Israel – BooksPlease

I’ve been reading Joan Leegant’s novel Wherever You Go, which is set in Israel and America. I’ll be writing about this book, which I really liked in a future post. It reminded me of our visit to Israel in 1993, so I got out the photo albums and here are just a few:

First a sight of camels on the skyline – photo taken from the coach on the way to Jerusalem.

Then a view of Jerusalem showing the Dome of the Rock, but not the usual view of the golden dome because this was in 1993 when the covering was being refurbished. It was covered with scaffolding all around it!

The Chagall Windows get a brief mention in Wherever You Go, when one of the characters talks of them disparagingly – Mariah the self-appointed arbiter of taste saying to Yona, one of the main characters:

‘I suppose you’ll go see the Chagall windows in the famous hospital in Jerusalem, Mariah had sniffed, the legendary artist deemed by the gallery crowd to be the painterly equivalentof Fiddler on the Roof, all mush and sloppy sentimentality, colorful art, like colorful clothes, against the law. (page 122)

The beautiful Chagall Windows in the Synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre were on our tour and I loved them. You couldn’t take photos inside but here is one of the outside:

I bought a tapestry canvas of one of the windows, Zebulon, whilst I was there. I still haven’t bought the wool to actually stitch the tapestry! I’d love it to look something like this when I’ve stitched it:

The whole visit was very memorable, and we have loads of photos, but one in particular was very special – the Yad Vashem Memorial. The photo shows the statue at the entrance to the Children’s Memorial in an underground cavern. You go down into a dark chamber where candles are reflected so it seems as though you are lost in space surrounded by stars: