Ein Karem

I'm 100% Palestinian.

Uh, my dad is from Ein Kerem, which is just outside Al-Quds, which is, uh, proper Jerusalem, and my mom is from, uh, a town called Tubas in Palestine.

Um, so yeah, I'm demi-Falastini all the way through, and that's essentially, I've lived it my whole life.

Uh, I've un- I've always been vocal about it, but I think, uh, when I, I actually went to Palestine for the first time as an adult e- ever, like, uh, my first trip ever was in, uh, September of 2023, one month prior to October 7th of 2023.

So Mary decided to visit her to uncover more of the mystery.

Mary spent what little she had on a cart to carry her from Nazareth to Ein Kerem.

The road was a long coil of earth snaking through the undulating Judean Hills, shimmering with emerald foliage.

The summer air was filled with the scent of wild herbs and the distant echoes of birdsong.

What would he sound like? Would he cry like other babies? Would he stumble and fall like other children? The thought of a child gave her a smile.

With that faint flicker of affection in her mind, she drifted off to sleep.

The cart finally arrived at Ein Kerem.

The home of Zechariah and Elizabeth was in the center of town.

And I went to the hospital there.

That's Ein Karim, one of the hospitals in Jerusalem.

From hitting you? From hitting me.

This is

These people would have had vines going, go to Jerusalem today.

I love going to Ein Kerem, the place of John the Baptist, the birth of John the Baptist.

Because you walk by these little courtyards and the people have these vines growing.

There's grapes growing there.

Seven gilded onion domes, commissioned by Tsar Alexander III for his mother, designed by David Grimm.

There's the Mount of Olives Convent and Ascension Church, the Gourney Convent in Ein Karim, a hospice and asylum in the Muristan, schools and properties in Bethany, Hebron, Jericho, Jaffa, Haifa, and Tiberias.

That's not a compound.

That's a parallel church.