were employed by the kibbutz as well as some Druze. Druze are an Arabic-speaking religious group who consider Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, to be a chief prophet. That first day, our job was to pour a slab over the grave of a kibbutznik (a resident of a kibbutz) who had died and was buried in the kibbutz cemetery on the side of a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. It was a picturesque spot and an easy job, though it was not so easy communicating with my boss as he spoke little English and I spoke neither Arabic nor Hebrew. Over the next half year we worked a lot together. I learned a little Hebrew and a couple of words of Arabic and he improved his English.
Kibbutzim (the plural of kibbutz) usually have some source of income besides agricultural products. At Beit Oren there was, and still is, a guest house (www.hotel-beitoren.co.il). I helped build a cinderblock wall underneath the hotel.
Another job was catching chickens at night and stuffing them in cages to be trucked to a nearby kibbutz. In our dining room we often ate chicken. I asked if the chicken we ate was the chicken we raised. Possibly, I was told, but it was easier to ship all the chickens to the nearby kibbutz to be slaughtered and then buy back what we needed.
Our kibbutz also fattened feeder cattle. Where chickens are raised, feeder cattle are often also raised. Why? They feed the cattle straw laced with good, nourishing chicken manure.
I also worked in the banana plantation at the base of Mt. Carmel near the Mediterranean. We would get up at 4 in the morning and, sitting on benches in the back of the kibbutz truck, ride down to the field, reaching it at daybreak. Then we would work a couple of hours until breakfast which had been brought down in the truck. The first day that I worked there, my job was to slice off the suckers growing from the base of the banana plant, and pour neft on the cut to stop the suckers from regrowing. Neft smelled like kerosene. I was later to learn that neft is kerosene.
After breakfast we worked until it was time to drive back to Beit Oren for lunch. We ate a hearty lunch and then had the rest of the afternoon off. That might seem a lot of time off but we did work six days a week, Sunday to Friday.
Beit Oren was founded in 1921 by young socialists from Europe. On the way to the swimming pool, there was a monument to workers. A Marxist slogan, written in Hebrew, read “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That sounds good but is it fair if a doctor has the same standard of living as a garbage collector? (Not that garbage collecting is a lowly occupation.)
The kibbutz had children’s houses where the children lived, grouped according to age. When kibbutzim were first founded, that was a convenient arrangement. Nannies or teachers could look after the children while their mothers were working. Mothers and fathers would need only a room or two in the dorm. Kitchens were unnecessary, other than the main kitchen in the dining hall.
The children had excellent outside playgrounds. I remember passing by and overhearing a conversation between two perhaps four-year-olds. I could understand what they were saying and this was after only a couple of months of learning Hebrew! One child asked, “Lama?” (Why?) The other responded, “Kaha.” (That's the way it is.)
Some people think it terrible that children were separated from their parents, but the children weren’t separated that much. Parents could be working nearby and stop in to see their preschoolers. In the afternoons and evenings, parents could spend a lot of time with their children. A kibbutznik told me that she was thankful for the opportunity to have grown up in children’s houses. She had learned to socialize.
The children had a children's farm with animals that they could play with and care for. I remember an incident that may not be directly connected to the children's farm. It involved a kibbutznik who had grown up in the children's houses and had no doubt been involved with the children's farm. He may have been in his early twenties at the time.
I came into the dining hall to find a bit of a commotion. There was a raven flying around inside. People were trying to shoo it out a door but it wouldn't go. Then the young kibbutnik whom I mentioned came into the hall. He called and the raven flew down onto his shoulder. Then he walked out the door with it.
The dining hall was large enough for everyone living on the kibbutz to sit down for a meal. Ordinarily food was cooked in the kitchen and some taken to the children's houses where the children ate. But for the Shabbat (Sabbath) supper, all of us ate together. Us volunteers sat with different families.
During the work week, others employed by the kibbutz also ate in the dining hall. I remember an incident involving one of these others who had evidently taken the good life too much for granted. At the breakfast table, he was so involved talking that he wasn't eating. Then he dumped his omelet, untouched, in the food scraps container in the middle of the table. He got up and got another omelet! When he returned to the table he noticed my surprised look and explained that the omelet that he had dumped was cold.
Actually dumping the omelet may not have been a complete waste as food scraps were probably given to the pigs. Yes, from one of the barns we could occasionally hear squeals. Beit Oren was a secular kibbutz.
On Shabbat and holidays, us volunteers were asked to help wash the lunch dishes. Even with an industrial dishwasher it was a tedious task. It wasn't so much a matter of getting a goy (non-Jew) to do work that was forbidden for Jews to do on Shabbat. It was just felt that the volunteers should also take their turn.
At Beit Oren, the young kibbutzniks (the Anglicized plural of kibbutznik) had considerable influence in kibbutz policies. Not long after I began volunteering at Beit Oren, twenty-three young Danish volunteers arrived, twenty-one young ladies and two young men. There was partying almost every night. Beer and cigarettes were subsidized. Some non-smokers started smoking just to take advantage of the low prices. I drank a fair amount of Star beer.
Kibbutz truck in the Sinai
Two young kibbutzmen (made-up word) took all of us volunteers on a tour through Israel in the kibbutz truck. One of our first stops was the Golan Heights. When we got out of the truck to look around, one of the volunteers wandered off the beaten path. The kibbutsmen yelled at him to get back on the path. There were landmines throughout the Heights. The cows that had been put out to graze there had not yet stepped on all of the mines. (I didn’t see any three-legged cows.) I couple of years later in Jerusalem I met a young American who had lost a foot from stepping on a landmine on the Golan Heights.
On our way to the Sinai, we visited Deir el Quruntul (the Monastery of the Temptation) near Jericho. The kibbutzmen had advised the ladies to bring long dresses or skirts on our trip as they wouldn’t be allowed to enter the monastery wearing shorts. When we arrived at the monastery, we found that us men also couldn’t enter wearing shorts. So the ladies went in first wearing their skirts or dresses while we waited outside. When they returned, they stripped off their skirts and dresses and lent them to us so that we could enter. I observed the widening eyes of the monk who had guided the ladies out and was waiting to guide us in. (The ladies were wearing bathing suits underneath.)
Another stop was at Masada, a fortress on a hilltop where the last of the Jewish freedom fighters held out against the Romans. There is a cable car to the top but we climbed up, and it's quite a climb! From the walled plateau, looking down on the west side, we could see the giant siege ramp that the Romans built in order to capture the fortress. They used Jewish slave labour to built the siege ramp so those in the fortress didn't want to shoot down on them to stop them. If they had been short of arrows, they might have catapulted stones. But they didn't. I thought that the freedom fighters should have heightened and reinforced the west wall with stones when they saw the siege ramp being built. But it's all too easy now to speculate on how they might have done better.
In the Sinai some of us went snorkeling at Nuweiba on the Gulf of Eilat (otherwise known as the Gulf of Aqaba). The eastern side of the Sinai Peninsular was then still under Israeli control. In the Red Sea, life is colourful and abundant, whereas on land vegetation is sparse and drab. We slept in sleeping bags on the ground. Near the sea, nights are warm, though inland they are cooler.
We didn't doddle on the return trip to the kibbutz.
Being older and more conservative than the other volunteers, I didn’t fit in so well with the party life. There was in fact too much partying and not enough work. Beit Oren would later be the first kibbutz in Israel to go bankrupt. So I decided to move on. Having saved up most of my clothing allowance and having sold most of my tuck shop vouchers to other volunteers, I had enough to catch a bus to Jerusalem and get established there.
In Jerusalem I contacted the Emissaries with whom I had previously associated. Christians would call the Emissaries a cult as they have a mystical interpretation of Scripture. For me, communal living was the attractive part of my association with them.
I moved in with a couple of Israeli Emissaries living in a suburb of Jerusalem, Ein Karem (Spring of the Vineyard). Ein Karem is supposedly where John the Baptist was born. Consequently there are several Christian churches and monasteries there. One church, supposedly built over the spot where John lived, is on the north-east side of the valley. Another church, supposedly built over the spot where John also lived, is on the south-west side of the valley. The supposition is that John’s parents, being somewhat affluent, had both a summer home and a winter home. It is more pleasant living on the south-western side of the valley in summer and on the north-eastern side in winter.
The Israelis in my new home were into holistic living. I remember searching the kitchen for a can opener, only to learn that they didn’t have such a thing. We ate a lot of bread as bread in those days was, and probably still is, subsidized. Subsidies are nice for people like myself living on a shoe-string budget, but I still think they are not a good idea. Some farmers in Israel were feeding bread to their cows.
Decembers can be cool in Jerusalem and my room wasn’t heated. I remember trying to read in bed, but my hand that was holding the book got so cold that I gave up and just snuggled under the covers. The first few nights I slept fitfully, waking up every hour. The church bells chimed every hour night and day. After a week or so, however, I didn’t even hear them.
I worked with the Emissaries in construction, even on Christmas Day! Although Christmas isn’t an Israeli holiday, I had expected that they would make allowances for those of us who were from Christian countries. They in fact did. While we were working, the ladies were preparing a sumptuous dinner––a pork roast. Besides Jews at the supper table, there was even a Muslem man. The Emissaries like to unbind people from their traditions.
On our way to the Sinai, we visited Deir el Quruntul (the Monastery of the Temptation) near Jericho. The kibbutzmen had advised the ladies to bring long dresses or skirts on our trip as they wouldn’t be allowed to enter the monastery wearing shorts. When we arrived at the monastery, we found that us men also couldn’t enter wearing shorts. So the ladies went in first wearing their skirts or dresses while we waited outside. When they returned, they stripped off their skirts and dresses and lent them to us so that we could enter. I observed the widening eyes of the monk who had guided the ladies out and was waiting to guide us in. (The ladies were wearing bathing suits underneath.)
Another stop was at Masada, a fortress on a hilltop where the last of the Jewish freedom fighters held out against the Romans. There is a cable car to the top but we climbed up, and it's quite a climb! From the walled plateau, looking down on the west side, we could see the giant siege ramp that the Romans built in order to capture the fortress. They used Jewish slave labour to built the siege ramp so those in the fortress didn't want to shoot down on them to stop them. If they had been short of arrows, they might have catapulted stones. But they didn't. I thought that the freedom fighters should have heightened and reinforced the west wall with stones when they saw the siege ramp being built. But it's all too easy now to speculate on how they might have done better.
In the Sinai some of us went snorkeling at Nuweiba on the Gulf of Eilat (otherwise known as the Gulf of Aqaba). The eastern side of the Sinai Peninsular was then still under Israeli control. In the Red Sea, life is colourful and abundant, whereas on land vegetation is sparse and drab. We slept in sleeping bags on the ground. Near the sea, nights are warm, though inland they are cooler.
We didn't doddle on the return trip to the kibbutz.
Being older and more conservative than the other volunteers, I didn’t fit in so well with the party life. There was in fact too much partying and not enough work. Beit Oren would later be the first kibbutz in Israel to go bankrupt. So I decided to move on. Having saved up most of my clothing allowance and having sold most of my tuck shop vouchers to other volunteers, I had enough to catch a bus to Jerusalem and get established there.
In Jerusalem I contacted the Emissaries with whom I had previously associated. Christians would call the Emissaries a cult as they have a mystical interpretation of Scripture. For me, communal living was the attractive part of my association with them.
I moved in with a couple of Israeli Emissaries living in a suburb of Jerusalem, Ein Karem (Spring of the Vineyard). Ein Karem is supposedly where John the Baptist was born. Consequently there are several Christian churches and monasteries there. One church, supposedly built over the spot where John lived, is on the north-east side of the valley. Another church, supposedly built over the spot where John also lived, is on the south-west side of the valley. The supposition is that John’s parents, being somewhat affluent, had both a summer home and a winter home. It is more pleasant living on the south-western side of the valley in summer and on the north-eastern side in winter.
The Israelis in my new home were into holistic living. I remember searching the kitchen for a can opener, only to learn that they didn’t have such a thing. We ate a lot of bread as bread in those days was, and probably still is, subsidized. Subsidies are nice for people like myself living on a shoe-string budget, but I still think they are not a good idea. Some farmers in Israel were feeding bread to their cows.
Decembers can be cool in Jerusalem and my room wasn’t heated. I remember trying to read in bed, but my hand that was holding the book got so cold that I gave up and just snuggled under the covers. The first few nights I slept fitfully, waking up every hour. The church bells chimed every hour night and day. After a week or so, however, I didn’t even hear them.
I worked with the Emissaries in construction, even on Christmas Day! Although Christmas isn’t an Israeli holiday, I had expected that they would make allowances for those of us who were from Christian countries. They in fact did. While we were working, the ladies were preparing a sumptuous dinner––a pork roast. Besides Jews at the supper table, there was even a Muslem man. The Emissaries like to unbind people from their traditions.
Snow in another part of Jerusalem
Perhaps I’m too footloose and fancy-free. It was my cold room, however, that prompted me to move on. It snowed that Christmas season. It snowed every winter that I spent in Jerusalem, though sometimes the snow melted as soon as it hit the ground.
I got a volunteer position at the youth hostel in Ein Karem. My room was nice and warm. The other volunteer was an Israeli girl. Our job was to keep the hostel rooms neat and clean and to buy and prepare breakfasts for hostellers.
Breakfasts were always “milk meals.” Thus we cooked breakfast in special pots and pans and served breakfast in blue plastic bowls or on blue plastic plates. Milk meal cutlery had holes drilled in the handles to distinguish them from meat meal cutlery. The meat meal bowls and plates were red. Blue and red and "holey" and "holeless" were kept in different parts of the kitchen.
The hostel was high on the side of a hill with a long flight of steps up to it. We could see people coming from a long way off. If we saw a rabbi coming to inspect our kitchen, we could rush in to check, for example, that we hadn’t inadvertently got some "holey" spoons mixed with the common spoons.
The other volunteer was a vegetarian. She got herself a cute little puppy which she was raising to be like herself, a vegetarian. Besides carrots and suchlike vegetables, it drank milk and ate yogurt and boiled eggs (ingredients of a standard hostel breakfast).
She also found a stray kitten. There are many feral cats around
Jerusalem I remember watching the kitten desperately trying to get into the garbage can in the hostel kitchen. I speculated that it had inherited memory like young migrating geese that can begin migrating before their parents and end up in the same area to the south. Probably, however, the kitten simply smelled meat scraps that had been thrown in the garbage.
The other volunteer went on a fast for some reason, I forget now. That was fine with me except that, for her, abstaining from food also meant abstaining from work. To prove that it was possible to both fast and work, I went on a fast myself. After a couple of days she found out that I was fasting and she resumed eating, saying that it was not sensible for both of us to be fasting at the same time. I continued fasting for almost twenty-one days. My rate of working, however, did slow down.
Fasting is supposed to help with meditating. I did reflect on life. What was I doing in this world? I wasn’t satisfied with my life the way it was going. The problem was me. I needed to change and I needed help. I decided to go back to church.
After resuming eating and regaining strength, I walked into town one Shabbat morning. The reason that I was walking is that buses in Jerusalem don’t run on the Sabbath. I was heading for a charismatic Baptist church that I had heard about, the Narkis Street Church (www.narkis.org). Services were on Saturday as that was a convenient day when many people were off work. The first day of the week, Sunday, was another working day.
At the church I didn’t introduce myself to anyone––just joined in the singing of Christian choruses and listened to the sermon which was in English. The sermon, if I remember correctly, was something about Yeshua (Jesus). I almost didn’t return the next Saturday but I did, and then the next and the next.
1981 was long before the proliferation of cellphones. I had made a verbal arrangement to meet someone at Jaffa Gate in the Old City at a certain time one afternoon. I got there before the time and waited and waited. While waiting, however, I met several people that I knew who were passing in or out the gate. I was beginning to feel at home in Jerusalem. After years there, I felt very much at home. Anyway, after waiting about an hour that afternoon, I gave up and went home. The next day when I met the person for whom I had been waiting, she said that she had been there. But it was about two hours after the agreed-upon time. That's Israeli timing.
While volunteering at the hostel I had been doing odd jobs for people in Ein Karem to earn extra pocket money. An Israeli lady invited me to live in an apartment in her house in exchange for odd jobs around the house. So I moved in. Living there was a comfortable arrangement but probably not good for me spiritually, though I did continue attending the Narkis Street Church.
I remember collecting the Israeli lady’s sweater for her from the dry cleaners. I had to hang it on the clothes line to let it air to reduce the chemical smell. However I forgot it overnight and it got soaked with dew. The sun the next morning dried it. The drying shrunk it. Noting that it was now about the right size to fit her young daughter was the wrong comment for me to have made.
The time came for me to move on. Through a connection with the House of Prayer on Ha-Nevi’im (Prophets Street), I ended up staying with Christians who had leased a large house in Bethphage back of the Mount of Olives. This was my first time actually living on the eastern side of Jerusalem, the Palestinian side. Living there was yet more relaxed than living in Ein Karem.
Palestinian neighbours were friendly and helpful. I picked up on their attitude to some extent. I remember walking through an open field near Bethphage and seeing an Israeli army jeep driving on the road in the distance. I felt like hiding but then realized a feeling such as that was out of place. I was doing nothing wrong. So I didn't change directions as I might have if I had been concerned about them observing me through binoculars.
Not volunteering with an official Israeli organization was making it more and more difficult to get tourist visa extensions. I spent hours in the visa office of the Department of the Interior. Knowing that a visit might take hours, I would take a book along. Sometimes I wouldn’t get much reading done as I would be chatting with other foreigners also waiting.
Reaching the last week of my last visa extension, I prepared to leave Israel. I caught a bus to Eilat and another to Nuweiba on the Gulf of Eilat. Nuweiba itself is drab but underwater, as in other parts of the Red Sea, it is teeming with colourful life. Although I would snorkel on two subsequent visits to Nuweiba, I didn’t go snorkeling that time as suchlike activities are inconvenient when travelling alone. The difficulty is in keeping valuables safe.
I got a volunteer position at the youth hostel in Ein Karem. My room was nice and warm. The other volunteer was an Israeli girl. Our job was to keep the hostel rooms neat and clean and to buy and prepare breakfasts for hostellers.
Breakfasts were always “milk meals.” Thus we cooked breakfast in special pots and pans and served breakfast in blue plastic bowls or on blue plastic plates. Milk meal cutlery had holes drilled in the handles to distinguish them from meat meal cutlery. The meat meal bowls and plates were red. Blue and red and "holey" and "holeless" were kept in different parts of the kitchen.
The hostel was high on the side of a hill with a long flight of steps up to it. We could see people coming from a long way off. If we saw a rabbi coming to inspect our kitchen, we could rush in to check, for example, that we hadn’t inadvertently got some "holey" spoons mixed with the common spoons.
The other volunteer was a vegetarian. She got herself a cute little puppy which she was raising to be like herself, a vegetarian. Besides carrots and suchlike vegetables, it drank milk and ate yogurt and boiled eggs (ingredients of a standard hostel breakfast).
She also found a stray kitten. There are many feral cats around
Jerusalem I remember watching the kitten desperately trying to get into the garbage can in the hostel kitchen. I speculated that it had inherited memory like young migrating geese that can begin migrating before their parents and end up in the same area to the south. Probably, however, the kitten simply smelled meat scraps that had been thrown in the garbage.
The other volunteer went on a fast for some reason, I forget now. That was fine with me except that, for her, abstaining from food also meant abstaining from work. To prove that it was possible to both fast and work, I went on a fast myself. After a couple of days she found out that I was fasting and she resumed eating, saying that it was not sensible for both of us to be fasting at the same time. I continued fasting for almost twenty-one days. My rate of working, however, did slow down.
Fasting is supposed to help with meditating. I did reflect on life. What was I doing in this world? I wasn’t satisfied with my life the way it was going. The problem was me. I needed to change and I needed help. I decided to go back to church.
After resuming eating and regaining strength, I walked into town one Shabbat morning. The reason that I was walking is that buses in Jerusalem don’t run on the Sabbath. I was heading for a charismatic Baptist church that I had heard about, the Narkis Street Church (www.narkis.org). Services were on Saturday as that was a convenient day when many people were off work. The first day of the week, Sunday, was another working day.
At the church I didn’t introduce myself to anyone––just joined in the singing of Christian choruses and listened to the sermon which was in English. The sermon, if I remember correctly, was something about Yeshua (Jesus). I almost didn’t return the next Saturday but I did, and then the next and the next.
1981 was long before the proliferation of cellphones. I had made a verbal arrangement to meet someone at Jaffa Gate in the Old City at a certain time one afternoon. I got there before the time and waited and waited. While waiting, however, I met several people that I knew who were passing in or out the gate. I was beginning to feel at home in Jerusalem. After years there, I felt very much at home. Anyway, after waiting about an hour that afternoon, I gave up and went home. The next day when I met the person for whom I had been waiting, she said that she had been there. But it was about two hours after the agreed-upon time. That's Israeli timing.
While volunteering at the hostel I had been doing odd jobs for people in Ein Karem to earn extra pocket money. An Israeli lady invited me to live in an apartment in her house in exchange for odd jobs around the house. So I moved in. Living there was a comfortable arrangement but probably not good for me spiritually, though I did continue attending the Narkis Street Church.
I remember collecting the Israeli lady’s sweater for her from the dry cleaners. I had to hang it on the clothes line to let it air to reduce the chemical smell. However I forgot it overnight and it got soaked with dew. The sun the next morning dried it. The drying shrunk it. Noting that it was now about the right size to fit her young daughter was the wrong comment for me to have made.
The time came for me to move on. Through a connection with the House of Prayer on Ha-Nevi’im (Prophets Street), I ended up staying with Christians who had leased a large house in Bethphage back of the Mount of Olives. This was my first time actually living on the eastern side of Jerusalem, the Palestinian side. Living there was yet more relaxed than living in Ein Karem.
Palestinian neighbours were friendly and helpful. I picked up on their attitude to some extent. I remember walking through an open field near Bethphage and seeing an Israeli army jeep driving on the road in the distance. I felt like hiding but then realized a feeling such as that was out of place. I was doing nothing wrong. So I didn't change directions as I might have if I had been concerned about them observing me through binoculars.
Not volunteering with an official Israeli organization was making it more and more difficult to get tourist visa extensions. I spent hours in the visa office of the Department of the Interior. Knowing that a visit might take hours, I would take a book along. Sometimes I wouldn’t get much reading done as I would be chatting with other foreigners also waiting.
Reaching the last week of my last visa extension, I prepared to leave Israel. I caught a bus to Eilat and another to Nuweiba on the Gulf of Eilat. Nuweiba itself is drab but underwater, as in other parts of the Red Sea, it is teeming with colourful life. Although I would snorkel on two subsequent visits to Nuweiba, I didn’t go snorkeling that time as suchlike activities are inconvenient when travelling alone. The difficulty is in keeping valuables safe.
Monastery of St. Catherine
From Nuweiba I hitchhiked eastward toward the Egyptian border. Some Israeli soldiers gave me a ride to the border and some UN soldiers gave me a ride from the border to the Monastery of Saint Catherine's. They merely photographed the monastery and, in the background, the traditional Mount Sinai (also called Mount Horeb). Some people think, however, that the Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments is actually in Saudi Arabia.
After photographing, the UN soldiers prepared to return to the Israeli side of the Sinai Peninsular. I decided to return with them. Besides, it was raining! So I returned to Israel the same day that I left but got only a month tourist visa whereas I had been hoping for a three-month visa.
Returning to Bethphage, I needed to prepare for a proper trip to Egypt. I worked several days a week in West Jerusalem, earning enough to buy a bus ticket from Jerusalem to Cairo, return. Just before my month was up, I caught the bus to Cairo.
My most vivid recollection is the time spent at the pyramids in Giza. The pyramids invite people to climb them. In order to climb the big pyramid, the most popular one to climb, a person would have to pay a huge amount of money and be escorted by a guide. Guards surrounded the pyramid to deter unauthorized climbers.
There was only one guard at the small pyramid. Going around the back where the guard couldn’t see me, I started climbing. It was more of a challenge than I had imagined it to be. The blocks are huge and even the small pyramid is high. Finally I reached the top and rested in a nook where I couldn’t be seen from below. I stayed there an hour or so, gazing out on the desert and meditating. Even with the pyramids there might be an Israeli connection. Israelites may have built them.
After a week or so in Cairo and vicinity, I returned to Jerusalem. With only three months more that I would be allowed to stay in Israel without an official letter from some organization, I had to think of volunteering again. Through young singles I met at the Narkis Street Church, I learned of the possibility of volunteering at ALYN Hospital for Crippled Children (www.alyn.org). I applied and was accepted.
Five of us volunteers were accommodated in an apartment near the hospital. Once a week we were supplied with a large box of fruit and vegetables. Eggs and dairy products were also available. If not cooking and eating at the apartment, we could also eat with the children in the hospital dining room.
My work involved getting the boys out of bed in the morning, helping them get dressed if need be, taking them for breakfast, and sending them off to school which was right there in the same building. There was more activity at lunchtime and a lot more after school.
I remember one volunteer catering to the children more than the rest of us did. One morning she arrived at work crabbier than usual. (She was indulgent with the children.) She explained that her cat had kept her up all night. First it wanted to go out and then it wanted to come in again and then it wanted to go out again and then it wanted to come in again and then it wanted to go out again and . . . . I didn’t advise her what I wanted to advise her, that she could have deterred the cat from coming in again by opening the window, swinging the cat around a few times by the tail, and letting it fly out the window.
Children at ALYN sometimes travelled outside the hospital and occasionally I accompanied them. It wasn't that difficult if it was a boy, but one time it was somewhat complicated.
I was accompanying Miriam to a kibbutz in the Galilee below the Golan Heights. She had been invited to return for a bit of a vacation by the kibbutz family with whom she had stayed when all of us were at the kibbutz a few months earlier. That time it had been a vacation for all the younger children at ALYN.
Miriam was a cute little Bedouin girl. ALYN cared for a token number of Arab children as well as Jewish. Although crippled in both legs, Miriam was a tough individual. Bedouins need to be tough to survive. If I remember statistics correctly, only about nineteen out of twenty Bedouin children survive to adulthood.
Miriam and I got driven to the Jerusalem bus station and were given return tickets to and from Qiryat Shemona in the northern Galilee. I carried Miriam onto the bus, set her in a seat by a window, and then folded up her wheelchair and stowed it in the luggage compartment underneath the bus, along with my small bag. Miriam wanted her bag with her on the bus where she could keep an eye on it.
While travelling up the Jordan Valley, our conversation was limited. She spoke little English and I spoke little Hebrew and no Arabic. Long before lunch we ate the packed lunch that ALYN had provided.
At the scheduled lunch stop she needed to go to the washroom. I got her wheelchair out and set her in it. A lady who had been sitting across from us offered to help and wheeled Miriam into the "ladies."
After the break we continued north, arriving at Qiryat Shemona five hours after leaving Jerusalem. I telephoned to the kibbutz but the person who answered the phone couldn't understand my Hebrew. I handed the phone to Miriam who explained that such and such a family was expecting her. Arrangements were made to pick us up.
At the kibbutz, Miriam stayed with the family and I was billeted with another family. Miriam and I didn't see much of each other over the next couple of days. I remember a kibbutznik explaining to me how much nicer it was since the Israelis gained control of the Golan Heights. Before that, farmers working the fields were targeted by Syrians taking pot shots at them from the Heights.
The trip back to Jerusalem was uneventful. As we pulled into the bus station, passengers surged to get to the door first. Thus they would be more likely to be first getting their luggage out from under the bus. I let the crush subside before getting off myself. Eventually I got Miriam's wheelchair out from under the bus and unfolded it ready to put her in it. I climbed back into the bus, now empty except for a distraught Miriam. The delay in my return had made her think that she had been abandoned. So even a stoical Bedouin can lose it!
Back at ALYN, I settled into the usual routine. Some of us volunteers would walk into town early Shabbat morning to attend the Narkis Street Church. One morning we arrived to find that the church had been burned down. It was arson and the arsonists were most likely from Yad L’Achim, a counter missionary organization. It could have been people from the same organization who had squeezed crazy glue into the Baptist House door locks. The next week we met in a large tent that had been erected in the former parking lot. Later a tin and plywood construction was built there.
After six months at ALYN, it was time to move on. Through another connection, not the Narkis Street Church connection, I had previously visited a Benedictine monastery near Beit Shemesh (House of the Sun). The monastery, Tel Gamaliel, was founded by an American priest (www.fatherisaacjacob.edublogs.org) and named after a first-century Jewish rabbi. Father Isaac Jacob had invited me to join them. So I went to stay at Tel Gamaliel, though on most weekends I still travelled to Jerusalem to associate with my Narkis Street Church friends.
Tel Gamaliel was not a large establishment. Sometimes the only people there were Father Isaac and Sister Gemma, an American nun who had special permission from her order to live at Tel Gamaliel. Without Sister Gemma, the place would have fallen apart as she was the practical one of the two. Father Isaac was the theologian. He also had a sense of humour as illustrated by him officially adopting the Jewish name, Isaac, instead of his Christian name, Henry.
At Tel Gamaliel, although they knew I was a Protestant, they accepted me as one of them. If I was there on Sunday, I would join them for mass. When receiving the wafer, the proper hand position for Roman Catholics is to cup the left hand in the right hand and receive the wafer in the left hand. For adherents of the Church of England, the proper hand position was the reverse, receiving the wafer in the right hand. (King Henry VIII was unorthodox.) Being somewhat rebellious, I chose to receive the wafer in my right hand. Father Isaac and Sister Gemma probably simply thought I was ignorant.
I was often driving the community's truck. One errand that I remember was collecting manure in a Sicilian Monastery field below the Tel. The Sicilian monks allowed the Bedouins to graze their sheep and goats on monastery property. The manure that I was collecting was to fertilize trees that we had planted on the Tel.
There were a number of Bedouins there at their encampment where the manure was thickest. I asked them if I could collect some manure but they understood neither English nor my Hebrew. They might have understood Hebrew if my Hebrew had been better. So I shoveled a few kilos of manure into the truck while they watched. There was no question of paying for it. The Bedouins may not have attached any value to it anyway. But they knew that I was from one or the other monastery on whose land they were grazing their sheep and goats.
I don't know what arrangement the Bedouins had with the Sicilians, but I know that grazing on kibbutz property was usually forbidden. It could have been later when I was staying at a kibbutz near Gaza that a kibbutnik told me of problems with the Bedouins. A kibbutznik had allowed them to graze their sheep under the fruit trees. (Goats amongst the fruit trees would have been too hard on the trees.) But then the kibbutz council had vetoed the permission, saying that they didn't want to set a precedent.
The Bedouins seem to survive despite difficulties. They are a hardy bunch. I remember one winter evening, with a bit of snow on the ground, I was hurrying along just outside the Sicilian Monastery wall wanting to get back to the warmth of the communal house at Tel Gamaliel. Rounding a corner in the wall, I almost bumped into a Bedouin boy. He wasn't wearing shoes.
Since I was travelling to Jerusalem most weekends anyway, it was more convenient for me to live closer to Jerusalem. Through a previous connection, I was offered accommodation in la petite maison (the little house) in Ein Karem in exchange for work for the owner of the property. I moved into la petite maison. (The house was named by his Moroccan wife.)
Having a house and yard of my own, I wanted to keep things tidy. I remember burning garden refuse that I had raked into a heap in the middle of the yard. Watching the pile burn down, I noticed something round amongst the embers. I raked it out. It was a grenade! I went into the house until things cooled down outside, then I hid the grenade in another part of the yard. The friend who later took over my position and my accommodation told me that he found the grenade and turned it over to the authorities.
One of the Narkis Street Church singles was the handyman taking care of the “tabernacle,” as the tin and plywood construction was called, and the Baptist House and other buildings on the church property. When he was leaving, he recommended me as his replacement. The pastor’s wife interviewed me and I was taken on as the new handyman for the property. I would get accommodation and money with which to buy food. Being an official volunteer again meant that I could get visa extensions more easily, although now I had to get a recommendation also from the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
I moved into the Baptist House basement (doubling as a bomb shelter). There was a kitchen there as well as a couple of bedrooms, but the bathroom was on the third floor of the Baptist House though there was a toilet in the bomb shelter that could have been used during an extended stay there. My bedroom, the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom were all more spacious than the rooms in la petite maison.
After photographing, the UN soldiers prepared to return to the Israeli side of the Sinai Peninsular. I decided to return with them. Besides, it was raining! So I returned to Israel the same day that I left but got only a month tourist visa whereas I had been hoping for a three-month visa.
Returning to Bethphage, I needed to prepare for a proper trip to Egypt. I worked several days a week in West Jerusalem, earning enough to buy a bus ticket from Jerusalem to Cairo, return. Just before my month was up, I caught the bus to Cairo.
My most vivid recollection is the time spent at the pyramids in Giza. The pyramids invite people to climb them. In order to climb the big pyramid, the most popular one to climb, a person would have to pay a huge amount of money and be escorted by a guide. Guards surrounded the pyramid to deter unauthorized climbers.
There was only one guard at the small pyramid. Going around the back where the guard couldn’t see me, I started climbing. It was more of a challenge than I had imagined it to be. The blocks are huge and even the small pyramid is high. Finally I reached the top and rested in a nook where I couldn’t be seen from below. I stayed there an hour or so, gazing out on the desert and meditating. Even with the pyramids there might be an Israeli connection. Israelites may have built them.
After a week or so in Cairo and vicinity, I returned to Jerusalem. With only three months more that I would be allowed to stay in Israel without an official letter from some organization, I had to think of volunteering again. Through young singles I met at the Narkis Street Church, I learned of the possibility of volunteering at ALYN Hospital for Crippled Children (www.alyn.org). I applied and was accepted.
Five of us volunteers were accommodated in an apartment near the hospital. Once a week we were supplied with a large box of fruit and vegetables. Eggs and dairy products were also available. If not cooking and eating at the apartment, we could also eat with the children in the hospital dining room.
My work involved getting the boys out of bed in the morning, helping them get dressed if need be, taking them for breakfast, and sending them off to school which was right there in the same building. There was more activity at lunchtime and a lot more after school.
I remember one volunteer catering to the children more than the rest of us did. One morning she arrived at work crabbier than usual. (She was indulgent with the children.) She explained that her cat had kept her up all night. First it wanted to go out and then it wanted to come in again and then it wanted to go out again and then it wanted to come in again and then it wanted to go out again and . . . . I didn’t advise her what I wanted to advise her, that she could have deterred the cat from coming in again by opening the window, swinging the cat around a few times by the tail, and letting it fly out the window.
Children at ALYN sometimes travelled outside the hospital and occasionally I accompanied them. It wasn't that difficult if it was a boy, but one time it was somewhat complicated.
I was accompanying Miriam to a kibbutz in the Galilee below the Golan Heights. She had been invited to return for a bit of a vacation by the kibbutz family with whom she had stayed when all of us were at the kibbutz a few months earlier. That time it had been a vacation for all the younger children at ALYN.
Miriam was a cute little Bedouin girl. ALYN cared for a token number of Arab children as well as Jewish. Although crippled in both legs, Miriam was a tough individual. Bedouins need to be tough to survive. If I remember statistics correctly, only about nineteen out of twenty Bedouin children survive to adulthood.
Miriam and I got driven to the Jerusalem bus station and were given return tickets to and from Qiryat Shemona in the northern Galilee. I carried Miriam onto the bus, set her in a seat by a window, and then folded up her wheelchair and stowed it in the luggage compartment underneath the bus, along with my small bag. Miriam wanted her bag with her on the bus where she could keep an eye on it.
While travelling up the Jordan Valley, our conversation was limited. She spoke little English and I spoke little Hebrew and no Arabic. Long before lunch we ate the packed lunch that ALYN had provided.
At the scheduled lunch stop she needed to go to the washroom. I got her wheelchair out and set her in it. A lady who had been sitting across from us offered to help and wheeled Miriam into the "ladies."
After the break we continued north, arriving at Qiryat Shemona five hours after leaving Jerusalem. I telephoned to the kibbutz but the person who answered the phone couldn't understand my Hebrew. I handed the phone to Miriam who explained that such and such a family was expecting her. Arrangements were made to pick us up.
At the kibbutz, Miriam stayed with the family and I was billeted with another family. Miriam and I didn't see much of each other over the next couple of days. I remember a kibbutznik explaining to me how much nicer it was since the Israelis gained control of the Golan Heights. Before that, farmers working the fields were targeted by Syrians taking pot shots at them from the Heights.
The trip back to Jerusalem was uneventful. As we pulled into the bus station, passengers surged to get to the door first. Thus they would be more likely to be first getting their luggage out from under the bus. I let the crush subside before getting off myself. Eventually I got Miriam's wheelchair out from under the bus and unfolded it ready to put her in it. I climbed back into the bus, now empty except for a distraught Miriam. The delay in my return had made her think that she had been abandoned. So even a stoical Bedouin can lose it!
Back at ALYN, I settled into the usual routine. Some of us volunteers would walk into town early Shabbat morning to attend the Narkis Street Church. One morning we arrived to find that the church had been burned down. It was arson and the arsonists were most likely from Yad L’Achim, a counter missionary organization. It could have been people from the same organization who had squeezed crazy glue into the Baptist House door locks. The next week we met in a large tent that had been erected in the former parking lot. Later a tin and plywood construction was built there.
After six months at ALYN, it was time to move on. Through another connection, not the Narkis Street Church connection, I had previously visited a Benedictine monastery near Beit Shemesh (House of the Sun). The monastery, Tel Gamaliel, was founded by an American priest (www.fatherisaacjacob.edublogs.org) and named after a first-century Jewish rabbi. Father Isaac Jacob had invited me to join them. So I went to stay at Tel Gamaliel, though on most weekends I still travelled to Jerusalem to associate with my Narkis Street Church friends.
Tel Gamaliel was not a large establishment. Sometimes the only people there were Father Isaac and Sister Gemma, an American nun who had special permission from her order to live at Tel Gamaliel. Without Sister Gemma, the place would have fallen apart as she was the practical one of the two. Father Isaac was the theologian. He also had a sense of humour as illustrated by him officially adopting the Jewish name, Isaac, instead of his Christian name, Henry.
At Tel Gamaliel, although they knew I was a Protestant, they accepted me as one of them. If I was there on Sunday, I would join them for mass. When receiving the wafer, the proper hand position for Roman Catholics is to cup the left hand in the right hand and receive the wafer in the left hand. For adherents of the Church of England, the proper hand position was the reverse, receiving the wafer in the right hand. (King Henry VIII was unorthodox.) Being somewhat rebellious, I chose to receive the wafer in my right hand. Father Isaac and Sister Gemma probably simply thought I was ignorant.
I was often driving the community's truck. One errand that I remember was collecting manure in a Sicilian Monastery field below the Tel. The Sicilian monks allowed the Bedouins to graze their sheep and goats on monastery property. The manure that I was collecting was to fertilize trees that we had planted on the Tel.
There were a number of Bedouins there at their encampment where the manure was thickest. I asked them if I could collect some manure but they understood neither English nor my Hebrew. They might have understood Hebrew if my Hebrew had been better. So I shoveled a few kilos of manure into the truck while they watched. There was no question of paying for it. The Bedouins may not have attached any value to it anyway. But they knew that I was from one or the other monastery on whose land they were grazing their sheep and goats.
I don't know what arrangement the Bedouins had with the Sicilians, but I know that grazing on kibbutz property was usually forbidden. It could have been later when I was staying at a kibbutz near Gaza that a kibbutnik told me of problems with the Bedouins. A kibbutznik had allowed them to graze their sheep under the fruit trees. (Goats amongst the fruit trees would have been too hard on the trees.) But then the kibbutz council had vetoed the permission, saying that they didn't want to set a precedent.
The Bedouins seem to survive despite difficulties. They are a hardy bunch. I remember one winter evening, with a bit of snow on the ground, I was hurrying along just outside the Sicilian Monastery wall wanting to get back to the warmth of the communal house at Tel Gamaliel. Rounding a corner in the wall, I almost bumped into a Bedouin boy. He wasn't wearing shoes.
Since I was travelling to Jerusalem most weekends anyway, it was more convenient for me to live closer to Jerusalem. Through a previous connection, I was offered accommodation in la petite maison (the little house) in Ein Karem in exchange for work for the owner of the property. I moved into la petite maison. (The house was named by his Moroccan wife.)
Having a house and yard of my own, I wanted to keep things tidy. I remember burning garden refuse that I had raked into a heap in the middle of the yard. Watching the pile burn down, I noticed something round amongst the embers. I raked it out. It was a grenade! I went into the house until things cooled down outside, then I hid the grenade in another part of the yard. The friend who later took over my position and my accommodation told me that he found the grenade and turned it over to the authorities.
One of the Narkis Street Church singles was the handyman taking care of the “tabernacle,” as the tin and plywood construction was called, and the Baptist House and other buildings on the church property. When he was leaving, he recommended me as his replacement. The pastor’s wife interviewed me and I was taken on as the new handyman for the property. I would get accommodation and money with which to buy food. Being an official volunteer again meant that I could get visa extensions more easily, although now I had to get a recommendation also from the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
I moved into the Baptist House basement (doubling as a bomb shelter). There was a kitchen there as well as a couple of bedrooms, but the bathroom was on the third floor of the Baptist House though there was a toilet in the bomb shelter that could have been used during an extended stay there. My bedroom, the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom were all more spacious than the rooms in la petite maison.
The Narkis Street Church, burned down
A large part of my regular routine involved preparing for the Sabbath service. As the tabernacle wasn’t secure, anything of value such as the sound equipment needed to be locked away during the week, then brought out early Saturday morning and locked away again after the service. They were locked in a room of the daycare building, one of the buildings on the property.
Besides the regular routine, one of the first tasks that I undertook was to heap up the rubble in the burned-down church. Attached to the church, there had been a few rooms, one of the rooms being Pastor Bob Lindsey’s study. When cleaning up the remains of that room, I found one of Pastor Bob’s feet. I’ll explain.
In the early sixties, with the pre-1967 border between East and West Jerusalem, Pastor Bob was trying to help an Arab teenager cross from one side to the other. This was after sunset, if I remember the story correctly. A strip along the border was mined. Pastor Bob stepped on a landmine. He lost a foot. Thus, when I knew him, he had a prosthetic foot. It was one of his prosthetic feet that I had found.
Besides working around the Tabernacle and Baptist House, I had time to do odd jobs for neighbours to earn extra money. One time I earned a meal instead of money. It was after sunset on Shabbat. The Jewish day begins in the evening, not at midnight. A religious neighbour came to ask if I could help. He had forgotten to unscrew the light bulb in the refrigerator before nightfall. Thus, if he opened the refrigerator door, the light would come on. Opening doors is permissible for a Jew on Shabbat, but starting an electrical current isn't. So I went over to his apartment and opened the refrigerator door and unscrewed the light bulb.
Saturday afternoons, after the sound system and other valuables that had been used during the morning service were securely locked away, some of us singles would explore areas around Jerusalem. Because buses weren't running in West Jerusalem, we would walk over to East Jerusalem and catch an Arab bus.
One time, while hiking, we met a young Palestinian out in the countryside. When conversing with him, we found his English to be quite good. Many Palestinians can speak two or three languages. The Palestinian invited us to his nearby home and introduced us to his parents and brothers and sisters. His mother prepared a bit of a snack for us. An attractive young lady who had just arrived from England was with us and she was doing most of the talking with the Palestinian. She was being friendly, as it's nice to be, although an attractive young lady soon learns to be cautious when in an Arab culture. Before we left, she and the Palestinian exchanged addresses and promised to write to each other. Then he asked her to marry him. She was taken aback. I don't know if she did end up corresponding with him.
Another day, not a Saturday, I went on a bus tour of some of the Jewish settlements in Gaza. The greenhouses there were impressive––Gaza soil is fertile. As well as working hard themselves, the settlers employed locals to help. Some of the settlers had resettled in Gaza after being evicted from Yamit just south of Gaza when that part of the Sinai was handed over to Egypt in 1982. In 2005, after I had left Israel, the settlers in Gaza were evicted again. It was called a "disengagement."
Although I enjoyed the years that I spent as caretaker of Baptist House and the Narkis Street Church, I remember little annoyances. One of my duties was posting letters that the church secretary had written and picking up church mail from our post office box at the central post office. The central post office was about a twenty-minute walk away but another post office was only about ten minutes away. Then there was a mailbox about five minutes away. If not picking up mail at the central post office, I would sometimes go to the nearer post office to post letters. Someone asked me why I didn’t go to the mailbox. I replied that I wasn’t sure when mail from that mailbox got picked up. I facetiously added that they might wait until it was full before collecting the letters from it. One day as I was on my way to post a letter at the nearer post office, I thought I would save time by going to the mailbox, so I veered off in the other direction. Reaching the mailbox, I found it crammed so full that parts of letters were sticking out the mail slot. I couldn’t get even one more letter in! So posting letters that day took longer than usual.
Accomplishing things often took longer than expected. I remember one morning arriving at the bank before it opened in the hopes of being one of the first in line to see a teller. There was already a crowd waiting for the bank to open. Through the store-front-style windows we could see the staff moving around within the bank. Punctually at 8:00 o’clock one of the staff came to unlock the doors. That was a hopeful sign. However he unlocked only the revolving door. Half a dozen or more people crowded into the first section of the revolving door. Because they were so tightly crowded together, they could take only very small steps. It took a while for the door to revolve enough for them to get out on the inside of the bank. Meanwhile half a dozen or more people had crowded into the second section of the door, slowing down the rotation yet more. Then the third section slowly revolved around to where people could get into it and half a dozen or more people crowded into that section. I observed the man who had unlocked the revolving door standing there grinning. He didn’t seem to be about to unlock the regular door beside the revolving door. So I decided I would have to join the crowd. It could have been the fourth section where I was one of the half dozen or more people slowly inching our way into the bank. As there was glass all around, I could still see the man standing there grinning. Then another man who may have been the bank manager motioned to him and he unlocked the regular door. Those outside who hadn’t jammed into the revolving door rushed inside, getting into line to see the tellers ahead of us who were still inching along in the revolving door.
Just across Narkis Street was one of the best falafel stands in Jerusalem. One of the times that I went to buy a falafel, the vender and the customer in front of me were chitchatting and chitchatting and chitchatting. To add to my annoyance, someone nearby was just laying on his car horn, spoiling the peacefulness of the day. The chitchatting ended with what must have been something like “I’d better go now.” The chitchatter, with a slightly quicker pace than a stroll, crossed the street to his car which he had parked blocking the exit from an alleyway. The honking was from a man in a car wanting to exit the alleyway.
Another time at another falafel stand, my attention was drawn to the situation by an excessive amount of honking. The honking was of the horns of a number of cars behind a bus which was stopped in the middle of the road. Many streets in Jerusalem are too narrow for cars to pass obstacles in their way. The reason that the bus was stopped was that a car was parked right on the corner so the bus couldn’t round the corner. A man was standing in the street in front of the bus frantically trying to catch the bus driver’s attention. The man was indicating how he would direct the driver to make the turn. The driver was purposefully looking away. Bus drivers in Jerusalem know to the centimetre where the back of the bus will be on any turn. After a while a man came with a falafel in hand and got into the car and drove off. The bus made its turn and the noise of the car horns subsided to its usual level.
I shouldn’t let other people’s foibles bother me. It bothered me also when people were overly fussy. Some ladies who hung around the Baptist House, wanting to feel useful, over-watered the potted flowers so that some of them were drowning.
Although Sunday was my day off, I sometimes hung around the Baptist House during afternoons when the Korean Church met there. The Korean children were better behaved than average children, but children will be children. Some young children accidentally locked themselves in the washroom and there was no way to unlock the door from the outside. As it was my day off, I didn’t hurry to get a ladder to help a parent climb in the washroom window. The children eventually figured out how to unlock the door, either following instructions from a parent calling through the window or a parent calling through the door.
Some problems were more than annoying. One night I was woken up by the sound of a crash outside. I rushed out to find that someone had thrown a large rock through the windshield of the church van. The next morning, during the police interview, I didn’t mention my suspicions. I suspected a couple of the church teenagers whom on the night before I had refused to drive home. P.K.’s (Preacher’s Kids) and M.K.’s (Missionary Kids) are sometimes rebellious.
Thievery was a constant problem. I suspected a certain man who lived across Narkis Street. Anything of value left out would soon disappear. Money was stolen from the cashbox of the Baptist House bookshop. One night a burglar broke into the safe in the office. (After I left volunteering there, I heard that the whole safe got stolen.)
One of the ladies in the church congregation tended toward paranoia. She thought people, perhaps her landlady, were entering her rented apartment while she was out. So she kept her valuables in the church safe. So, as I heard later, she lost her valuables.
We all have our faults. Living in Israel as long as I did and learning so little Hebrew could be considered a fault. My excuse is that when I was living at the Baptist House I was speaking English most of the day. I did go to ulpan (Hebrew language school). However, I was going in the evening after a long day’s work. As well as having difficulty learning Hebrew, I was having difficulty staying awake in class. I started kita aleph (grade 1) three times but finished only the third time.
It was getting more and more difficult to get visa extensions so I had to resort to leaving Israel, then returning. On my last return, I was told that the visa I was then receiving would be my last. Having heard that Israeli immigration officials kept records of the unwanted for ten years, I prepared for an extended stay outside of Israel.
I spent that last month touring Israel and the Sinai. It may not have been then as I was mostly travelling with a friend, but another time I was alone in Tel Aviv. Passing by a popular beach, I thought I'd go swimming. This would be my last chance for a while to go swimming in the Mediterranean, I was thinking. The problem was what to do with my backpack. I took it into the public washroom and changed into swimming trunks. Back on the beach, I left the backpack in an open space near the water. In the water, I kept a constant eye on it. There were numerous other sea or sun bathers around. I planned what I might yell out in Hebrew if someone “mistakenly” picked up my backpack and started walking off with it. Then a dog strolled up, lifted its leg, peed on my backpack, and strolled off.
Among other things that I did that month was to revisit Nuweiba and Saint Catherine's Monastery. I was travelling with a friend and we camped out in tents. Being with a friend greatly reduced the problem when going snorkeling in the Red Sea. We rented one mask and snorkel and went snorkeling one at a time, the other, meanwhile, watching our things. That trip I lost only my Israeli army coat which I had left in my unattended tent.
At Saint Catherine's, touring part of the monastery, we came across a room with a bin full of skulls. They were the skulls of deceased monks, so we learned, together in death as they were in life. We were told that after a monk had died and been buried for a while, the remains were exhumed and the bones dismembered and cleaned and sorted. The grave could be re-used.
We also climbed the steps up Mount Sinai that a monk had spent his lifetime chiseling out, and we camped the night in Elijah's Hollow. Before dawn we climbed to the top of the mountain to see the sunrise. There were a few young people there too. Seeing the sunrise is the thing to do when on Mount Sinai.
On the way back from Egypt to Israel, through the familiar border crossing, I was hoping that the Israeli immigration official wouldn't notice that the one month visa that I had been given in Haifa was my absolute final one. I was hoping he might give me another month or two. But all I got was a stern warning to leave the country before the deadline.
When the last day of my permitted stay in Israel arrived, or it may have been the second last day, I flew to England and from there returned to Canada.
Nine and a half years later, when in British Columbia, I happened to meet Meridel Rawlings. From my previous stay in Israel, I had known Meridel and her husband Jay and their ministry in Israel (www.jerusalemvistas.com). Meridel told me that they were looking for a tutor for their youngest son. As I was between jobs, I decided to take on the challenge so flew to Israel in the autumn of 1996. I received the usual three-month tourist visa.
Besides tutoring their son, I was house sitting the Rawlings’ new house in Mevasseret Zion. (The name can be loosely translated as bringing good news to Zion.) The house was finished on the outside, but on the inside some work still needed doing. It was necessary for someone to stay there because of burglars. When I was there, a burglar stopped trying to break in when he saw me inside. The neighbouring house got burgled three times during the six months that I was house sitting for the Rawlings.
One incident that I remember was making a phone call to complain about something, I forget what. I had it on speaker phone and was listening to music while waiting for an agent to answer. As the house wasn't heated, I was getting cold sitting there waiting so I started exercising. And I exercised vigorously for perhaps twenty minutes. Then an agent started speaking. I responded and voiced my complaint. Because I was breathing heavily, it must have sounded to the agent as though I were boiling mad.
In the valley below Mevasseret Zion, there was a dam. During the rainy season a lake grew behind it. But as soon as the rains stopped, the lake shrank to nothing. The water was seeping into the ground. Building the dam may not have been a wasted effort, however. Adding to the groundwater is good for springs and wells at a lower altitude.
Finishing tutoring, I found work with Christian Friends of Israel, Jerusalem (www.cfijerusalem.org). The founders of Christian Friends of Israel lived in Mevasseret Zion. As working with Christian Friends of Israel wasn’t full-time work, I got a job also at the Garden Tomb (www.gardentomb.com). The room that I rented in the Christian Quarter of the Old City belonged to a Palestinian working at the Garden Tomb.
One of my jobs with Christian Friends of Israel was driving the cook to the shook (market) to buy groceries. In order to drive the CFI van, I needed to get an Israeli driver's licence. In order to get a licence, I had to take a driving course. After taking the course I had to have a road test. I thought I did okay on the road test but the examiner failed me and sent me back to the driving school. I had to pay for the driving course a second time. I think the examiner got a kick-back from the school for getting them more students.
Christian Friends of Israel provided a nice cooked lunch for the staff. After lunch we all assembled for prayer. Sitting there in a warm room after a good meal, I had trouble keeping awake. Others may have thought that I found praying boring, but I like to think that my sleepiness was because of a lack of a sleep.
Living in the Old City was much more convenient than living in Mevasseret Zion as the office of Christian Friends of Israel was about a fifteen minute walk away through the New Gate and the Garden Tomb was about the same distance away when going through Damascus Gate. Usually I would go out the New Gate in the morning to work as odd job man with Christian Friends of Israel and then walk to the Garden Tomb to garden there for the afternoon and then return home through Damascus Gate. Weekends I usually worked at the Garden Tomb.
There were also non-Christians living in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. There was no problem with that except if the non-Christians were Jews making a point of being Jewish. On the route that I took to or from Damascus gate, I passed a building where some Jews lived. Israeli soldiers guarded the building as one of the residents had been killed just outside his home there.
During the nine and a half years that I had been out of Israel, there had been a noticeable worsening of attitudes between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. I had left Israel just before the first intifada (the first Palestinian uprising beginning in late 1987) and returned when hostilities were building up to the second intifada (beginning in 2000).
When buying things at the shook, people need to keep their bags close to them at all times. I remember setting my bag down while going to examine some fruit or vegetables at a stall only few metres away. Someone soon called, in Hebrew, “Whose bag is that!” People were afraid of bombs being left there. Similarly, garbage containers were constructed to minimize the threat. I once dropped some garbage in an elevated garbage container and it fell right through to the sidewalk below. It had no bottom. Bottomless garbage containers weren’t completely pointless as street cleaners could more easily clean up piles underneath them rather than bits of garbage strewn down the street.
While working one day at the office of Christian Friends of Israel, I heard an explosion in the distance, then another and another. The explosions were bomb blasts. Three suicide bombers had blown themselves up on the pedestrian street of Ben Yehuda, killing a number of Jews. The delays between the blasts were in order to give people time to gather to help the injured so the following blast would be in the midst of a bigger crowd.
Although, or perhaps because, I was working for Christian organizations, it was difficult getting visa extensions. I finally had to leave the country. Travelling to England and then Germany, I drove a Renault back to Israel for a German friend. The trip involved putting the car on a couple of ferries. Because of the political situation, it was not possible to drive from Turkey to Israel.
As I was still living in the Old City, parking the Renault was a problem. I usually parked it overnight in a vacant lot just outside the Old City walls. One morning I found a window smashed by someone breaking into it during the night.
Some streets in the Old City were drivable, though I seldom drove in the Old City. I remember watching a foreigner trying to turn his van around on a dead end street in the Old City. There was a Palestinian sitting on a stool outside a gate. If he had moved, it would have given the driver more room to turn around. But he didn’t move.
Having a car at my disposal when my German friend wasn’t in the country, somewhat altered my lifestyle. Three friends and I decided to go on a trip to Nuweiba. This would be my fourth visit, but my first with Nuweiba under Egyptian control rather than Israeli.
We first explored Eilat and vicinity. When looking for a shady spot to park the car, we were advised not to park under a tree. Why? Goats might climb on top of the car to reach the tree leaves.
The first complication when arriving at the Taba border crossing just south of Eilat was learning that we couldn't take the car any further without registering it and changing to Egyptian licence plates. That would have been an expensive proposition. So we parked the car in a hotel parking lot––could have been the Taba Hilton––and caught a bus to Nuweiba.
The area seemed to be much the same under Egyptian control as it was under Israeli control. Locals might have preferred it under Israeli control as tourism was down a bit. Young Bedouin men didn't appreciate the change as they didn't like getting drafted into the Egyptian army. The fish may have been better off under Israeli control. Although fishing may have been prohibited also by Egyptian preservation laws, locals were less observant of Egyptian laws than they had been of Israeli laws.
On the way back from Nuweiba we visited St. Catherine's Monastery and Mt. Sinai. (Mt. Sinai is called Jebel Musa in Arabic––the mountain of Moses.) As well as the steps up Mt. Sinai, which I had climbed over a decade earlier, there is a road.
In the middle of the night of December 31/ January 1, we joined a number of pilgrims going up the road, planning to arrive at the summit of Mt. Sinai before daybreak. I chose to walk but some others, including my companion, rode. How? Budget Rent a Camel. Yes, with us were a number of camels and Bedouins still trying to persuade us hikers to rent a camel. Along the way there were rest stops where we could buy snacks or a hot drink. At the last stop before the top we could have rented blankets and we were tempted to as it was quite cold.
The camels and Bedouins didn't go any further as that was where the camel route, as the road was called, met the steps––the last 750 steps to the top. We made it! The sunrise looked much the same to me as it had over a decade earlier. It was the first morning of 1998. I didn't realize it then, but that year would be an eventful year for me.
Going back down the mountain, camel rentals were cheaper. My companion rented one again but ended up walking in the end as the ride was too bumpy.
A couple of days later, back at the parking lot in Taba, I was relieved to find that our car was intact. There were no broken windows nor hoof marks on the roof.
Having that car probably led to an event that has altered my life considerably. In January of 1998 I was attending a conference by Intercessors for Israel at the Holy Land Hotel in Jerusalem. In an afternoon session of the conference, the organizers announced that it was snowing outside and those who had come with vehicles should consider leaving early. Since I was Canadian, I didn’t think the suggestion would apply to me.
By the end of the afternoon, the snow was quite deep. I had offered to drive some ladies home. We set off, first trying to drive uphill but then giving up and driving downhill. I didn’t have snow tires on the Renault. I managed to drive the ladies home, but from their place to the Old City was uphill again. I didn’t think I could make it. The ladies invited me to stay for the night in a spare room in their house. I accepted the invitation.
In the morning, there was a fair amount of snow on the roads. The ladies were planning on walking in the snow to the Old City and invited me to join them. I phoned the office of Christian Friends of Israel to say that I was stranded in another part of town. The man who answered the phone said that nothing much would be happening there that day as he was the only one who had made it in.
Then I phoned the Garden Tomb. A few people had managed to make it there. Because of the snow, the Garden Tomb would be closed for visitors that day, but staff would be busy clearing broken branches; the weight of the snow had broken branches off the trees. I apologized for not being able to make it as I was stranded a distance away from the Old City. Then I joined the ladies walking to the Old City.
One of my companions walking to the Old City was a beautiful Swiss lady. It was while we were walking and while they were taking photographs of the snow by the Western Wall in the Old City that I began thinking that the Swiss lady would make a nice wife. (I had prayed a bit about a wife but hadn’t actually stuffed a note between the stones of the Western Wall.)
Weeks later, around the middle of February, Valentine’s Day came around. Another lady had given me Valentine’s Day candy––little heart-shaped candies with mushy things like “I love you” written on them. Since I was trying to limit my sugar intake, I wouldn’t eat any of the candies. Rather than throw them out, I thought of passing them on. Years later, mentioning that the candies were a pass-on was the wrong thing for me to say.
It was Saturday morning. On the way to driving a handicapped man to church, I dropped off the box of candies at the Swiss lady’s home. She was still in bed, so said her flat mate who answered the door, so I left the box with the flat mate. The next day at work at the Garden Tomb, I got a phone call. It was the Swiss lady wondering what I meant by giving her those candies. We arranged to go for a walk together. Going for a walk together, we even held hands! That week we went for more walks together. At the end of the week I proposed marriage and she accepted.
We got married in June in the garden at the back of Christ Church, an old Anglican church in the Old City. We spent the first part of our honeymoon by the Dead Sea at Ein Gedi (Spring of the Kid) then flew to Canada, having decided that it would be too problematic remaining in Israel. From Canada we flew to Switzerland and then, later, returned to Canada. We haven’t been back to Israel since, though some time we would like to at least visit Israel again.
Besides the regular routine, one of the first tasks that I undertook was to heap up the rubble in the burned-down church. Attached to the church, there had been a few rooms, one of the rooms being Pastor Bob Lindsey’s study. When cleaning up the remains of that room, I found one of Pastor Bob’s feet. I’ll explain.
In the early sixties, with the pre-1967 border between East and West Jerusalem, Pastor Bob was trying to help an Arab teenager cross from one side to the other. This was after sunset, if I remember the story correctly. A strip along the border was mined. Pastor Bob stepped on a landmine. He lost a foot. Thus, when I knew him, he had a prosthetic foot. It was one of his prosthetic feet that I had found.
Besides working around the Tabernacle and Baptist House, I had time to do odd jobs for neighbours to earn extra money. One time I earned a meal instead of money. It was after sunset on Shabbat. The Jewish day begins in the evening, not at midnight. A religious neighbour came to ask if I could help. He had forgotten to unscrew the light bulb in the refrigerator before nightfall. Thus, if he opened the refrigerator door, the light would come on. Opening doors is permissible for a Jew on Shabbat, but starting an electrical current isn't. So I went over to his apartment and opened the refrigerator door and unscrewed the light bulb.
Saturday afternoons, after the sound system and other valuables that had been used during the morning service were securely locked away, some of us singles would explore areas around Jerusalem. Because buses weren't running in West Jerusalem, we would walk over to East Jerusalem and catch an Arab bus.
One time, while hiking, we met a young Palestinian out in the countryside. When conversing with him, we found his English to be quite good. Many Palestinians can speak two or three languages. The Palestinian invited us to his nearby home and introduced us to his parents and brothers and sisters. His mother prepared a bit of a snack for us. An attractive young lady who had just arrived from England was with us and she was doing most of the talking with the Palestinian. She was being friendly, as it's nice to be, although an attractive young lady soon learns to be cautious when in an Arab culture. Before we left, she and the Palestinian exchanged addresses and promised to write to each other. Then he asked her to marry him. She was taken aback. I don't know if she did end up corresponding with him.
Another day, not a Saturday, I went on a bus tour of some of the Jewish settlements in Gaza. The greenhouses there were impressive––Gaza soil is fertile. As well as working hard themselves, the settlers employed locals to help. Some of the settlers had resettled in Gaza after being evicted from Yamit just south of Gaza when that part of the Sinai was handed over to Egypt in 1982. In 2005, after I had left Israel, the settlers in Gaza were evicted again. It was called a "disengagement."
Although I enjoyed the years that I spent as caretaker of Baptist House and the Narkis Street Church, I remember little annoyances. One of my duties was posting letters that the church secretary had written and picking up church mail from our post office box at the central post office. The central post office was about a twenty-minute walk away but another post office was only about ten minutes away. Then there was a mailbox about five minutes away. If not picking up mail at the central post office, I would sometimes go to the nearer post office to post letters. Someone asked me why I didn’t go to the mailbox. I replied that I wasn’t sure when mail from that mailbox got picked up. I facetiously added that they might wait until it was full before collecting the letters from it. One day as I was on my way to post a letter at the nearer post office, I thought I would save time by going to the mailbox, so I veered off in the other direction. Reaching the mailbox, I found it crammed so full that parts of letters were sticking out the mail slot. I couldn’t get even one more letter in! So posting letters that day took longer than usual.
Accomplishing things often took longer than expected. I remember one morning arriving at the bank before it opened in the hopes of being one of the first in line to see a teller. There was already a crowd waiting for the bank to open. Through the store-front-style windows we could see the staff moving around within the bank. Punctually at 8:00 o’clock one of the staff came to unlock the doors. That was a hopeful sign. However he unlocked only the revolving door. Half a dozen or more people crowded into the first section of the revolving door. Because they were so tightly crowded together, they could take only very small steps. It took a while for the door to revolve enough for them to get out on the inside of the bank. Meanwhile half a dozen or more people had crowded into the second section of the door, slowing down the rotation yet more. Then the third section slowly revolved around to where people could get into it and half a dozen or more people crowded into that section. I observed the man who had unlocked the revolving door standing there grinning. He didn’t seem to be about to unlock the regular door beside the revolving door. So I decided I would have to join the crowd. It could have been the fourth section where I was one of the half dozen or more people slowly inching our way into the bank. As there was glass all around, I could still see the man standing there grinning. Then another man who may have been the bank manager motioned to him and he unlocked the regular door. Those outside who hadn’t jammed into the revolving door rushed inside, getting into line to see the tellers ahead of us who were still inching along in the revolving door.
Just across Narkis Street was one of the best falafel stands in Jerusalem. One of the times that I went to buy a falafel, the vender and the customer in front of me were chitchatting and chitchatting and chitchatting. To add to my annoyance, someone nearby was just laying on his car horn, spoiling the peacefulness of the day. The chitchatting ended with what must have been something like “I’d better go now.” The chitchatter, with a slightly quicker pace than a stroll, crossed the street to his car which he had parked blocking the exit from an alleyway. The honking was from a man in a car wanting to exit the alleyway.
Another time at another falafel stand, my attention was drawn to the situation by an excessive amount of honking. The honking was of the horns of a number of cars behind a bus which was stopped in the middle of the road. Many streets in Jerusalem are too narrow for cars to pass obstacles in their way. The reason that the bus was stopped was that a car was parked right on the corner so the bus couldn’t round the corner. A man was standing in the street in front of the bus frantically trying to catch the bus driver’s attention. The man was indicating how he would direct the driver to make the turn. The driver was purposefully looking away. Bus drivers in Jerusalem know to the centimetre where the back of the bus will be on any turn. After a while a man came with a falafel in hand and got into the car and drove off. The bus made its turn and the noise of the car horns subsided to its usual level.
I shouldn’t let other people’s foibles bother me. It bothered me also when people were overly fussy. Some ladies who hung around the Baptist House, wanting to feel useful, over-watered the potted flowers so that some of them were drowning.
Although Sunday was my day off, I sometimes hung around the Baptist House during afternoons when the Korean Church met there. The Korean children were better behaved than average children, but children will be children. Some young children accidentally locked themselves in the washroom and there was no way to unlock the door from the outside. As it was my day off, I didn’t hurry to get a ladder to help a parent climb in the washroom window. The children eventually figured out how to unlock the door, either following instructions from a parent calling through the window or a parent calling through the door.
Some problems were more than annoying. One night I was woken up by the sound of a crash outside. I rushed out to find that someone had thrown a large rock through the windshield of the church van. The next morning, during the police interview, I didn’t mention my suspicions. I suspected a couple of the church teenagers whom on the night before I had refused to drive home. P.K.’s (Preacher’s Kids) and M.K.’s (Missionary Kids) are sometimes rebellious.
Thievery was a constant problem. I suspected a certain man who lived across Narkis Street. Anything of value left out would soon disappear. Money was stolen from the cashbox of the Baptist House bookshop. One night a burglar broke into the safe in the office. (After I left volunteering there, I heard that the whole safe got stolen.)
One of the ladies in the church congregation tended toward paranoia. She thought people, perhaps her landlady, were entering her rented apartment while she was out. So she kept her valuables in the church safe. So, as I heard later, she lost her valuables.
We all have our faults. Living in Israel as long as I did and learning so little Hebrew could be considered a fault. My excuse is that when I was living at the Baptist House I was speaking English most of the day. I did go to ulpan (Hebrew language school). However, I was going in the evening after a long day’s work. As well as having difficulty learning Hebrew, I was having difficulty staying awake in class. I started kita aleph (grade 1) three times but finished only the third time.
It was getting more and more difficult to get visa extensions so I had to resort to leaving Israel, then returning. On my last return, I was told that the visa I was then receiving would be my last. Having heard that Israeli immigration officials kept records of the unwanted for ten years, I prepared for an extended stay outside of Israel.
I spent that last month touring Israel and the Sinai. It may not have been then as I was mostly travelling with a friend, but another time I was alone in Tel Aviv. Passing by a popular beach, I thought I'd go swimming. This would be my last chance for a while to go swimming in the Mediterranean, I was thinking. The problem was what to do with my backpack. I took it into the public washroom and changed into swimming trunks. Back on the beach, I left the backpack in an open space near the water. In the water, I kept a constant eye on it. There were numerous other sea or sun bathers around. I planned what I might yell out in Hebrew if someone “mistakenly” picked up my backpack and started walking off with it. Then a dog strolled up, lifted its leg, peed on my backpack, and strolled off.
Among other things that I did that month was to revisit Nuweiba and Saint Catherine's Monastery. I was travelling with a friend and we camped out in tents. Being with a friend greatly reduced the problem when going snorkeling in the Red Sea. We rented one mask and snorkel and went snorkeling one at a time, the other, meanwhile, watching our things. That trip I lost only my Israeli army coat which I had left in my unattended tent.
At Saint Catherine's, touring part of the monastery, we came across a room with a bin full of skulls. They were the skulls of deceased monks, so we learned, together in death as they were in life. We were told that after a monk had died and been buried for a while, the remains were exhumed and the bones dismembered and cleaned and sorted. The grave could be re-used.
We also climbed the steps up Mount Sinai that a monk had spent his lifetime chiseling out, and we camped the night in Elijah's Hollow. Before dawn we climbed to the top of the mountain to see the sunrise. There were a few young people there too. Seeing the sunrise is the thing to do when on Mount Sinai.
On the way back from Egypt to Israel, through the familiar border crossing, I was hoping that the Israeli immigration official wouldn't notice that the one month visa that I had been given in Haifa was my absolute final one. I was hoping he might give me another month or two. But all I got was a stern warning to leave the country before the deadline.
When the last day of my permitted stay in Israel arrived, or it may have been the second last day, I flew to England and from there returned to Canada.
Nine and a half years later, when in British Columbia, I happened to meet Meridel Rawlings. From my previous stay in Israel, I had known Meridel and her husband Jay and their ministry in Israel (www.jerusalemvistas.com). Meridel told me that they were looking for a tutor for their youngest son. As I was between jobs, I decided to take on the challenge so flew to Israel in the autumn of 1996. I received the usual three-month tourist visa.
Besides tutoring their son, I was house sitting the Rawlings’ new house in Mevasseret Zion. (The name can be loosely translated as bringing good news to Zion.) The house was finished on the outside, but on the inside some work still needed doing. It was necessary for someone to stay there because of burglars. When I was there, a burglar stopped trying to break in when he saw me inside. The neighbouring house got burgled three times during the six months that I was house sitting for the Rawlings.
One incident that I remember was making a phone call to complain about something, I forget what. I had it on speaker phone and was listening to music while waiting for an agent to answer. As the house wasn't heated, I was getting cold sitting there waiting so I started exercising. And I exercised vigorously for perhaps twenty minutes. Then an agent started speaking. I responded and voiced my complaint. Because I was breathing heavily, it must have sounded to the agent as though I were boiling mad.
In the valley below Mevasseret Zion, there was a dam. During the rainy season a lake grew behind it. But as soon as the rains stopped, the lake shrank to nothing. The water was seeping into the ground. Building the dam may not have been a wasted effort, however. Adding to the groundwater is good for springs and wells at a lower altitude.
Finishing tutoring, I found work with Christian Friends of Israel, Jerusalem (www.cfijerusalem.org). The founders of Christian Friends of Israel lived in Mevasseret Zion. As working with Christian Friends of Israel wasn’t full-time work, I got a job also at the Garden Tomb (www.gardentomb.com). The room that I rented in the Christian Quarter of the Old City belonged to a Palestinian working at the Garden Tomb.
One of my jobs with Christian Friends of Israel was driving the cook to the shook (market) to buy groceries. In order to drive the CFI van, I needed to get an Israeli driver's licence. In order to get a licence, I had to take a driving course. After taking the course I had to have a road test. I thought I did okay on the road test but the examiner failed me and sent me back to the driving school. I had to pay for the driving course a second time. I think the examiner got a kick-back from the school for getting them more students.
Christian Friends of Israel provided a nice cooked lunch for the staff. After lunch we all assembled for prayer. Sitting there in a warm room after a good meal, I had trouble keeping awake. Others may have thought that I found praying boring, but I like to think that my sleepiness was because of a lack of a sleep.
Living in the Old City was much more convenient than living in Mevasseret Zion as the office of Christian Friends of Israel was about a fifteen minute walk away through the New Gate and the Garden Tomb was about the same distance away when going through Damascus Gate. Usually I would go out the New Gate in the morning to work as odd job man with Christian Friends of Israel and then walk to the Garden Tomb to garden there for the afternoon and then return home through Damascus Gate. Weekends I usually worked at the Garden Tomb.
There were also non-Christians living in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. There was no problem with that except if the non-Christians were Jews making a point of being Jewish. On the route that I took to or from Damascus gate, I passed a building where some Jews lived. Israeli soldiers guarded the building as one of the residents had been killed just outside his home there.
During the nine and a half years that I had been out of Israel, there had been a noticeable worsening of attitudes between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. I had left Israel just before the first intifada (the first Palestinian uprising beginning in late 1987) and returned when hostilities were building up to the second intifada (beginning in 2000).
When buying things at the shook, people need to keep their bags close to them at all times. I remember setting my bag down while going to examine some fruit or vegetables at a stall only few metres away. Someone soon called, in Hebrew, “Whose bag is that!” People were afraid of bombs being left there. Similarly, garbage containers were constructed to minimize the threat. I once dropped some garbage in an elevated garbage container and it fell right through to the sidewalk below. It had no bottom. Bottomless garbage containers weren’t completely pointless as street cleaners could more easily clean up piles underneath them rather than bits of garbage strewn down the street.
While working one day at the office of Christian Friends of Israel, I heard an explosion in the distance, then another and another. The explosions were bomb blasts. Three suicide bombers had blown themselves up on the pedestrian street of Ben Yehuda, killing a number of Jews. The delays between the blasts were in order to give people time to gather to help the injured so the following blast would be in the midst of a bigger crowd.
Although, or perhaps because, I was working for Christian organizations, it was difficult getting visa extensions. I finally had to leave the country. Travelling to England and then Germany, I drove a Renault back to Israel for a German friend. The trip involved putting the car on a couple of ferries. Because of the political situation, it was not possible to drive from Turkey to Israel.
As I was still living in the Old City, parking the Renault was a problem. I usually parked it overnight in a vacant lot just outside the Old City walls. One morning I found a window smashed by someone breaking into it during the night.
Some streets in the Old City were drivable, though I seldom drove in the Old City. I remember watching a foreigner trying to turn his van around on a dead end street in the Old City. There was a Palestinian sitting on a stool outside a gate. If he had moved, it would have given the driver more room to turn around. But he didn’t move.
Having a car at my disposal when my German friend wasn’t in the country, somewhat altered my lifestyle. Three friends and I decided to go on a trip to Nuweiba. This would be my fourth visit, but my first with Nuweiba under Egyptian control rather than Israeli.
We first explored Eilat and vicinity. When looking for a shady spot to park the car, we were advised not to park under a tree. Why? Goats might climb on top of the car to reach the tree leaves.
The first complication when arriving at the Taba border crossing just south of Eilat was learning that we couldn't take the car any further without registering it and changing to Egyptian licence plates. That would have been an expensive proposition. So we parked the car in a hotel parking lot––could have been the Taba Hilton––and caught a bus to Nuweiba.
The area seemed to be much the same under Egyptian control as it was under Israeli control. Locals might have preferred it under Israeli control as tourism was down a bit. Young Bedouin men didn't appreciate the change as they didn't like getting drafted into the Egyptian army. The fish may have been better off under Israeli control. Although fishing may have been prohibited also by Egyptian preservation laws, locals were less observant of Egyptian laws than they had been of Israeli laws.
On the way back from Nuweiba we visited St. Catherine's Monastery and Mt. Sinai. (Mt. Sinai is called Jebel Musa in Arabic––the mountain of Moses.) As well as the steps up Mt. Sinai, which I had climbed over a decade earlier, there is a road.
In the middle of the night of December 31/ January 1, we joined a number of pilgrims going up the road, planning to arrive at the summit of Mt. Sinai before daybreak. I chose to walk but some others, including my companion, rode. How? Budget Rent a Camel. Yes, with us were a number of camels and Bedouins still trying to persuade us hikers to rent a camel. Along the way there were rest stops where we could buy snacks or a hot drink. At the last stop before the top we could have rented blankets and we were tempted to as it was quite cold.
The camels and Bedouins didn't go any further as that was where the camel route, as the road was called, met the steps––the last 750 steps to the top. We made it! The sunrise looked much the same to me as it had over a decade earlier. It was the first morning of 1998. I didn't realize it then, but that year would be an eventful year for me.
Going back down the mountain, camel rentals were cheaper. My companion rented one again but ended up walking in the end as the ride was too bumpy.
A couple of days later, back at the parking lot in Taba, I was relieved to find that our car was intact. There were no broken windows nor hoof marks on the roof.
Having that car probably led to an event that has altered my life considerably. In January of 1998 I was attending a conference by Intercessors for Israel at the Holy Land Hotel in Jerusalem. In an afternoon session of the conference, the organizers announced that it was snowing outside and those who had come with vehicles should consider leaving early. Since I was Canadian, I didn’t think the suggestion would apply to me.
By the end of the afternoon, the snow was quite deep. I had offered to drive some ladies home. We set off, first trying to drive uphill but then giving up and driving downhill. I didn’t have snow tires on the Renault. I managed to drive the ladies home, but from their place to the Old City was uphill again. I didn’t think I could make it. The ladies invited me to stay for the night in a spare room in their house. I accepted the invitation.
In the morning, there was a fair amount of snow on the roads. The ladies were planning on walking in the snow to the Old City and invited me to join them. I phoned the office of Christian Friends of Israel to say that I was stranded in another part of town. The man who answered the phone said that nothing much would be happening there that day as he was the only one who had made it in.
Then I phoned the Garden Tomb. A few people had managed to make it there. Because of the snow, the Garden Tomb would be closed for visitors that day, but staff would be busy clearing broken branches; the weight of the snow had broken branches off the trees. I apologized for not being able to make it as I was stranded a distance away from the Old City. Then I joined the ladies walking to the Old City.
One of my companions walking to the Old City was a beautiful Swiss lady. It was while we were walking and while they were taking photographs of the snow by the Western Wall in the Old City that I began thinking that the Swiss lady would make a nice wife. (I had prayed a bit about a wife but hadn’t actually stuffed a note between the stones of the Western Wall.)
Weeks later, around the middle of February, Valentine’s Day came around. Another lady had given me Valentine’s Day candy––little heart-shaped candies with mushy things like “I love you” written on them. Since I was trying to limit my sugar intake, I wouldn’t eat any of the candies. Rather than throw them out, I thought of passing them on. Years later, mentioning that the candies were a pass-on was the wrong thing for me to say.
It was Saturday morning. On the way to driving a handicapped man to church, I dropped off the box of candies at the Swiss lady’s home. She was still in bed, so said her flat mate who answered the door, so I left the box with the flat mate. The next day at work at the Garden Tomb, I got a phone call. It was the Swiss lady wondering what I meant by giving her those candies. We arranged to go for a walk together. Going for a walk together, we even held hands! That week we went for more walks together. At the end of the week I proposed marriage and she accepted.
We got married in June in the garden at the back of Christ Church, an old Anglican church in the Old City. We spent the first part of our honeymoon by the Dead Sea at Ein Gedi (Spring of the Kid) then flew to Canada, having decided that it would be too problematic remaining in Israel. From Canada we flew to Switzerland and then, later, returned to Canada. We haven’t been back to Israel since, though some time we would like to at least visit Israel again.