From Yad Vashem to Shiloh (Thursday, July 1st)

This morning we went to a place called Yad Vashem. It is also known as the Holocaust museum and it is a powerful place. To enter it you start in a long thin building where you wander back and forth from one end to the other. At the beginning end there is a continuous reel of clips of life before the Holocaust, happy families waving at the camera, kids laughing and playing in the street. Then as you begin to wind your way thru the building each turn takes you chronologically through the days of the Holocaust, how it began, how it spread and intensified. There are artifacts, belonging of various victims showing who they were and parts of their lives. They were just ordinary people like you and me, falling in love, raising children, going to school, working to provide for their families. There are pictures and articles talking about different aspects of the Holocaust and videos showing news reels from the day and interviews with survivors reliving their experiences. All these things are presented in a dignified and honorable way as a memorial to the lives of those who lived and died in it, but there is nothing passed over or left out for fear of offending anyone. All of the horrors of the Holocaust are laid bare before you as you make your way through the building. It is a hard place to visit but if you ever get the chance, take it!

Once you are on the other side of the building there are several memorials that you can visit. Unfortunately it took me so long to get through the first part that by the time I got out it was time to meet up with my group again to get to the next place. And then disaster struck. (Okay maybe that's a little dramatic.) What happened was that my friend Cassie and I got lost trying to get back to the entrance where we were meeting our group; really lost. By the time we finally found our way out our group had had to leave with the bus to make it to the next stop! Thankfully Lawson Stone (our hero!!) had stayed behind to find us and get us a taxi to catch up with the group. I realize that it is part of his job to make sure he doesn't lose any students in Israel, but he was very gracious about it that I was very, very grateful.

We caught up with our group at the Israel Museum (I think that's what it was called) where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept. There is also a very neat model of what Jerusalem would have looked like in ancient times. To be honest I was still a bit rattled from my time at Yad Vashem (both from the memorial itself and from getting lost) so I wasn't really in the mood for another museum. I wandered around for a while looking at things and then headed to the entrance to wait for the group.

By this time it was 12:30 or so but instead of having lunch right away we took a 45 minute drive to the north to see a sight we had had to miss earlier, Shiloh. Shiloh is where the Ark of the Lord and the Tabernacle were kept when Joshua and the Children of Israel first entered the land. It is also where Hannah prayed begging God to give her a child and where she brought Samuel when he was old enough, in keeping with her promise. And later it was where Samuel was serving the Lord when God spoke to him. There really isn't much to look at in Shiloh. There is no reconstruction, just broken down walls with weeds growing up in between them. The archeologists argue back and forth over where exactly the Tabernacle would have been. But just being there in that town was a moving experience to me. There was something very special about standing in a place where you know Yahweh's presence once lived. I know that's true of Jerusalem as well but it was different here. Jerusalem is busy and noisy and constantly being fought over. Here at Shiloh it was quiet except for the wind sweeping over the hills and deserted and there was a stillness about the land. Maybe it was just the way a remote place tucked away in the northern hills appeals to a girl from the mountains, but it was beautiful.