I took another long break from writing. Shortly after my last post on October 7th, Hamas led an attack on Israeli soil, the first since the first since the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. 1,200 Jewish people were killed, and a resurgence of Israel-Hamas war has now divided the world.

I find myself in a place today where a little bit of writing about something fun might pull me out of the sadness of the last few months.

Day 7 saw us taking a cable car ride up Mount Masada, the fortress of Herod the Great. According to UNESCO World Heritage:

It is a symbol of the ancient kingdom of Israel, its violent destruction and the last stand of Jewish patriots in the face of the Roman army, in 73 A.D. It was built as a palace complex, in the classic style of the early Roman Empire, by Herod the Great, King of Judaea, (reigned 37 – 4 B.C.). The camps, fortifications and attack ramp that encircle the monument constitute the most complete Roman siege works surviving to the present day.

https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1040/#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20symbol%20of,reigned%2037%20%E2%80%93%204%20B.C.).

After Mount Masada, we took a drive through the Judean Hills to Mount Scopus to get the best views of Jerusalem. We then went to Mount of Olives where the western part of the slope has been used as a Jewish cemetery for 3,000 years. It is also the place where Jesus is said to have ascended to Heaven. The tour ventured to Mount Zion and King David’s tomb, the site associated with King David’s burial. The tomb is on the ground floor of a church that is said to hold the room of the Last Supper.

We ended the night at the Western Wall. The Western Wall (called the Wailing Wall by most people in the West), is an ancient limestone wall in the old city of Jerusalem in the spot known as Temple Mount. It is the holiest spot for Jewish people to pray as it is believed to be the last part of our Holy Temple. There is a tradition at the wall where people leave notes in the cracks of the wall for health and wellbeing. My mom and I left a note of health for a friend of ours who has cancer and generally took in the magnitude of such a place. I don’t cry much (okay, that’s a lie, I cry all the time), but it was such an overwhelming feeling seeing women praying and practising sorrow meditation.

One of the things that bothered me on this tour was that my mom and I were the only Jews doing the tour so we had to deal with the ignorance of a lot of the people on the tour. While Jewish women were praying at the wall, many of the women in our tour group were taking selfies or photos of their hands touching the wall. I have limited patience for the ignorance of others, and these people seemed completely oblivious to the seriousness of where we were. I’d been dealing with this for the entire trip, and I’m not sure I was great at hiding my facial expressions most of the time. Even our tour guide had a hard time with a lot of these people. He’d sit with me at the group dinners or walk with me when we were going to different sites and talk to me about the people and fun places to visit in the city when we had some free time.

This was the start of the wind-down of the trip and I was not ready to have to say goodbye to my parents. I never look forward to that part of my trip.