Nazareth

Nazareth is a place that probably sounds familiar to most of you guys. Not for it's annual auto show, since I don't believe they have one. It was Jesus' hometown and "his almighty" probably did something-or-other around there. So did his mom. According to the guidebook, it was in al-Nasira, as they now call it, where she got word from Angel Gabe that she was chosen to endure morning sickness for the sake of a soon-to-be cute little baby that would eventually lead to a whole lotta headache (and press). So of course, there are a lot of tourists in Nazareth. And so obviously, that means commercialism. There's no shortage of Christian memorabelia there. When Tal and I got on the train to Haifa (our first stop on the way to Nazareth) we weren't exactly hoping for a spiritual experience, but in the back of our minds, we were dreaming of running into our favorite filmmaker of all time (or at least he's mine). Elia Suleiman is a local Nazarene, but since he's also a hotshot, he's probably sitting in a cafe somewhere in New York or Paris. Ok, so we didn't run into him, but we found his friend Jamal Daher, he's also in actor in both of Suleiman's feature films, "Chronicle of a Disappearance" and "Divine Intervention". Turns out Elia is going to be in town in a couple weeks and maybe just maybe, we'll have to opportunity to gawk as we should have gawked at Jesus' old stuff.


Also, here's a picture of the place where Mary heard the "good news".