The Jewish part of the city is packed. Even many of the streets are shut down. That creates big issues for tours trying to get around or even local staff trying to get to work. All tourist prices are greatly increased. That means tours from North America and some other countries are over priced and so numbers drop off dramatically. Also, many people want to be home for the Easter time with their families.
Most of you will understanding what kosher is all about. The food to be kosher must be inspected by the rabbis. Killing of meat must be done in a certain fashion to be sure the blood is drained away. In terms of the menus, meat and dairy are never served at the same meal. Lets complicate it one more step. During Passover this year we had two Shabbats in a row. The last day of Pssover was a Thursday and that means it is a Shabbat. The next day is the regular Friday at sundown start. That means that all transportation in Jerusalem stops for 3 days in a row. The ovens in hotels are never on during Shabbat.
Ready for one more complication?? Before Passover, every bit of yeast needs to be cleaned out of the house and no yeast permitted for the 8 days. Unless you have been here, you do not imagine what that entails. Hotels need to clean any place bread (yeast in any form) might have been. They purged the kitchens. Hotels have 3 kitchens in case the dairy and meat might come in contact. Plastic plates are used during the change over and good bye to the wonderful breads.
That impacts all the grocery stores. Many smaller stores just close as it is too hard to prepare. We go to a larger grocery store. The best thing to do is to do lots of shopping well ahead of the start of Passover. In the store we do our shopping, they cover over half the shelves with white tarps. Of course the entire bakery is empty. I had to ask one of our Jewish staff at the garden, why they would cover things like the frozen vegetables. It ends up that not only do you need a kosher stamp on products, but during Passover there must be a stamp that shows the product has no yeast. That is not all. You have to have to pull all your processing equipment apart and inspect that it has been cleaned. For many companies, it would cost thousands to pull processing machines apart and have them steam cleaned so they do not bother to do it and you cannot buy what they produce during that time frame. Of course if you were to go into a neighbourhood that is Ultra Orthodox, they would take things to an even greater level.
I won't even try to explain the last complication. This is the seventh year when farmers must leave their fields fallow. That means religious Jews will not buy food that is grown on Jewish owned soil. Of course there are numerous ways they get around it. Some only buy if grown outside of Israel. Others will buy if grown by Arabs. Some Jewish farmers sell their land on a one year contract to Arabs to farm it for them and get around it. Such is life in Israel.
Donna and I continue to try to see as many places around the city as possible. We do lots of walking on our days off. Unfortunately the weather has not been all that great. Many of you in Canada have been warmer then us. Last Sunday was a bit brutal. We headed for church in the wind and rain. By the time we had made the 30 minute walk we were soaked. Our pants , socks and shoes were drenched. We were very cold by the time we got back home and even our rooms had cooled off considerably. Stone walls without insulation are not much of a match for our little plug in electric heaters. During that night we had a very big storm. It thundered continually for hours. It is not just the big bangs like at home although we had a number of them. The thunder just rolls around the sky and never seems to stop. Rain poured down. By the time I got up at 6 to go out and start cleanup, it had stopped raining for a few minutes. In some spots there were two inches of hail. It sure thrashed a lot of leaves and flowers. Today though we are warm and should be in the eighties tomorrow. Drops off a bit each day for the rest of the week.
Friday morning we have to have our suite entirely cleaned which includes all the windows and walls. We will need to be all packed and will have our ride to the airport at 8. hould get into Toronto for a quick change of planes and be on to Calgary for the night. All being well we will be back home by lunch on Saturday
A couple of days ago we had some shopping to do. So I took some pictures of our local stores. The first two are of our local grocery store. Everything is packed in.
The darker picture is behind the counter in our bakery. They are getting pita out of the oven. And above is our favorite vegetable store. so nice to get it all freshly picked.
We had a very good time during all our Easter services. It was a very busy time and we had over 1500 for the 6:30a.m. ; about 900 for the next and maybe 350 for the third service. Then we had to get all the benches back in place to be ready for a regular day on the Monday.
If you want to view the service, go to gardentomb.org and click on the section for Easter. Also the Garden just started a Facebook page this week. Just type Garden tomb into Facebook
I think I will wrap this up. Thanks for following along and also for those that prayed for us. gord and donna
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