Hezekiah's Tunnel and Israel Museum ... by Tommy

Shalom Y'all. It is I, the T man alive and well. I realize that it has been quite awhile since I have written anything, but you all probably knew it would be like that from the start. I am not very good with the computer and I do not type fast. However I do enjoy writing every now and then and hope to be doing so more often in the near future.

So here we go, Hannah was very nice and uploaded all of theses pictures for me, so now I'm gonna try to tell you about them ...... Let me know how I do :)

Here are some pictures from Tuesday - June 14th.

Hezekiah's Tunnel is a tunnel that (you guessed it) dates back to the time of King Hezekiah. There are at least two references in scripture that talk about this tunnel 2 Kings 20:20 And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? And 2 Chronicles 32:30 This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.

Here is a little bit of history of Hezekiah's Tunnel: In 701 BCE, King Hezekiah prepared the tunnel as a defense against an invading force, led by the Assyrian General Sencherib, who was laying siege to the city. In the Book of Chronicles, we read how Hezekiah stopped up the single source of water in the area, the Gihon spring. King Hezekiah's goal was twofold. Not only would he cut off the water supply to the invading army, but he could also provide an abundance of water for the residents of Jerusalem. In the end, Hezekiah was victorious. Jerusalem withstood the vicious siege and a defeated Sencherib, leaving him with his Assyrian army in disgrace.

There is so much history about this tunnel, but I will not explain about it any further. I think y'all get the idea of what it was used for. But for those of you who do not understand, my advice would be to go there and see it for yourself :) ... Oh yeah, I suggest you go and see it for yourself either way. And if you need a guided tour, just let me know, I'd be more then happy :)

A garden near the entrance of the tunnel.

Steps leading down to the entrance.

You had to walk quite a distance to get to the tunnel. I was usually in the lead ... you know, kinda the daring one :) or protective - I'm still trying to make up my mind :)

The steps down to the tunnel!

Cathrin and Yunis came along with us.

There were quite a few steps and it continually got narrower and narrower as you went down :)  Not exactly a place for claustrophobic people, although you do have a lot of head room - in most places.

I cannot remember what the significance of this was, other then a hole in the ground, but here it is anyway :)

A small room off to the side of the tunnel, there were quite a few of these.

Yunis was having a great time until we got to the water part of the tunnel. On our way into the tunnel, we got stuck in between two groups of school children on a field trip :) I don't think a single one of them knew how to talk quietly; they were yelling and screaming the whole way. I cannot blame Yunis for getting scared at all. I ended up carrying him most of the way but after awhile he got used to the water and the screaming and had a blast :)

Don't worry, Hannah did not put the dent in my head, it had something to do with lighting in the background :)

Cross walks and bracing to hold up the ground and buildings that are on top of us :)

All of the old looking rocks date back to the time the tunnel was built. There is sooo much that has not been uncovered.

The Canaanite Tunnel, is a separate smaller tunnel from the Hezekiah Tunnel but it is in a very close proximity to it. It is currently a dry tunnel only about 400 feet long. However Hezekiah's Tunnel has water in it and it is about 1750 feet long. We did not do the the Canaanite Tunnel; we wanted to rough it and get wet :)

Here is the Hezekiah Tunnel. The water is not very deep, about two and a half at the deepest, but most of the way it was only about a foot to a foot and a half deep. However, it could easily be thirty or forty feet deep if they filled it with water. That was how tall the tunnel was in many places, but it was only about three feet wide at the widest point and no more then two foot at the narrowest point. With such tall ceilings, the sound echoed very well ... Oh Yeah, did I tell to you that we got caught in between two groups of school children yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs? It was quite LOUD to say the least :)

Me in the front, carrying Yunis (you can barely see his head peeking over my right shoulder) followed by Cathrin and and Hannah bring up the rear and taking pictures. We all had our loaded backpacks on and were doing our best to squeeze through. At one point I wondered if I was going to make it through a certain point with my backpack on my back and Yunis in my arms. Yunis and I became great buddies and he loved his rides in my arms or on my shoulders. At one point (on one of his many rides), he told me in German that I was too bumpy and he wanted to get down :) I did know what he was saying so I kept walking :) After a little bit Cathrin translated what he said.

Hannah had to take her own picture, due to the fact that I could not go back and get one of her.

There are many channels that lead off from the main tunnel, I think this is one of them :)

Exiting the water part of the tunnel. The water was sooo cold, but it felt very good. However if you ever get a chance to do it, I recommend wearing some sort of flip flop or sandal. I did it barefoot and it was quite a challenge to not stub my toe or step on a sharp rock :) I made it through without getting too beat up!

The Pool of Siloam. This is the pool of water where the Temple Priest would go down yearly on the last day of Sukkot (Tabernacles). He would draw water from this pool, and take it back up to the Temple and pour it out on the Alter. John 7:37-38 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Although scripture does not say it, it is believed that it was at the time when the Priest were pouring the water on the Alter that Yeshua stood up and said what He said in the verse above. I cannot say for sure that that is how it happened (seeing as I was not there), but we do know that it was somewhere in the same time frame since both of these things happened on the same day, that being the last great day of Sukkot.

I made it! Although it was quite embarrassing to walk around with the front of my shorts wet like they were :) I was glad that everyone else around me knew that I had just come from the tunnel and that the low water in it was the culprit :)

Another pool - I think it was another section of The Pool of Siloam.

After we left the tunnel area, we had to walk along the outside of the City of David (as the area of the tunnel was called) to get to the exit. While walking along, we saw these caves. They are believed to be the burial sites of king David and his family. Whether that is the case or not I do not know, but it was neat seeing them.

On Wednesday morning (June 15th), we visited the Israel Museum. The structure below is the well-known famous Shrine Of The Book. It is where they house the Dead Sea scrolls. The white structure resembles the lid of the clay jars that they found the scrolls in. They did not allow us to take any pictures inside the shrine, but we did get to go in and take a look around. Except for a small section of Isaiah, they do not have any of the original scrolls on display. They do however have copies of the scrolls on display.

Walking in the museum ... besides all of the buildings, there are huge garden areas that you get to walk through. They are very nice and well kept.

The Shrine Of The Book.

I think that this next picture was one of my favorite parts of the whole museum. It is a model of the second Temple and the city of Jerusalem at that time period.

I do not know who built this model, but whoever it was did a fabulous job. Kol HaKavod (Well Done)!

We were able to go up on an overlook area and take this picture. The person on the right in the picture is Cathrin. It kinda gives you an idea of how big the model is.

The Temple, with Hannah in the background.

Yunis was glad to be on his feet again. He had had a long ride on my shoulders on the way to the museum, due to the fact that we did not know which bus to take and had to probably walk about a mile and a half to get to the museum.

Can you imagine coming to this holy site three times a year to worship YHVH Our Elohim - the one and only living God? What a time of rejoicing that must have been! I look forward to the day when we will all (and I mean all - every nation and every tongue) come to YHVH's Holy Temple and worship Him. No longer will there be strife, no longer will there be sickness and disease, no longer will there be division in the body of Messiah, no longer will families be split in two, no longer will people question whether Yeshua in Messiah, etc. We will all live as one people under one ruler Yeshua the Messiah. YHVH I pray that you will speed this day. I long with my whole heart for the coming of Your son Yeshua HaMosiach Amen.

A map explaining what the different buildings are.

A marble column dating back at least to the time of Yeshua.

A view of the southeast from the museum. You can see the beginning of the Judean wilderness in the background.

A map of Jerusalem in the time of the second Temple.

Cathrin took this picture of Hannah and me.

And a close up :)

Some friendly Israeli girls took this picture for us.

And this one.

The Knesset building.

Walking to the artifacts part of the museum.

Once again we were not allowed to take pictures inside of the buildings, but we did have a very funny experience. After walking around the different buildings and seeing tons of ancient artifacts, we looked at the clock and realized that it was time for us to leave the museum so that we could be on time for our next appointment. As we were walking along, Hannah was in the front and we were looking for an exit. I was not paying much attention to where we were headed, but was just following Hannah. Next thing I know, she pushes open a door and walks outside. Cathrin followed her, so naturally I did the same. As soon as I hear the door click shut behind me, I knew something was wrong. I looked up to realize that we had just walked out a fire escape door and were now on the roof of the museum :) By this time Cathrin realized what had happened and so had Hannah. 

We started trying to figure out a way to get out of the situation that we were in. My first thought was of the door, so I turned around to open it and found to our disappointment that it could only be opened from the inside :) We then started looking for steps or a ladder to get down. There were neither of those, so we decided to knock on the glass door when someone walked by. The glass was so thick that no one could hear us on the inside and it was tented so dark that we could hardly see when someone walked pass on the inside. By this point Cathrin and I were both laying into Hannah, in a friendly way though :)  After a few minutes a security man came along and opened the door. And unlike Adam I did not say "It was the woman". I just apologized and we proceeded on to the real exit. I was in the lead this time and we made it out without any further incident, beside the fact of giving Hannah a hard time the rest of the day :)

Well I had better be getting along. I've been kinda long winded and I have other things that need to be gotten to. I plan to write in the near future about some of the different lessons that YHVH taught me while over there.

Shalom until the next time,

T for the two of us.

P.S. If any of you are receiving these posts via email and there is something mentioned about a video, then you will need to click on the link to go to the actual blog to watch. I figure that you have figured that out by now, but just in case you had not, I thought I'd inform you.

In Jerusalem: Tuesday and Wednesday ... by Hannah

On Tuesday June 14th, we slept in later than usual, and left the house around 10 or 11am. We took the bus to the main station with Cathrin and Yunis, and then separated, since Tommy and I had a meeting with someone. We tried to take the bus to the Ben Yehuda street area, but after sitting in traffic for quite awhile ... and realizing that we were running late anyway ... we decided to get out and walk! We passed dozens of buses :)

This is near the Mahane Yehuda area - the Jerusalem shuk

So many people were getting on and off the buses ... most (or at least a lot) of the buses go through this area ... and they all stop about every quarter mile :)  That may be an exaggeration, but not much!

We finally reached office of Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, who we were meeting with. Reb Avraham has an organization called Azamra. This website "is dedicated to global outreach to people of all backgrounds and beliefs through Internet, quality publications and educational programs promoting the study and practice of Torah, healthy lifestyle, environmental responsibility and the pursuit of peace."

We met Reb Avraham at the Prayer and Action for Israel event, hosted by PJTN at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. My father and most of us children volunteered at this event at Opryland in Nashville this past February. Reb Avraham approached my father with some questions about what we believed and my father shared how we believe in Yeshua as the Messiah and observe the Torah and have a love for the people and land of Israel. We children were very privileged when Reb Avraham blessed each of us ... such beautiful blessings they were!

When Tommy and I were preparing to go to Israel, Reb Avraham invited us to go and visit him while we were in Jerusalem. We accepted the invitation and spent a wonderful couple of hours in discussion ... getting to know each other better and sharing what was on our hearts. Reb Avraham shared that he knows of people across the world (through his organization) that were not raised Jewish, but whose hearts are being turned to the Torah and the land of Israel and they believe they are a part of Israel.

After leaving his office, we walked to the old city and met up with Cathrin and Yunis. We made our way to the City of David area where we were able to visit Hezekiah's Tunnel! I will share pictures of that later.

As we were walking in that area, the call for prayers began in all of the surrounding mosques ... and there are a lot of them. It is such an eerie sound.

These pictures were taken from the west side of the Kidron Valley, looking at the Arab villages on the east side of the valley. 

I'm not sure if this is considered Silwan or Ras El-Amud.

The Kidron Valley

A horse in Jerusalem!

You can see the cemetery on the Mount of Olives in the left side of the photo.

On Tuesday evening, we joined Avi and Dina's tour group at the Grand Court Hotel to listen to Bruce Brill and his son Oren play some "Jewgrass" music. Below is one of the videos that we took.





After the concert was over, we got a taxi with Avi and Dina and went back to their house. It was pretty late by the time we went to bed!

The following morning (Wednesday, the 15th) we took a bus back into the city and went to the Israel Museum. This was another place that we had not visited during our family's stay in Israel.

This is the Supreme Court building - we walked past it to get to the museum.

This is the Knesset - Israel's parliament building. It is also near the museum.

Tommy and Yunis in front of the Knesset.

We took quite a few pictures at the museum, but we will publish them on a different post. After leaving the museum around noon, we went to the old city and did some shopping. We also took the Western Wall tour, which we had done as a family but Cathrin had not seen it. Once again, there are quite a few pictures, so we will post those separately.

In the evening, we went to see the Yemin Moshe neighborhood area and the Montefiore windmill. Our family has a historical fiction book series called Promise Of Zion by Robert Elmer and we have read them through several times. They are written for a fairly young audience (maybe 8-14) but are very good and we all enjoyed them. Anyway, part of the story took place in this area and we wanted to see it.

It is such a beautiful peaceful area.

The western view of the old city.

The old city again ... across the Hinnom Valley.

The Montefiore Windmill!

The roof of a building near the windmill plaza.

I don't know that you can see it in this picture, but the border fence is behind Tommy off in the distance. He was intentionally showing the orange flagging on his backpack (orange is the color of the settlers who believe that all of Israel should belong to Israel. Makes sense, huh?!)

I had orange flagging on my backpack too :)

That night was the first night of big light show in Jerusalem. We had seen people setting up all types of exhibits throughout the old city area and wanted to see what it looked like once the lights were on. Since we had a little time to kill, we decided to try and find Succat Hallel - a 24/7 prayer house. Abba had visited it when he was in Jerusalem by himself, but we had never been there. We knew it was in the basement of the Mount Zion hotel, and thought it would be fairly easy to find.

A beautiful moon!

The Hinnom Valley with the old city in the background.

The trolley car ... this was another part of the story in Promise of Zion. Can you imagine riding across the valley in this thing?!

The line for the trolley car.

We walked around the Mount Zion hotel a little bit, trying to find the prayer house! I ended up calling Abba back here in the States to ask him where it was :)  He was at work and when he answered his phone I said, "Umm ... we're at the Mount Zion hotel, trying to find Succat Hallel. Can you tell us where it is?!"

He began explaining how to get there, while at the same time Cathrin went and asked someone in the hotel. Eventually, we went through a gate and walked down some steps to the front part of the hotel, and there was the entrance!

We went in and there was a man playing a guitar. He had two children with him and there were one or two other people in the room. It felt like we were walking into an oasis after traveling through a desert! There was a grand piano there and I wondered if I ought to start playing it. I was debating it in my mind when Tommy walked over to me and said, "You ought to go play that piano!"

I hemmed and hawed a little and then he said, "Just go do it. You know you want to!"

I did want to, so I went up and starting playing along with the man on the guitar (we later found out his name is Adam). Tommy checked out the electric bass that was there, but it wasn't working so he started banging on a bongo drum instead :)  We had such a nice time of praise and worship and stayed much longer than we expected to.

It was about nine o'clock when we left and started walking back toward the Jaffa gate area. It was so crowded from everyone wanting to see the lights and it was getting late, so we decided to just catch a bus and go back to Avi and Dina's.

While we waited for the bus, we saw that there was a lunar eclipse and took a few pictures.

When the bus that we needed to take to central station came along, it was jam-packed! The bus driver started to stop, but must have decided it was too full to take any more passengers and started to drive on again. Some of the other people that were also waiting for that bus ran out in front of it so that the driver couldn't go anywhere! Others started banging on the doors and windows. Finally he opened up and we squeezed in. It was TIGHT! Kinda reminded us of the pictures you see of Japanese commuter trains :)

When we got back to the central station, we took a few more pictures of the moon which was nearly dark by that point.

The bus ride back to Mevaseret Zion was uneventful. Tommy went for a walk after we got back to the house and took a few more pictures of the moon coming out of the eclipse (if that's the right terminology!)

The name of the street where we stayed!

Those were the last pictures from that night in Jerusalem. We have a couple more posts with the Hezekiah's Tunnel and Israel museum pictures, as well as the Western Wall tour and old city photos. I'm going to see if Tommy will take care of at least one of those posts :)