MEA Weekly Picture from Israel Masada

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Avir on the paths at the top of Masada

Avir is visiting Masada today.  Masada is a rugged natural fortress situated on an isolated rock plateau, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea.   It is a dramatic landscape of great natural beauty.  On the eastern side, the rock falls in a sheer drop of approximately 450 metres to the Dead Sea.

Herod the Great had his ‘winter home’ on the top of Masada.  During the Roman Period, Herod ruled Judea and with his great wealth he built several palaces based on classic Roman architecture.  As a winter home, Masada was luxurious, particularly the ‘Hanging Palace’ with its three terraced swimming pools hanging off the top side of the hill at one end.  These opulent terraces is an outstanding example of design and elaborate engineering, constructed in extreme conditions.  As a fortress, it was well-stocked in its storehouses, cisterns and well protected by a wall.

The Great Revolt of the Jews against the Romans began in 66 AD, about 36 years after the life of Yeshua and some 75 years after Herod’s death.  After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, a group of zealots joined the residents at Masada. For three years, this small band of Jewish zealots held out by harassing and raiding the significant Roman military force. The Romans finally held siege to this tiny fortress high up in the sky, which held the last of the Jewish rebels, an event which was chronicled by Flavius Josephus, a famous Jewish rebel leader whom the Romans captured and used his talents as an historian.

After three years of building a huge ramp on earth right up to the fortress on top of Masada, the Jews realised that the Tenth Roman Legion’s battering rams and catapults would succeed in breaching Masada’s walls. Elazar ben Yair, the Zealots’ leader, decided that all the Jewish defenders should commit suicide at their own hand, rather than be taken into slavery or killed at the hands of the Romans. The Zealots cast lots to choose ten men to kill the remainder as well as choosing one man who would kill the final few, after which he killed himself.

Flavius recounts this dramatically story, told to him by two surviving women. Ben Yair led almost one thousand men, women and children in this last heroic stand after they burnt down the fortress.  To many, Masada symbolizes the determination of the Jewish people to be free in its own land.  Avir is to appear in other Masada pictures over the next few weeks.

MEA Weekly Picture from Israel

Pictures from Israel

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Avir at the Gates

From the top of the Mount of Olives, Avir is looking through the gates to a scene that is familiar to many visitors in Jerusalem, the 150,000 gravestones that cover the entire western and much of the southern slopes of this Mount, which has been used as a Jewish cemetery for over 3,000 years.

The Mount of Olives, where according to the Bible in Zechariah 14:4, those buried here will be resurrected when the Messiah comes.  The earliest tombs are located at the foot of the mountain in the Kidron Valley, where great men of history were also buried. Some of them were: King David’s rebellious son Absalom; the First Temple priest Zechariah; another bears an inscription mentioning the sons of Hezir, a priestly family that lived 2,000 years ago.

Jewish burial here continued throughout the centuries, interrupted only between 1948 and 1967 when Jerusalem was divided.

MEA Weekly Picture from Israel

Pictures from Israel

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On the road to Jerusalem

Avir is on the road again, with walking shoes on and camera ready, catching all the best sights of the Jerusalem skyline and the Old City. The view from the Mount of Olives is one of the best places to check out. This view of Jerusalem, where every building shines white with its golden-coloured sandstone, is a sight to behold!  It is quite beautiful. Like most modern cities, Jerusalem’s architecture is uniquely different. Contemporary designs in Jerusalem are essentially Post-Modern, with lingering influences of the International Bauhaus style, as well as Functionalism, a late-20th Century reaction to Modernism, which itself was a post-World War development against established forms and designs.

There are even some old structures dating back thousands of years to Biblical times and many new structures that were built with the latest technology. High-rises weren’t always part of Jerusalem’s urban planning plan, although in its day, the Temple of Solomon rose to about 20-storys high on what is now known as the Temple Mount.

“Then Solomon began to build the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. It was on the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David, his father.”  (2 Chron.3:1)

The Temple Mount is the trapezoid-shaped, walled-in area at the south-eastern corner of the Old City of Jerusalem. The four walls surrounding it date back – at least in their lower parts – to the time of the Second Jewish Temple, built at the end of first century B.C.E.    These huge supporting walls, partly buried underground, were built around the summit of the eastern hill identified as Mount Moriah, the site traditionally viewed as the location of where Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice and the known location of the two Jewish Temples. The gaps between the walls and the mount were filled in to create a large surface area around the Temple. Its eastern wall and the eastern half of its southern wall form part of the city wall on those sides. Deep valleys (now partly filled by debris) run outside the walls (northeast, east, south, west), thus separating the Temple Mount from and elevating it above its surroundings, both inside and outside the city.

Many people who live and work in Jerusalem, including the tens of thousands of visitors a year, never  seem to get bored with the amazing views it provides.