Origins of my new heading picture...

Hey all! Do you like my new title picture?

I liked this one because you an see a good representation of the extreme differences in Jerusalem, represented by the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim temple, in the far background, and the Western Wall, a holy Jewish site, in the more immediate background.

We went this morning for Sukkot, to see the end of the Feast of Tabernacles! This is the morning that they end their week of praying for rain with a ritual that, in effect, symbolizes their desperation for their prayers to be heard. After their week, they take palm fronds and go to the Kotel (aka the Western Wall) and they worship and pray and everything there, in their community groups, (and each group is very different, no unity of religion here...) and then they take the fronds and they beat them against the ground or the wall in desperation for their prayers to be answered. It's like they've prayed as much as they can, and they don't know what else to do, so they throw a temper tantrum. Not kidding, either. That's how our Judaism professor explained it to us. His name is Ophir Yarden. :) I just liked that name, thought I'd share. Anyway, here are some pictures from the wall!

This is Michelle and I with the wall in the background....and it was early, so no judging on these pictures :)

This is a group of Jews we were by, who were all dressed in white robes (which are apparently optional for the group except the one leading), and they have their palm fronds, and their kippas (their little hats), and they were walking in a circle and chanting/praying and singing and etc.

Just me with a guy, so you could see the garb and etc.

This is a balcony where we went to go see better, and you can see the whole wall and how packed the place was for the end of Sukkot. This is also good cause you can see the separation between men and women really well. We were allowed to go in the back part of the left side (in this picture) but just to pass through. They have the barrier extended because of the holiday. But the tiny little sliver to the right that isn't as packed, that's the women's side. Isn't it interesting that the men's side is so full and huge, and the women's side is less full, yet way way smaller?

This is the same group I was taking pictures of before..you can see them a little better as a whole.

This is Brother Brown, Kathryn, me, Michelle (in the blue), and Lindsay Pugmire....you can see the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall behind :)

Good morning! This was towards the end. Oh and you can kind of see my new purse! I bought it the other day...and I really love it! It's cute!

This was us sitting on a bench in our tiredness, towards the end when we were going to go meet everyone to walk back. Jeremy, who took the picture, told us to act silly, and the best we came up with for the most part was smiling and acting like we were sleeping....you can tell what was on our minds (Sleeeeeep!) :).

It was a wonderful early morning at the Western Wall, though. They almost didn't allow us to come. We had heard about it from Ophir, our professor, and he told us to try to go because we could take pictures because it wasn't the sabbath yet (it was on Friday October 9th, but Sabbath doesn't start until sun-down on Fridays), and so we got it specially approved by Brother Brown and security. (Since we haven't been allowed to go out into that part of the city for the past week.) And they even moved classes around, and pushed breakfast back a little bit so we could be there for a while instead of rushing back! It sure is nice to have 80 students to cater to, instead of 35,000 or whatever number BYU has :)

I miss you all, and I love you all, but I know I'm supposed to be here, and I feel at home here at the center. I am already in love with this city. It's a wonderful place! I just wish all the little kiddies could play nice....but we're working on it. We'll have peace in the middle east just yet. :)

Shalom!