raprologuedifferentsortsofsacrificelove/hate/sexes
WAR WITH ROME BEGINS NOT WITH A CLANG OF SWORDS BUT WITH THE LICK OF A DAGGER DRAWN FROM AN ASSASSIN'S CLOAK!!
Festival season in YERUSHALAYIM:
a time when Jews from across the Mediterranean converge upon the holy city
bearing fragrant offerings to G d?! There are in the ancient Jewish cult a host of annual observances
& celebrations that can only be performed HERE, inside the Temple, in the presence of the High Priest,
who hoards the Most Sacred feast days - Passover, Pentecost and the Harvest Festival of Sukkot -
for himself, all the while pocketing a healthy fee, or TITHE, as he would call it,
for his trouble ànd the well-being of the world?!
And whàt trouble it ìs!
On sùch days the city's population can swèll to more than a million people!
It takes the full force of the porters & lower priests to squeeze THÌS crùsh of pilgrims
through the Hulda Gates @ the Temple's southern wall [zie: 3 mei 1967!], to herd them along the dark
& cavernous galleries beneath the Temple plaza & guide them ùp the double flight of stairs that lead
to the public square & marketplace known as the Court of Gentiles!? This Temple of YERUSHALAYIM
is a roughly rectangular structure, some 500 m. long & 300 meters wide, balanced
atop Mount MORIAH, on the eastern edge
of the holy city.
Its outer walls
are rimmed with covered porticos whose slab-topped roofs,
held up by row after row of glittering white stone columns, protect these masses
from the merciless SUN! On the Temple's southern flank sits the largest & most ornate of the porticoes,
the Royal Portico - a tall, two-story, basilica-like assembly hall built in the customary Roman style:
THÌS is the administrative quarters of the San hedrin, the supreme religious body & highest
judicial court of the jewish Nation; it also is where a clatter of merchants & grubby money
changers lie impatiently in wait as you make your way ùp the underground stairs
& onto the spacious sunlit plaza
[zie: Gouden Omar-koepel!]!
These money changers
play THE vital role ìn the Temple?!
For a fee, they will exchange your foul foreign coins for the Hebrew Holy Shekel,
THE ONLY currency permitted by the Temple authorities!? Those money changers also will collect
the half-shekel Temple TAX that all adult males MUST pay to preserve the pomp & spectacle of all you can see around you:
the mountains of burning incense & the ceaseless sacrifices, the wine libations
& the first-fruits offering, the Levite choir belting out psalms of praise
& the accompanying orchestra thrumming lyres
& banging cymbals!
Someone
MÙST páy for ALL these
"necessities"?!
Someone
MÙST bèar the
cost of the burnt
offerings that so
please the
Lord!?
Asih, man, 80 jaar
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