In all my homiletics training I have been taught to be careful when talking to a congregation about the original langauges. Don't give people the impression that their translation is useless if they don't know the original langauges. Our tour leader did that the other day and I saw today that it through some people. Which is just what I had been learning. Glad I didn't do it.
Small interlude. As I sit here writing in the lobby of the hotel I find myself listening to some 90's music. Brings back the odd memory. I guess they like American music in Israel too. Small interlude complete.
Back to the tour. The day was spent in the upper Galilee. Our first visit was the center of Kabalism in Israel. A place called Zefat. The actual name in Hebrew is pronounced like spud except replace the d with a t. Sort of. I am not the Hebrew perspective. Here we learnt an interesting piece of history about CMJ. They had a place here that was a hospital. The Jews there did not want Christians in contact with sick Jews so they built a bigger hospital across the road. So CMJ turned their hospital into a school. They sold the building to a Scottish mission society for £1. The problem with this was that they did this in good faith but in the end it ended up in government hands. The place is now rather delapidated and falling apart.
Having never been in a synagogue before (that was't a ruin :) ) our next port of call was facinating.
I got my first opportunity to wear my dad's kippur. I think he would have approved. We learnt a few things about Kabbalism specifically that you cannot begin to learn it unless you are over 50, have a very good knowledge of Torah and are invited. I don't think Maddona or Britney Spears have any of these qualifications. But it makes them look good and that's all that counts these days especially in Hollywood. They also claim some truths similar to Jesus' teachings as their own. In that part of town we saw many men in the very traditional orthodox garb. The whole nine yards. The only other place I have ever seen it was at the Wall where we will hopefully be going very soon! From the synagogue we did some quick shopping for lunch and then hopped onto the bus to reach our next destination. Well you don't expect us to walk there do you? :)
In case you weren't sure that is a ruined synagogue. What's so special about it. Well it's the best preserved ruin in Israel. Joy. We stopped there for a teaching on the parable of the sower. We were told that the parable of the sower has links to rabbinic teaching concerning types of disciples. The comparisons were tenuous at best. Here is another example of using the Talmud as the hermeneutic for interpreting the Bible. Bad bad very bad. After that we had our lunch and were on our way. I didn't eat lunch as I hadn't found anything at the shop I recognised. I found a shady tree to lie under and read a bit. This turned out to be a mistake as when I was on the bus I felt a pain in my neck and discovered that a rather large ant had decided to munch me. Ouch!
Our last stop for the day was Mt Meron. Why did we go here? Cos it's a nice nature walk. And it was. Although our tour leader needs to study the correct definition of flat. He seems to have got it wrong the whole trip so far. Got to see the border to Lebanon and our two previous stops from that height. After a lecture I gave to one of my fellow travellers on the use of the P setting on her camera and how to adjust exposure in that mode we reached the bottom.
In the bus and off to the hotel. I was too tired and decided to forego the pool. That afternoon we had a repeat of the teaching on Torah that was done on the summit of mount Sinai. This was of course for us lemmings that didn't make it to the top. Again some good points were made mixed with some Scripture twisting. This is never fun. I was too tired to ask a question.
Had a nice glass of wine before bed. Really enjoyed my sweet dessert wine. Will continue the tradition till the bottle is empty.
More in the next post!
-- Post From My iPhone
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