Day 2 in Jerusalem - 9/10/17
Welcome,
everyone, to your glimpse into the life of a Globie! My name is Alexandra, and
I will be your tour guide today. I have, after all, learned from the best guide
in Jerusalem (or so everyone on the street says as we queue up behind Sa'id).
Today was a particularly somber day of touring as we spent the morning at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem and during the afternoon, we walked through the Old City following The Way of the Cross. On our walk, we were surrounded at every turn by the holiest sites in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions. We started our walk very near to the Dome of the Rock, took a moment to pause at the Wailing Wall, and followed the 14 points that create the story of Jesus' crucifixion, ending at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Yad Vashem was set up in a similar way, with a zig-zag path through the museum that walked us from the beginnings of the Anti-Semitic movement in Nazi Germany to the end of the Second World War and its aftermath. While I walked through the museum, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the atrocities committed against so many people by Hitler's regime. But it also caused me to think about other humanitarian crises that went ignored-- Stalin's Russia and America's internment of Japanese Americans, both at the same time as the Holocaust. Then I realized there are other, modern crises we distance ourselves from and in doing so, risk history repeating itself, as it is wont to do.
On a somber day of touring, like today, I couldn't help but focus on the topic of Global Civic Engagement and wonder how much better might our world be if we worked for each other and served one another.
Today was a particularly somber day of touring as we spent the morning at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem and during the afternoon, we walked through the Old City following The Way of the Cross. On our walk, we were surrounded at every turn by the holiest sites in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions. We started our walk very near to the Dome of the Rock, took a moment to pause at the Wailing Wall, and followed the 14 points that create the story of Jesus' crucifixion, ending at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Yad Vashem was set up in a similar way, with a zig-zag path through the museum that walked us from the beginnings of the Anti-Semitic movement in Nazi Germany to the end of the Second World War and its aftermath. While I walked through the museum, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the atrocities committed against so many people by Hitler's regime. But it also caused me to think about other humanitarian crises that went ignored-- Stalin's Russia and America's internment of Japanese Americans, both at the same time as the Holocaust. Then I realized there are other, modern crises we distance ourselves from and in doing so, risk history repeating itself, as it is wont to do.
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| Candles at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre |
On a somber day of touring, like today, I couldn't help but focus on the topic of Global Civic Engagement and wonder how much better might our world be if we worked for each other and served one another.
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