Today we visited many places of Christian importance. We went to Ein Kerem (Ein means "spring" as in a source of water) where there are two distinct Churches. One commemorates the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, six months pregnant. The other Church, not far away, commemorates the birth of John. So, at the first they have in the courtyard the famous text, from Luke the Magnificat, "My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord" displayed in many languages. In the other courtyard is the Benedictus, "Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel". Both of these are found in the first chapter of Luke and make excellent passages for prayer.
After Ein Kerem, we went to Yad Vashem, the Israeli holocaust memorial and museum. We were given an hour and a half to walk through the museum. This was my first time really in any kind of holocaust memorial. This museum did a very good job showing the historical progression of anti-semitism and the Nazi rise to power. They have so many pictures, videos, quotations, and artifacts. I was grateful for this day. The part where I happened to break down was when I got to the section on the Warsaw ghetto. Even though the Jewish population of Warsaw was one third of the total, the Jews were forced into a ghetto which took about 3 percent of the cities land. What spoke to me was seeing and hearing how people in the ghetto turned toward music and the arts. In conditions so dehumanizing, courageous souls on the brink of starvation found hope by nurturing those tender things that make us really human.
I could go on about my experience to day, but I will have to be satisfied with recommending it to you or something like it, like the Holocaust memorial in DC for example.
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