The Last Supper

I slept in today! 11 hours! (one for each hour of misery yesterday apparently.) I usually wake up so early, oh my goodness but the break was good. Then I got frustrated because I couldn't figure out the most efficient thing to do, but not super-frustrated. That's because yesterday defined frustration, so it really didn't compare. This Sabbath thing here drives me crazy. Everything's closed on Saturdays, all the Jewish sites. On Sunday all the Christian sites are closed. Hey - at least they don't fall on the same day. It did make planning take until noon then (well, I did sleep until 9.)

The Upper Room
I went to the Upper Room this morning, where Jesus and the disciples allegedly ate the Last Supper - the final meal of his life. The next day he was crucified. It's doubtful, though possible, that's it's the correct location for that meal, although it is likely that it is the room he appeared to the disciples in after his resurrection.

This 'large upper room,' is small enough that it's very difficult to get a good picture of, but this series should give you an idea.


The disciples would have entered this door.



This would have been their first view. You can get a good idea of the size of the room from this - as I recall, I was practically out of the door, trying to photograph the broadest possible view of the room.



The far wall, from where they stood. To orient yourself, you can see the cleft in the wall, presumably for a statue, in the picture above this one. Imagine a large, three-sided table set back from this. Glasses of wine, festive food, dirty plates, dessert, and a lot of sadness.



The wall opposite the one above. The table was probably between them, perhaps a bit closer to the window in the far corner (see above), to get the last rays of light. A buffet table may have lined this wall.

I sat on stone steps inside (picture #2), watching tour group after tour group file in, listen to someone yabber, pray, and file out. Describing the room was halfway to impossible. Who knows what it looked like way back then? It's been altered so over the centuries, with Romanesque this and Renaissance that....well, I don't really remember about the Renaissance part. I do know that the columns were Romanesque, and other parts were modified later, but I don't know exactly when.

Some Biblical Background
If you already know the biblical basics of what Passover is, etc., you may as well skip this section.

They were celebrating the Passover meal in this room, when Jesus told Judas to go out and do what he was going to do, quickly. Passover, which is the biggest holiday of the Jewish calendar, commemmorates God leading them out of slavery to the Egyptians.

For a quick history - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were Jewish patriarchs. Jacob, had twelve sons, ten of whom were cruel to their dad's favorite kid, bratty Joseph. One day Joseph's figurative head went missing, and he informed all of his older brothers that he had a dream indicating that they would all bow down to him.

Rather irritated, they sold him into slavery in Egypt. Little Joseph rose in the ranks over the years, until he got dumped into jail for allegedly having sex with his masters wife. (oops.) God let him hang out there for a couple years, then gave him the wisdom to interpret a dream for Pharaoh, indicating that there would be seven years of plenty, then seven years of famine. Pharaoh, impressed with this wise young man, promoted him to be head of all Egypt. (God doesn't follow the corporate ladder, apparently).

So, when the famine came along, Joseph was in charge - and there to see his brothers come begging for grain. They were reconciled, and Joseph's father (the patriarch Jacob) and eleven sons moved to Egypt, where he was reunited with his favorite kid.

God had renamed Jacob Israel, and Jacob's twelve sons became the forefathers of the twelve tribes of Israel, whose descendants were traced for many generations.

Centuries passed (God clearly doesn't work on the corporate time scale, either), and the Jews - too prolific for a later Pharaoh's taste - became slaves in Egypt. Really miserable. So God told Moses to have all the Jews put blood on their door, and get ready to leave - no doing anything time-consuming like making bread with yeast in it. That night an angel went through and punished the Egyptians for the way they treated the Jews, slaying every firstborn son in Egypt - unless you had blood on your door, in which case you got 'passed over.' So the Egyptians, clever people that they were, let them go.

yee-hah! Well, except that it took them 40 years of whining and grumbling to reach the Promised Land God was leading them to (that awful time-scale thing again).

So, at the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples were celebrating this release from slavery to the Egyptians, nearly two thousand years earlier. (Something along that line - not surprisingly for something that happened about four thousand years ago, it's arguable.)

Travelogue
I’m at the hotel, trying to get food over Passover. Tis downright painful. You can’t even get a bowl of soup. America, America, how I love Thee so… We can even get food on Thanksgiving! Pick a time, any time… so I’m attempting a tuna salad…a heated bowl of Progresso would be phenomenal.

I definitely had the wrong idea when I decided it would be 'so cool' to be in Jerusalem for Holy Week. I really don't recommend it, especially if you're traveling alone. It takes longer to get places because roads are closed off. Taxi rates are different. Everybody is celebrating with family, like Americans do at Christmas, so you wind up really lonely - I just wanted to cry so many times when I sat in those dining rooms. You can't eat a lot of stuff, as you can see above. Some of the cheaper dining rooms are closed off, so you have to eat at the super-expensive ones, because it's too risky to go out by yourself.

You get the idea. They are really strict about it here. I didn't realize Jews today were any stricter about the Sabbath than American Christians today - which is to say, it really doesn't matter much to the vast majority of us. But they even have a Sabbath elevator! It stops at every floor so that you don't have to push the button. I think it would be a lot more convenient to push the button and get where I want to go! The big problem with it, though, is that it beeps every single hour, even late at night and early in the morning, and near as I can tell there isn't a room in the place that you can't hear it beeping all night long.

For Passover the hotel I was staying at put a great big sign out front asking visitors not to bring any food into the hotel, because they had cleaned it all out for Passover, eliminating any scrap of yeast.

Speaking of which, at our festivals and holidays, we eat extra good food. But Passover food - yuck! Well, a lot of it. The cooks really try, and the better hotels succeed, but that success always seems to be a novelty to the eaters - like wow, someone actually made something that tastes good over Passover!

They can't use the microwave, I believe, and I don't think the stove was legit either. Pretty much all I could manage was a salad - many of the things on the menu are banned on the Sabbath/Passover, and I finally gave up and asked the girl what I could have. She said she didn't know, she's go find out! (I forget which rules applied only to Passover by now).

Which seemed to be pretty common. Everyone I asked as to why the rules and which ones had no idea. They all said, "I don't know, I'm not Jewish, I just work here." And I'd say, "Oh, but do you just know the symbolism?" "No," they'd say, "I have no idea." Which struck me as a little odd. Do they not talk to each other at all?

I also saw Jesus' prison today.