Menorah

First stop of a long day was a visit to see the menorah which symbolises Israel!

Will update this tomorrow, time for dinner now!

Our guide, Gade, pointed out various panels of the Menorah including one of Judas Maccabaeus which is the Handel piece we are doing for our concert this season. The model was made by Benno Elkan, a German Jew who escaped to Britain.

Following this we visited the Israel museum where there is a model of Jerusalem as it was 2,000 years ago. It was made in the 60s when the archeology was not as advanced as now and a lot more is known now which would mean a change of plan!

From there we drove to the garden tomb, the alternative place of burial for Jesus and had a communion service there!

We drove from there through the ultraorthodox Jewish part of the city. It was notable that many men were around and we were told that because so many Jews had died in the holocaust they needed a class of thinkers! So they are paid to be idle and produce offspring!

We arrived at Yad Vashem in time for a late lunch, once again taken from the breakfast table as I had no money left! After an hour we had an introduction to the museum which lasted too long as we had only 1.5 hours to go round the museum which was fascinating, a mixture of audiovisual personal accounts of the holocaust and artefacts from different extermination camps. Plus a list of the righteous who saved Jews. Here was so much to take in.

Extras: orthodox Jewish area, model of Jerusalem,