For The Someday Book

After the deep emotional and spiritual work we had been doing on our first few days in Jerusalem, all of us were relieved for a day of recreation in the desert. The day’s agenda included a trip to Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered), swimming in the Dead Sea, a cable car ride to the Monastery of the Temptation, and exploring the Tel as-Sultan in Jericho. All of these destinations were fascinating, but they did not carry such a burdensome weight of spiritual history. I was ready to engage the day with the joy and delight of new experiences.

Leaving behind the green of Jerusalem as we enter the Judean wilderness

We drove out of the city by going over the Mount of Olives, which is 2600 feet above sea level. In less than 20 miles, we dropped nearly 4000 feet—the shores of the Dead Sea are almost 1400 feet below sea level, the lowest place on earth. Our ears were a-popping! On the way, we again took one of the new roads built by the Israelis to facilitate Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which ran like a direct highway into the Judean wilderness. Our driver, Talib, pointed out that Palestinians were not allowed to drive on this road, but used the old Roman road that wound through the towns of Bethany, Bethphage and more. Everywhere you go in Israel/Palestine, you are confronted with the struggle over control of land and property.

A truck with Palestinian plates drives parallel to us on the Roman Road, unable to use the new highway.

An Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

We also saw many Bedouin encampments along the way. Israel has given the Bedouin citizenship rights, but demanded that they settled down from their nomadic practices. The encampments we saw in the Judean wilderness were rudimentary, although we saw evidence in the Galilee of towns and schools built especially for Bedouin communities. The major cultural shifts away from nomadic life among the Bedouin have not come easily, and poverty is in evidence everywhere.

A Bedouin settlement

The highlight of the Bedouin territory, especially for those of us who are the parents of young children, were the camels. There were camels everywhere! They caught us by surprise on the way down, but we vowed to have our cameras at the ready for our return. We all wanted a photo of the camels to show our children when we returned.

One lonely camel, whose picture is fuzzy because it was taken out the bus window at full speed.

Our first stop was Qumran, where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a young Bedouin boy in a cave in 1947. Between 1947 and 1956, nearly 1,000 scrolls were found in nearby caves, preserved almost perfectly for 2,000 years. They represent copies of Hebrew Bible books, along with community rules and logs from the Essene community. The scrolls have made major impacts on biblical scholarship, and it was fascinating to look out on the hillside and see the caves where they were found. Next time I see a note in my study bible about “Q4,” I’ll know that it refers to a scroll found in Cave 4, which I saw with my own eyes.

A reproduction of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, on display at Qumran

Cave 4, where several scrolls were found

Qumran has since become a site of major excavations, uncovering the community life of the Essenes. The Essenes were a Jewish sect that existed from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE. They chose to withdraw from the Second Temple practices and follow a stricter community rule which included common meals, ritual baths, celibacy and group living. Many think John the Baptist had some connection with the Essenes. The Qumran site has uncovered their cisterns, aqueducts, dining area, and many ritual baths, along with artifacts and Dead Sea scrolls that detail life in the community. It was fascinating to imagine a community living in the desert in such ascetic conditions.

Steps for the ritual bath, divided into three sections. One for those unclean going in, one for those clean going out, with the middle section to separate them from one another.

The remains of a first-century latrine at Qumran.

From Qumran, we completed our descent to the shores of the Dead Sea, where we donned swimsuits and took a dunk in the famous salt and mineral-laden waters. Swimming in the Dead Sea was just pure fun. Each of us cast aside our concerns about body image or looking graceful, and just acted like children at the beach. Any hope of dignity soon disappeared when the knee-deep mud at the water’s edge caused most of us to fall in immediately, covered in the (supposedly beautifying) Dead Sea mud. The 28.5% salt and mineral content makes it impossible to sink in the Sea, but it also is challenging to get any parts of your body to stay under the water! As a group, we laughed and laughed as each of us tried to shift our weight and get our feet underneath us into a standing position, only to see them bounce to the surface again. Once we got the hang of floating, we even engaged in some synchronized swimming, much to the amusement of ourselves and our colleagues on the shore.

Synchronized swimming in the Dead Sea

Like our “polar plunge” in the Sea of Galilee, floating in the Dead Sea felt like the healing waters of baptism. Casting off any cares and concerns, I just let my body get covered in mud and float around awkwardly in the water. Our tour guide told us, with a wink and a smile, that a swim in the Dead Sea minerals will make you look 10 years younger. I’m not sure my skin felt that much smoother, but my heart definitely felt lighter from the joy and playfulness of the place.

Check it out: no hands AND no feet in the water, yet still we float! How cool is that?

After cleaning up and changing from our swim, we headed into Jericho (part of the West Bank). You wouldn’t think that the forbidding monastery built into the cliff cave on the Mount of Temptation (traditional site of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness) would also be a site of joy and playfulness, but when you have to take a cable car ride to get there, it has a certain amusement park feel to it. Our group piled into three cable cars to make the five minute ascent to the top. We laughed and took pictures of the amazing view, and someone even started a light-hearted Hava Nashira, with each car singing one part of the round.

The cable car for the ride up to the Mount of Temptation

Can you see our destination? On the left, almost to the top of the mountain, the monastery hangs off the cliff.

Waving and taking pictures and singing "Hava Nashira"

The monastery is only 350 meters above sea level, which doesn’t sound like much until you remember that you’re starting near the Dead Sea, which is nearly 1400 feet below sea level—so it’s actually a steep climb. At the top, the monastery itself hovers out over the sheer cliff face, looking over a series of caves that have served as hermitage sites for Christian monastics since the first centuries after Christ. We got our exercise with more switchback steps on the mountainside, but it was worth the workout to see the spectacular view from the monastery. On the right were the hillside caves, and on the left were the monastery cubicles built off the side of the mountain. Although this was first developed as a monastic site by the Byzantines in the 5th century, it was abandoned and destroyed and not rebuilt until the late 19th century. This site was not for those who are afraid of heights!

Once we got to the top, we still had to climb all these steps to reach the monastery.

Looking out from the monastery to the caves in the cliff. These are the kinds of caves Jesus would have spent time in during his temptation in the wilderness. You can't tell from the photo, but they are hundreds of feet up the cliff, nearly impossible to reach.

Hanging off the side of the cliff, looking back at the monastery and the caves.

After a cable car descent, lunch and a little shopping, we explored Tel as-Sultan, the site of historic Jericho. The signs all claim that Jericho is the oldest continuously-occupied city in the world, dating back at least 12,000  years. As we climbed the archeological site, we saw the remaining walls of mud brick dwellings from several periods before Christ, along with black layers indicating the city’s destruction. Despite the wealth of archeological information found in the city, there is no evidence of that the famous walls ever “came a-tumblin’ down.” The most interesting and impressive find doesn’t look like much in the photo, but it is a Neolithic tower, a stone structure built sometime around 10,000 BCE, probably for worship. It was amazing to stand on the hilltop and imagine that human beings had been making a way of life in this desert for millenia.

The circular stone tower at the center dates back to the Neolithic period in Jericho.

If you look closely, you can see various layers of brick, and even the two layers of black indicating fires.

Me in Jericho, the oldest continuously-occupied city in the world, with mud-brick Bronze Age homes in the background.

When we piled back into the bus to return to Jerusalem, the air was full of laughter and joy. The tour guide teased us for our obsession with the camels, and we teased each other for rocking the cable cars, buying goofy souvenirs, getting stuck in the mud, and not losing as many wrinkles as we had hoped after our dip in the Dead Sea. We agreed that, even if the outside didn’t show it, we all felt younger at heart after our boisterous fun. Friendship, laughter, playfulness, joy—these are part of the pilgrimage experience, too. This day of recreation was just as holy as the days of serious contemplation, and we were re-created, renewed in joy and love.

Camels! Look at all the camels!