Welcome to Israel and Palestine!

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Finally in the Holy Land and excited to see what this place has to offer!

crazy pants

I arrived at the airport in Tel-Aviv and had to wait for a long time in the line for immigration. When it was finally my turn I was a little nervous because I knew they would question my Iranian visa since they are “enemies” and the security in Israel is a little over the top.

The lady at the desk asked me the purpose of my visa, where I was going, why I was alone, where would I stay, then checked my passport and asked me why I went to Iran, and what made me visit Iran. I answered all the questions and then asked me to go sit in the waiting area. Sat in the room with at least 10 other people waiting to be questioned, finally after 20-30 minutes it was my turn and I was brought into a small interrogation room with an officer seating in front of a computer. Once again he asked me the same questions and added a lot more such as “When did you leave your country”, “how do you make money?”, “What cities are you going to visit?”, “Give me a list of all the countries you have been” etc etc etc after about 15-20 minutes or so of non-stop questions he asked me to go back to the waiting area and after another 20-30minutes a lady came with my passport and said “You can go now”… what a relief!

I then walked out and took the bus from the airport to Jerusalem, where I needed to go to New gate, to a monastery to meet with a priest from El Salvador who has invited me to spend time with the Franciscans while in Israel.

As I got out of the bus on the side of the street in Jerusalem one of my automatic thoughts was “OMG! People with hats and the long curls on the side of the head are for real!” Right outside of the door of the bus there were so many young boys wearing black hats and sidecurls, a traditional look of the Orthodox Jews. I do not know much about Judaism, in fact it was the only religion that I totally bombed the test during my world religion class!

I arrived at the Saint Saviour’s monastery and met with Fray Oscar, a friend of my mom from El Salvador. I am so so blessed to have been invited to spend my time in Israel in a Franciscan monastery in Emmaus, located in the city of El-Qubeibeh, Palestine. After having some lunch and touring around the monastery in Jerusalem we were picked up and driven from Jerusalem to Palestine!

Although Palestine is part of Israel, they are very much divided. For many years (decades) the conflict between Israelis and Arabs have lead to the separation of both places and the creation of a big wall that separates both of them. I think this whole division comes from the belief that, per the Hebrew bible, Palestine was promised to the Jews by God but Palestinians are unwilling to acknowledge it and therefore oppose the take over.

Because of this conflict I was adviced to not mention that my destination was Palestine! We drove for about 30 minutes, cross a checkpoint (open to enter Palestine, but check ID to exit to Israel) and soon after we arrived at the Convento di S. Simone e Cleofa in Emmaus.

There is something special about this place. First of all it is beautiful, overlooking Palestine and Israel, and second it is sacred.

I spy Tel-Aviv!

There was an inexplicable feeling when I walked through the monastery, I felt at peace, but I also felt conflicted with my feelings of being a bad catholic! How am I deserving of being in the Holy land and in a holy monastery with a man so enlighten and full of passion for God and its mission as a server of God when I barely pray and when I do not fully agree with everything that the catholic religion is about?

Fray Oscar playing the piano in the monastery

That night I had to go to 6pm mass! I don’t think I have gone to mass voluntarily since father Tarantino left St. Hillary’s church when I lived in Belvedere maybe 10 years ago! I really felt like I was invading the place, like I didn’t belong there. The mass was at the small church in the monastery, given to only the 10 nuns around the area by Fray Oscar. I sat two benches behind the last nun, trying to be as small as possible, as to avoid them looking at me and figuring out what a fraud I was.

I sat there, followed the lead of the nuns since I think I have forgotten all the steps involved in a mass, all the while being conflicted as to whether or not I should take the communion. Am I deserving of taking the bread and wine? Will they know I haven’t done it in years? Will God approve of me doing so? I haven’t confessed my sins so could I get the communion? I grew up with this idea that you could only receive communion once you had confessed, repented, and done the prayers the priest asked you to in order to make the sins disappear and only after that you were deserving of the communion. But… I hadn’t confessed anything, simply because I think confession is the not something that works! What kind of sins can I have that are worthy of me talking to a priest? Why do I have to go to a third party when I have a direct line to God anytime I want? What about bad people who do very very bad stuff? After a couple of prayers their sins disappear? I don’t believe in it, and I probably will not ever do it so I decided to go for it. I again went after the last nun and Fray Oscar gave me the communion and I went back to my seat and prayed, I thanked God for opening the doors of this Holy Land to me and, as always, for keeping me safe throughout my journey.

The "small" chapel in Emmaus!

After mass I got together with Fray Oscar and Salem and we did the night prayers together. One cool thing about being with the Franciscans is that they speak Italian! Mass was in Italian and so were the prayers so I had no other choice than to practice my very rusty Italian. This made me reminisce of that one summer when a boyfriend and I rented a little apartment in Siena, Italy, and had a great time traveling around, practicing Italian with the locals and gaining too much weight from all the fabulous Italian food! (I digress!)

That night we had a great dinner prepared for us by a Mexican nun that lives in the convent. On the first floor of the house live two nuns that I only saw at mass because they are in a separate area of the house behind a locked gate. The first floor also has the church, the frays’ kitchen, a big dinning room that holds 100 people, and a TV room. Fray Oscar and Salem live on the second floor and they have many many rooms for guests, I got a really nice room all for myself.

After dinner I sat with Fray Oscar and Salem in the TV room and watched for an hour an Italian game show that they like.

The next day I skipped 7am mass and slept in. At 8:30 I met Fray Oscar for breakfast and after we went to the church and I read the Emmaus story from the bible with Fray Oscar by the altar. It was such a beautiful moment! I was right at the place were Jesus appeared, reading the story of what happened and it was just so special!

We then went for a walk around the neighborhood, passing through the village, looking at the way people live. The area around Emmaus is a lot of deserted land and one can see villages spread throughout the land.

Fray Oscar was telling me that for Muslim their pride and joy is their house and that they spend a lot of money making their houses beautiful, they like them big and flashy, and all, absolutely all of them must have terraces.

We walked to the top of the hill where the land belongs to the Franciscans and there we saw a group of 3 Palestinian boys smoking shesha. One of the boys was particularly interested in us and came to offer if we wanted to smoke and shortly after he asked us for a picture.

A typical sight in Palestine.. Sheep everywhere!

We kept walking down the hill until we reached the house of the nuns and we went in and walked around their beautiful garden/ forest full of pine trees and olive trees. This place is so serene, it really makes you feel at peace.

We then walked back to the monastery and had yet another awesome meal by Sor Marina. I think I will really miss her food!

In the afternoon Salem took us for a drive around Palestine. It was very interesting looking out the window and seeing the life in Palestine; I noticed that there are a lot of apartment buildings but so many of them were abandoned mid construction therefore they are empty and unfinished. The land goes from very deserted where one can still see many shepherds with their sheep, to fully covered by buildings and people.

Our first stop was in a city called something like “Beer-zed” and we stopped in a church that honors the Virgin of Guadalupe but sadly it was closed.

We then moved on to Ramallah, the capital of Palestine. Ramallah is just like any biggish Islamic town full of shops, cars, and street vendors. We walked some of the streets and got a quick orientation about the bus station and the important landmarks of the place and then headed back to the monastery.

Coffee stand in Ramallah

I spent almost two weeks in Emmaus and it was very special, I was able to relax and enjoy the monastery and its surroundings.

One day after visiting Jerusalem I decided to take pictures of the monastery and then saw Salem passed by and I asked him to join me in one of the pictures.

Then, he invited me to go up to the bell tower. We went up and it was so beautiful!!!!! I noticed that there was a bridge joining the bell tower and the roof and Salem said “Vuoi andare?” (want to go?) and I said “Si” so we went! It was so frightening! I walked on the edge of the church and then Salem jumped into the roof and asked me to come, I think my legs were shaking! Then he reached out to me and gave me a hand! The view from up there was beautiful! I could see all around the monastery, the beautiful garden with Fray Oscar’s meditation labyrinth, Ramallah, Qubeibeh, and even get a glimpse of Tel-Aviv.

Palestine, being a muslim country, has its day off on Friday so no public transportation to go to Jerusalem therefore Fray Oscar decided we would stay in Emmaus. It was the perfect day to relax and work on my Eneagram and Temperament test. Fray Oscar is such a wise man, he is interested in so many different subjects and knows so much, he started teaching me a little bit more about personality and the meaning of the Eneagram.

I found it funny that he presented me the gift of doing my eneagram since I meant to do it before I left as part of group counseling but I never got to it since I was busy packing, studying, working, and living a busy life. I also had the time to do a Myers-Briggs and do a little bit more of internal work. While answering the questions of the test it was interesting to see how my answers have somewhat changed from last year until now. I used to live a very rigid and controlled life due to my 3 jobs, school, and my almost non existent social life and now my answers show more fluidity and less structure which I think it’s a beautiful thing.

The monastery has beautiful gardens so of course I did some reading and relaxing in there.

One afternoon I was invited to go with Fray Oscar to the house of one of the guys who works at the monastery. He drove us there in his really really old car (my seat didn’t even have a seat belt!) and when we got there he said “Macchina vecchia, mai casa bella” (old car but beautiful house) Indeed the house was beautiful, it really shows how much time and effort he has put into building his house for his family. He then told me that it costs a lot to build the house so he does it little by little, he even said that he designed it and a friend is helping him build it.

Once we entered the house I met his mother, his wife, and one of his two children. We sat in the informal living room and chatted, he spoke Italian to me and Fray Oscar and translated to Arabic for his family. At one time he took me into his beautiful formal living room and asked me if I knew who the picture in the frame was; I looked puzzled since it looked like Saddam Hussein. Then he told that it was indeed Saddam Hussein and that he was very good to Palestine, he proceeded to show me another picture and added that he was a good friend of his that was killed by Israelis. I felt sad when I heard that, these people are from the same country (pretty much) and there is so much animosity between them and all for what? Some land? I just don’t get it!

Anyway, the time spent with Ashras' family was very nice; we got to talk about traveling and his wife wanting to go to Turkey but it being too expensive. Also, Ashras said he doesn’t like flying and when talking about going to other places he said “Io non voglio lasciare la Palestina, la Palestina e bella” (I don't want to leave Palestine, Palestine is beautiful.) It was so refreshing to hear that because for me it felt like being inside the walls of a territory would be too much, I would feel trapped, but they make the best out of it, they love their land, they are proud of it, and they are happy there!

After going to Jordan I came back to Emmaus and had some time to rest and enjoy the presence of Fray Oscar. We took this time to talk for hours about life, I learned about so many different therapies that he does, he gave me some chiroparctic treatments, he taught some Tae-Kwon-Do moves to protect myself, I learned so so so much from him and I am so so so so thankful for this opportunity of being here with him and learning from him.

My favorite memory though is the one walk Fray Oscar and I took one day up the hill, we walked along the busy main road by the monastery and then he lead me to the side streets and end up sitting on top of a terrace wall overlooking Palestine. Right there he took his note book and started reading the first chapter of his autobiography. I felt privileged and humbled to be there seating and listening to the journey of this holy man, I felt even more privileged after he finished and said this was the first time he ever shared it with anybody!

The passage that he read to me was about how he got his calling and the whole process of finding his way to God. The part that stuck the most to me was when he talked about his struggle of deciding of being a priest and the struggle he had within himself to really commit to a life of serving God. It was a beautifully written anecdote, but most importantly for me was it made me realize that we are all vulnerable, that we all have doubts but whatever we do in life we need to do it with all of our heart and believing that it is what is meant to happen for you. From previous conversations, and my endless questions about the profession, I had learned about how much priests have to give up for this profession, they have no salary, no possesions, no bank accounts, they work every day, and only get vacation every 2 years... I've never had to make a life changing decision like this and probably will never have but his story is so powerful and important for those going into that profession and it has to be shared and heard.

The many walls of Palestine!!

My time spent in the monastery was incredible! I went to mass in those 2 weeks more than I have had in the last 10 years! In all honesty I was mostly lost in mass since the readings and singing were in German, Arabic, Italian, and English and I only know the mass in Spanish so it was funny but I focused on being present even though I couldn't understand much of it.

Singing in German

Sneaky picture of Fray Oscar giving mass! haha

Mini chapel on the 2nd floor.

About Post Author

Andrea

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!