Haifa, Nazareth, Israel.

Friday 1^st February.

Chris – the New Yorker – left today heading for Amman. Although I was feeling fluey I dragged myself out of bed and headed off to Nazareth. I spent a lovely afternoon wondering around the city where Mary received the Annunciation and where Jesus was brought up. The Nazareth of 2000 years ago was nothing more than a collection of mud huts – these days it is a sprawling metropolis. Before leaving Lebanon, Nat had presented me with her copy of the LP for the Middle East. This included a section on Israel. She had given me permission to rip out the pages as she had no plans to revisit Israel in the near future. She had been there before. So I kind of had a guide with me. The pages were not stapled, however and were constantly getting messed up.

... Marcus and I are standing in Nat's kitchen with her copy of the LP for the Middle East. We are deciding how best to cut out the section on Israel without breaking the spine. We have tried cutting them out with a knife. Also cutting them out with scissors. We've also tried ripping them out. Although that was enjoyable it didn't help the book. We are standing, arms crosses, looking at the book as if it is a petulant child. The book is sulking. Back to the drawing board...

Nazareth was a great place to mooch around and I did the LP walking tour. Most of the places to view are churches. I jumped on the last bus back to Haifa as Shabbat was beginning this evening. [Ok. Shabbat. It’s an interesting one. It spans sundown Friday to the first three stars to appear in the sky on Saturday evening. And yes it is a time of rest. The part that really interests me here though is the prohibition of melachah. Melachah translates as work. During the Shabbat no work can be done by any Jewish person – unless it is to help save the life of another person. Now this law was set down a long time ago so there are quite a few, emmm, categories. 39 of them in fact. You can read about them on wikipedia here. Some of them sound like a lot of fun – winnowing for instance. The main problem for the practical application of this law today is adhering to such prohibitions as – making fire. This, it follows, includes electricity, computers, and mechanical engines. That’s just about everything then. There are a number of ingenious ways to get around the problem of this. Many include preset timers. However it would appear that many Jewish people these days accept that the law needs to be interpreted with some flexibility. It’s is still a very quiet period though]

I got back in the evening and watched TV for the evening. I HATE BEING BLOODY ILL.