Round About Jerusalem

Soon after leaving our hotel today, we came to a blockaded street near the King David Hotel and an Israeli in uniform boarded our bus. I worried because my passport was back at the hotel. But he quickly went out the back door of the bus.



While we sat there, two women soldiers sealed off one of the streets and we learned they were looking for a terrorist rumored to be in our general vicinity. My stomach churned as I watched passing buses and hoped not to see one of them explode.

Eventually we were allowed to pass and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. We will probably never know if they found the terrorist. But there was no news of a terrorist attack fortunately.



We spent the morning at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial. We walked through the garden of the righteous which was created to honor those who helped Jews at great personal danger during the war. We saw a large memorial to Janus Kortzek, the pediatrician who had stayed with the orphans of Warsaw as they were all transported to Treblinka.



We solemnly walked through the Valley of the Communities, which attempts to represent the many towns and cities decimated by the Holocaust.



We saw a memorial to the partisans, the many men and women who offered resistance to the Nazis.


Growing in the rocks were beautiful flowers reminding us that life continues, even after so much death.



We drove up through the hills surrounding Jerusalem to yet another Holocaust memorial, the Scrolls of Fire Monument, created by Nathan Rappaport.



Lunch was at a modern mall, featuring kosher McDonalds and Israeli Coca-Cola.



After a rather solemn morning, we were treated to a wine tasting at the Tsora Vineyard.



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