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"To the martyrs
To the ghetto fighters
To the partisans
To those who rebelled in the camps
To the fighters of the underground
To the soldiers in the armies
To those who saved their brethren
To the courageous people who took part in the clandestine immigration
The heroes of valor and revolt
For everlasting life"
The Chapel of the Milk Grotto of Our Lady (Latin: Crypta lactea; Arabic: مغارةآلسثئ; Hebrew: מערת החלב), also called Grotto of Our Lady or Milk Grotto, is a Catholic chapel in Bethlehem, in the West Bank, erected in 1872. Since Byzantine times, the place has been a center of Christian pilgrimage, maintained since its last erection together with its Marian shrine and monastery by the Custody of the Holy Land of the Order of the Friars Minor of the Catholic Church in Palestine. The Status Quo, a 250-year-old understanding between religious communities, applies to the site.
History
The current Catholic chapel was built in 1872 on the site of a former Byzantine church from around the 5th century, of which only part of the mosaic floor remains.
Significance
Christian tradition says is the place where the Holy Family found refuge during the Massacre of the Innocents, before they could flee to Egypt. The name is derived from the story that a "drop of milk" of the Virgin Mary fell on the floor of the cave and changed its colour to white.
The space, which contains three different caves, is visited by some in hope of healing infertile couples, the shrine allegedly being a place where prayers for children are miraculously answered.
Monastery of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
A monastery of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is attached to the chapel. The red-and-white clad nuns practice perpetual Eucharistic adoration, and are also uninterruptedly praying for peace since 2016, when a 'Queen of Peace' tabernacle was installed in their Eucharistic Adoration Chapel.
The tabernacle was donated by the Polish community 'Queen of Peace' to the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. It was originally designed for the Fourth Station of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, but was eventually moved to the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at the Milk Grotto in 2016, because they were better prepared to ensure the continuous prayer for peace.
The Polish artist who designed the tabernacle, Mariusz Drapikowski, explains his work as inspired by the Apocalypse of St John: the closed tabernacle depicts earthly Jerusalem, with the twelve Apostles and the twelve Tribes of Israel surrounding the image of Jesus on the cross, while the open shrine is representing the heavenly Jerusalem, brightly shining and flanked by a pair of olive trees which symbolise the two witnesses of the Apocalypse. Their branches are filled with a variety of different crosses, symbolising the various Christian professions emerging from the common trunk of Christianity. At the centre of the open shrine stands the monstrance showing a Madonna holding in her hands the Eucharistic Christ, depicted as a large host.
Bethlehem (/ˈbɛθlɪhɛm/; Arabic: بيت لحم, Bayt Laḥm, pronunciation; Hebrew: בֵּית לֶחֶם Bēṯ Leḥem) is a city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the State of Palestine, located about ten kilometres (six miles) south of Jerusalem. It is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate, and has a population of approximately 25,000 people. The city's economy is largely tourist-driven; international tourism peaks around and during Christmas, when Christians embark on a pilgrimage to the Church of the Nativity, revered as the location of the Nativity of Jesus.
The earliest-known mention of Bethlehem is in the Amarna correspondence of ancient Egypt, dated to 1350–1330 BCE, when the town was inhabited by the Canaanites. In the Hebrew Bible, the period of the Israelites is described; it identifies Bethlehem as the birthplace of David. In the New Testament, the city is identified as the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. Under the Roman Empire, the city of Bethlehem was destroyed by Hadrian, but later rebuilt by Helena, and her son, Constantine the Great, who commissioned the Church of the Nativity in 327 CE. In 529, the Church of the Nativity was heavily damaged by Samaritans involved in the Samaritan revolts; following the victory of the Byzantine Empire, it was rebuilt by Justinian I.
Amidst the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Bethlehem became part of Jund Filastin in 637. Muslims continued to rule the city until 1099, when it was conquered by the Crusaders, who replaced the local Christian Greek Orthodox clergy with Catholic ones. In the mid-13th century, Bethlehem's walls were demolished by the Mamluk Sultanate. However, they were rebuilt by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, following the Ottoman–Mamluk War.[8] After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, it became part of Mandatory Palestine until 1948, when it was annexed by Jordan during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. During the 1967 Six Day War, Bethlehem was occupied by Israel along with the rest of the West Bank. Since the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, Bethlehem has been designated as part of Area A of the West Bank, nominally rendering it as being under Palestinian control. Movement around the city is limited due to the Israeli West Bank barrier.
While it was historically a city of Arab Christians, Bethlehem now has a majority of Arab Muslims; it is still home to a significant community of Palestinian Christians, however it has dwindled significantly, mostly due to difficulties resulting from living under the Israeli occupation. Presently, Bethlehem has become encircled by dozens of Israeli settlements, which significantly hinder the ability of Palestinians in the city to openly access their land and livelihoods, which has contributed to the exodus of Palestinians.
The West Bank (Arabic: الضفة الغربية, romanized: aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; Hebrew: הַגָּדָה הַמַּעֲרָבִית, romanized: HaGadáh HaMaʽarávit), so called due to its relation to the Jordan River, is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip). A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the Levant region of West Asia, it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (via the Green Line) to the south, west, and north. The territory has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
The territory first emerged in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War as a region occupied and subsequently annexed by Jordan. Jordan ruled the territory until the 1967 Six-Day War, when it was occupied by Israel. Since then, Israel has administered the West Bank as the Judea and Samaria Area, expanding its claim into East Jerusalem in 1980. The mid-1990s Oslo Accords split the West Bank into three regional levels of Palestinian sovereignty, via the Palestinian National Authority (PNA): Area A (PNA), Area B (PNA and Israel), and Area C (Israel, comprising 60% of the West Bank). The PNA exercises total or partial civil administration over 165 Palestinian enclaves across the three areas.
The West Bank remains central to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians consider it the heart of their envisioned state, along with the Gaza Strip. Right-wing and religious Israelis see it as their ancestral homeland, with numerous biblical sites. There is a push among some Israelis for partial or complete annexation of this land. Additionally, it is home to a rising number of Israeli settlers. Area C contains 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law is applied and under the Oslo Accords was supposed to be mostly transferred to the PNA by 1997, but this did not occur. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law. Citing the 1980 law in which Israel claimed Jerusalem as its capital, the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, and the Oslo Accords, a 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice concluded that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, remain Israeli-occupied territory.
Palestine (Arabic: فلسطين, romanized: Filasṭīn), officially the State of Palestine (دولة فلسطين, Dawlat Filasṭīn), is a state in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Founded on 15 November 1988 and officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), it claims the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip as its territory, all of which have been Israeli-occupied territories since the 1967 Six-Day War. The West Bank contains 165 Palestinian enclaves that are under partial Palestinian rule, but the remainder, including 200 Israeli settlements, is under full Israeli control. The Gaza Strip was governed by Egypt but conquered by Israel in 1967. Israel governed the region until it withdrew in 2005. The United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and various human-rights organizations still consider Gaza to be held under Israeli military occupation, due to what they regard as Israel's effective military control over the territory; Israel disputes this. Hamas seized power after winning the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. This has since been ensued by a blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt.
After World War II, in 1947, the United Nations (UN) adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine, which recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. Immediately after the United Nations General Assembly adopted the plan as Resolution 181, a civil war broke out in Palestine, and the plan was not implemented. The day after the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, neighboring Arab countries invaded the former British Mandate and engaged Israeli forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Later, the All-Palestine Government was established by the Arab League on 22 September 1948 to govern the All-Palestine Protectorate in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip. It was soon recognized by all Arab League members except Transjordan, which had occupied and later annexed the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Palestine is currently recognized by 138 of the 193 United Nations (UN) member states. Though jurisdiction of the All-Palestine Government was declared to cover the whole of the former Mandatory Palestine, its effective jurisdiction was limited to the Gaza Strip. During the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
On 15 November 1988 in Algiers, Yasser Arafat, as Chairman of the PLO, issued the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which established the State of Palestine. A year after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was formed to govern (in varying degrees) areas A and B in the West Bank, comprising 165 enclaves, and the Gaza Strip. After Hamas became the PNA parliament's leading party in the most recent elections (2006), a conflict broke out between it and the Fatah party, leading to the Gaza Strip being taken over by Hamas in 2007 (two years after the Israeli disengagement).
The State of Palestine's mid-year population in 2021 was 5,227,193. Although Palestine claims Jerusalem as its capital, the city is under the control of Israel; both Palestinian and Israeli claims to the city are mostly unrecognized by the international community. Palestine is a member of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the G77, the International Olympic Committee, as well as UNESCO, UNCTAD and the International Criminal Court. Following a failed attempt in 2011 to secure full United Nations member state status, the United Nations General Assembly voted in 2012 to recognize Palestine as a non-member observer state. On 26 February 2024, the Palestinian government collapsed, with the entire Palestinian government resigning, including the prime minister.
Diakonikon-Baptistery and the ancient mosaics
location: Mount Nebo, Jordan
author: Jan Helebrant
license CC0 Public Domain Dedication
in the promised land, near gleniffer
if i could choose my address, i think living near the never never river in the promised land would be pretty cool :)
God told the people of Israel, when they cross into the Promised Land they must commemorate their divinely given laws on Mt. Ebal, which is just across the Jordan River, by writing them on stone and by setting up an altar (Deutronomy 27:2-8). They were told to put the cursings for violating the laws on Mt. Ebal, and the blessings for keeping the laws on Mt. Gerizim (Deuteronomy 11:29). Joshua did exactly that (Joshua 8:33), placing half the people on Mt. Ebal to recite the cursings, and half on adjacent Mt. Gerizim, to recite the blessings. Because they are so close, they could have heard each other, as modern recreations have demonstrated. It was not stated why Mt. Ebal was designated for the cursings, but it is relatively barren, while Mt. Gerizim is quite fertile.
This photo of Mt. Ebal was taken from Mt. Gerazim. In the valley below is ancient SHECHEM, and next to it, JACOB’S WELL, where Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman in John 4. Very nearby is the BALATA REFUGEE CAMP in modern Nablus.
Is15-9168--Mt-Ebal--5-5x7-5
Pilgrims go up to the Holy Temple for Succot in ancient Jerusalem. Soon, with G-d's help, we too will approach the Holy Temple for the Festivals.
"To the martyrs
To the ghetto fighters
To the partisans
To those who rebelled in the camps
To the fighters of the underground
To the soldiers in the armies
To those who saved their brethren
To the courageous people who took part in the clandestine immigration
The heroes of valor and revolt
For everlasting life"