I have always wanted to check out the
Mar Elias Monastery since I often pass it on my way to Gush Etzion. In looking it up, I was amazed to read that in 1910 William Holman Hunt's widow, Edith, commissioned a stone bench, which still stands today, just outside the monastery.
A few months ago, my friends Becky and Prezzy, and i rode out to the monastery to check out the bench. Sadly, some toolbag vandalised the bench with spray paint, and there appear to be inscriptions on the bench, but the weather has mostly worn them away.
So why put the bench here? Apparently WHH loved the light out here, and apparently worked on
'The Light of the World' as well as
'The Scapegoat' from this very spot. Hunt took several trips to Palestine, and his daughter was even born in Jerusalem.
Here's a pretty useless video i took of the bench...at night. In a previous
post, i provided a bit more detail about WHH in Palestine. For more on WHH, click
here.
The drama continues with Part 2: The House. Stay tuned...
The Israel Museum just underwent a $100 million renovation. One of the highlights of the visit i took with my mum was the Tzedek VeShalom Synagogue, built in 1734 in Paramaribo, Suriname. For the woodworkers out there, the ark is made of Cyprus wood and mahogany. Below is a video about the synagogue and some really cool footage of the restoration. Just some brief history of the settlement of Jews in the area. According to our tour guide, in 1630, about 500 Jews came to Suriname to establish sugar plantations. They named them after cities in the land of Israel: Hebron, Tiberias, Jerusalem, Beersheba, to name a few of the plantations that existed in Suriname. The name of the Jewish settlement was actually the Jodensavanne, or the Jewish Savannah. To read more about the Jewish community in Suriname, click here.
In addition to paying homage to their biblical roots, the Jews of Suriname paid tribute to their Spanish-Portugese Dutch roots. Whilst having a peek around the synagogue, we noticed that one of the finials for the Torah scrolls was an unmistakable nod to the Westerkerk in Amsterdam. You know--the one that Anne Frank mentions? Pretty cool, eh? How many synagogues today would commission, let alone tolerate, a Torah adornment in the style of a church? Pretty remarkable...
