Nazareth

On our way to Nazareth, we stopped at Kfar Kedem, located at Hoshaya, a moshavim type community of  about five hundred orthodox families.  After a few missed turns as our bus rolled through the community that looked like an American gated subdivision, we arrived at our gateway to Biblical times.

We learned, among other things, that farmers must a leave a corner of the field unharvested for the poor and that a donkey and an ox must not be yoked together. This reminded me somehow of Molly and Warbonnet harnessed to the hay wagon back in West Texas. Molly would slack off and Warbonnet would pull for her. Without a Git Up, Molly, Warbonnet would have worked himself to death .  I don't think an ox would do that for a donkey!

Joanne ground wheat into flour the old fashioned way before we all made pita bread for a snack before lunch.  Many of us got a kick out of riding the little donkeys before we continued to Nazareth.

Nazareth was a very small and very poor community of about two hundred in the boyhood time of Jesus.  People lived in interconnected caves .  Nazareth is now a city of eighty thousand, the Arab capital of Israel.  Eighty percent Christian twenty years ago;  it is now eighty percent Muslim.

We visited the Basilica of the Annunciation built in 1969 on the site of earlier Byzantine and Crusader churches that mark the site of the Annunciation.  The basilica has no arches; shapes of "A" and "M" remind us of Ava Maria.  I snapped a few photos of the many mosaics of the Virgin donated by communities from around the world.  Below this upper church lies the the Grotto or Cave of the Annunciation, where the angelic announcement to Mary occurred. 

Just down the street from the basilica, Muslim billboards proclaim Christians to be losers.  Perhaps the signs express anger and resentment - Muslims tried to build a Mosque here to overshadow the basilica but Israel intervened at the request of the Vatican.     





Nazareth - Catholic Encyclopedia Nazareth - Wikpedia
Nazareth - Bible Places

Kfar Kedem, Galilee Kfar Kedem, Galilee  Moshavim