Cultural Haifa

While I'm here in Haifa, I really hope to see what the city has to offer. To that end, on Friday morning I visited Elijah's Cave, a holy site at the base of the Carmel, and the Israel Maritime Museum which is about a block from the cave. The rest of my time this weekend has been spent with friends, or working on various school projects that are coming due sometime in the coming week.

Elijah's Cave is now a synagogue. In Biblical times, Elijah is said to have lived and taught here, hid here from the rage of King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. I went in and looked around for a little bit, then grabbed a copy of Tehilim from the bookshelf on the far side of the cave and read a couple. It was really a very short trip, but it was nice nonetheless. I thought about Papa Ruby for a little bit while I was inside, and then we left and walked over towards the museum campus.

A blurry photo of the inside of the cave.

I was surprised to learn that the Maritime Museum is less about Israeli maritime history and more about the maritime history of the world. It was still definitely cool though. The museum has two main exhibits. The upstairs exhibit is about the development of seafaring and shipping throughout the Mediterranean, and various parts of the exhibit touched on the ancient Greeks, Phoenecians, ancient Egyptians, ancient Romans, Macedonians, and of course Jews. The downstairs exhibit was all about piracy, which was really pretty cool. They had lots of old weapons and maps, as well as artifacts from different piracy cultures from all over the globe.

A model of an Ancient Greek shipping vessel.

After the museums we went to Hadar to pick up some produce for the week, and then headed back to the University. I went to Shabbat dinner in the moadon again this week which was excellent, and some friends and I went out to a pub in Mercaz haCarmel. People got a little silly, and later at a waffle joint, Dominique got a hold of my camera and started snapping photos nonstop.

Before the madness began. Dominique is the guy with the full liter of beer on the end.

This weekend has been mostly work for me, and I apologize for not updating more frequently. I have two presentations to give on Tuesday (1 in Hebrew, 1 in Terrorism and Responses), and the second presentation is not even finished yet. My Hebrew presentation is on the linguistic similarities between Hebrew and Arabic. It's a cool topic so far as I am concerned, but it's a dry presentation. This is intentional, because if people zone out and aren't listening, they won't have a lot of questions to ask me at the end of the presentation. With that, I'm going to get back to work. I'll update again soon.

It's pretty, but it just isn't me.