“The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? - He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready.” (Mark 14:14-15) The Biblical Cenacle is the “large upper room furnished and prepared” that hosted the scene...
Should Christians celebrate Passover or should they celebrate Easter? The answer may seem quite obvious to some of you, but in reality this question has become quite a controversy in the Christian community over the past several years. As Christians have learned more about the history...
“In two days, as you know, it will be the Passover Festival, and the Son of Man, will be handed over to be crucified.” (Matt. 26:2) Those are the words Jesus said to his disciples two days before he was captured and sentenced to death. At...
On the 26th of August 2012 the Sisters of Carmel in Bethlehem celebrated their 29thanniversary of the beatification of their founder St. Mary of Jesus Crucified. She was beatificated in 1983 by Blessed Pope John Paul II. For that annual occasion, many Christians from Bethlehem and...
Dabke is a popular folkloric dance that is common to the Levantine Eastern Mediterranean region. The synchronized “stamping of the feet” (Arabic.dabke) is the basic movement for the dance, which can be danced either in a straight line, in an arch or in a circle. One...
Whoever said that Christmas only comes once a year does not, obviously, live in Jerusalem. Thanks to a glut of Christian denominations confined in one small geographical space, Christmas comes three times in the Holy Land - more here than anywhere else in the world. In...
The ancient city of Jericho is literally older than history itself. Recorded history started in the 4th millennium BC with the advent of written language. By that time, Jericho had already existed as an ancient walled city for 4,000 years. During its long 10,000 years, Jericho...
What did Jerusalem look like in Jesus' days? For most of Christian history, this question remained shrouded in mystery. When the Temple and city were destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., the ruins remained buried for nearly two millennia - even after the Jewish People...
Bring Jerusalem Home With Souvenirs that Evoke the Time of Jesus If you're like most visitors to the Holy Land, you are probably hunting for some great souvenirs to bring back home to your loved ones. However, before you buy a T shirt that says Jesus...
Sabastiya, located in the northern West Bank, is a small Palestinian village with a charming old town consisting predominantly of Mamluk and Ottomoan style architecture. However, the complex history of the village traces its roots back thousands of years earlier, with significant archaeological remains in...