Part 5 Day 3B Our Trip To Israel

One of our excursions on this day was to the town of Nazareth.  What impressed me about this town was that even though there were automobiles and all the modern amenities we would find here in the states, it still maintained the appearance of a village because of the stone everywhere in the buildings.  We never did see one painted structure in all our travels in Israel.  Every building was gray stone.  There were red roofs made of tile, but that was the only color we saw.  The terrain was dry and dusty and the buildings seemed to disappear into the earth as though they were rising out of it by themselves.  I liked it there very much, because it seemed like such a simple life.

Nazareth is a town of about 65,000 people predominantly Muslim Arabs.  As we rode the streets in our tour bus we could see school children getting off the buses to go home.  The children wore uniforms of polo shirts and jeans, even the girls.  The colors were evidence of which school they attended.  Every child wore the same color for their school.  I was surprised to see that the unmarried young high school girls were not wearing traditional Islamic garb, but we did see women with children waiting for a bus, who were wearing it.

In Nazareth we visited the house of a sect called the “Druze” who opened their home regularly for groups of people for lunch.  We sat on couches all around very large rooms with coffee table high serving tables.  There were two rooms next to each other that were able to accommodate the 43 people on our tour.

A young woman came out while we were eating to explain the religion of the Druze to us.  The Druze religion was probably the most ridiculous religion that I have heard of.  It goes like this; the original Druze left the Islamic religion for the sake of equality between the sexes.  Their rules were basically that each person had a choice to be a “secular” Druze or a “religious” Druze.  The secular Druze could live as they pleased, no matter how outrageous and every one in the sect accepted them and their choice.  The religious Druze placed on themselves religious morals and clothing that restricted their behavior and living style.  These religious Druze were accepted by the sect also.  So let’s recap….Immoral secular Druze were allowed to be that way without challenge and that was alright and the religious Druze were allowed to be strict in their way of life without challenge and that was accepted by the secular Druze.  Is this beginning to sound like the American culture? 

The Druze practiced the old way of marriage, in that when a man got married, he did not leave his father’s home, he simply built on top of it another level and brought his wife there to start a family.  Some of the Druze homes were eight stories high, this sect tended to have large families and could have as many as 50 people in one household.  That is why the rooms were so large where we dined for lunch.  These rooms were the gathering place for much of the family activity.  My first question about this living arrangement was, “how do all these people get alone well enough to live with each other?”  The answer became clear when we learned that there were no challenges to lifestyle since everyone “did what was right in their own eyes.”  I guess that it would be easy to dwell together when no one cared about moral choices.  Although my guess is that there is more conflict than the Druze would like to admit.  After all when there are no morals or restrictions on behavior, there must be sin abounding, when sin abounds there are very hateful attitudes.  Attitudes must be unrestrained if there are no expectations of conduct.  If there are no moral standards then what prevents one Druze from stealing from another one, whether it be clothing or a spouse.  There is a standard in terms of the pecking order in the family. The father and mother are highly respected and cared for in the family.

I recall a scripture that says; “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Another place we visited on this day was the Nazareth Village.  It was a compound where the Christians in the area built a replica village to demonstrate the life style in the time of Christ.  We saw real people dressed in the costume of the time doing what the villagers would have been doing then.  We saw a 400 year old olive tree there; they can live up to 1000 years old.  There have been claims that the olive tree can live up to 5000 years.  The olive seed has as much oil in it as the olive itself and is desired in the making of Olive oil, so the seeds are not thrown out, they are valuable.  We were surprised to learn that green olives are not a different kind of olive; they are simply a black olive that has been picked before it ripens.  The black olives are the fully ripe olives.

As we were walking the paths to see the actors in their roles we came to a corral that held several goats and one sheep.  Outside the corral was a young man dressed as a shepherd.  Another lady and I approached the corral to reach inside and pet the goats, but before we got to them they began to walk away.  The Shepherd saw that we wanted to pet them so he said a couple of words in Hebrew and the goats immediately returned to the front of the corral.  There was no hesitation at all and they moved quickly.  I was deeply impacted by this, because it reminded me of the verse “My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me.”  Then we watched the shepherd open the gate and walk away from us to take the goats to another place.  Those goats stayed so close to him that they were practically stepping on his feet and they were jumping up on him.  This was a picture of how our walk with Christ should look.  Do we enthusiastically run after Him the way these goats desired to be with their shepherd?  Later in the trip we saw another shepherd herding his sheep along the dry desert.  I asked our guide Muriam where on earth was he going; there was no food or water in sight that we could see? She told me that the shepherd knows the places to go to get food and water and the goats know this, so they stay very close to him.

Another lesson for us from life was in this real life picture of a principle of our walk with Christ.  Do we trust Him to know where we should go even if we cannot see with our eyes His purpose?  Those goats trusted their master more than we trust our Lord.

Toward the end of the day we visited the Ethiopian In Take Center where Ethiopian refugees are housed and trained before being allowed to become citizens of Israel.  They are people who were forced into Christianity by the Catholic Church in their ancestry, but desire to be Jewish in their religion. In order to become citizens of Israel they must proclaim that they are of the Jewish religion and be able to prove a Jewish heritage in their families.  When we got off the bus, a barrage of children came at us in force.  They ran up to us to see the visitors.  I bent down to give them a hug, they grabbed on so tight that I toppled over from the weight of four very affectionate children.  Grandpa got a picture of this. Those children followed us all over the camp.  When we went into the common hall to hear a talk about what this organization does, we were placed on one side of a partitian with the Ethiopian men and on the other side all the women sat.   The Ethiopians could not speak English or Hebrew but we got a chance to greet them in sign language.  They were being trained in Hebrew and the Torah during their stay and would be expected to hold down jobs after leaving the compound. 

Our next and last stop was a very nice restaurant on the Sea of Galilee in Tiberius.  The food was amazing.  We sat in a candle lit room waiting for our food when a boat with fireworks, sailing up next to our tables that were situated on the dock next to the Sea.  The music coming from the boat was our national anthem.  As the music played and the fireworks flashed a group of Israeli children came and sang "God Bless America to us.  It brought tears to some of our eyes that we were treated with such honor and that these people wanted to bless us and our country.  It was delightful.  The Restaurant had a roof but was completely opened to the Sea and the kitchen was in the middle where the food was prepared. 

This was also the day that Gilad Shalete was released from captivity.  He was a young man who was captured and held for ransom by the Palestinians some four years ago.  We were in the Jesus Boat Museum when the news came.  We had to ask someone what all the excitement was because we couldn’t understand Hebrew.  The news was translated for us by our guide Muriam, and it made us all laugh.  She said that the Palestinians claimed that the Jews were so weak and valueless that they got only one man back compared to the 1000 Palestinians that were returned to them in ransom.  The reply of the Israeli people was that the Jews were so valuable that it took one Jew to equal over 1000 Palestinians.  I think there were about 1026 Palestinians that were released to bring back Gilad.  There was rejoicing in Israel that day.

Gwendolyn petting the Goats

The Shepherd and his goats and one sheep

A woman spinning her thread to make cloth.  This is why cloth was so expensive in the days of Christ, imagine how long it would take person to make enough thread to make a garment.

At the Ethiopian Intake Center, these girls were sweetie pies.

The Druze house where we had lunch and learned about this sect who broke off from Islam

The Druze House

The Stairs Entrance to the Druze house