Poria Hospital

Some pictures from the Galilee trip are interspersed with this story. 

Communion service Sunday morning, Mt of Beatitudes

Reconstructed Byzantine home in Chorazim

It rained on us most every day in the Galilee, and when it wasn’t raining it was threatening to do so. This is the rainy season, and the land has needed it badly for several years. I’ve been here many Januaries when there was no rain, and there had been no rain all winter. So though I know they would have preferred the sunshine, the group was more than cheerful about getting wet. And besides, the hills were very, very green.

Crusader capital, mint condition

The hardest day was the Wednesday, when we went to Zippori (Sepphoris) and Nazareth. It had rained and stormed all night, and it rained on us all day as we walked around what is usually a lovely archaeological site, and then made our way through the crowded streets of Nazareth to the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of St. Joseph. Much happened—there were the usual wonders of the little museum under the church, where caves were found that probably resembled the home of Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, and where the amazing Crusader-carved column capitals were found buried, which had never been used and thus still retained all their intricacy of faces and figures, each capital telling a different story from the New Testament.

Kathy and Jennifer, Arbel

Hyrax (also called coney or rock rabbit)

But then one of our group, Susan, fell and hurt her shoulder badly, and ultimately she and I and another pilgrim, Rebecca, who is a nurse, took a trip to the hospital. That in itself was an amazing education in alternative medical systems. This hospital was south of Tiberius in the town of Poria. The first language on signs, as well as in speech, was Hebrew. The second was Arabic. The third was Russian. A distant fourth was English. According to the website one of its specialities is to serve a diverse population of Christians, Muslims, secular, religious, and very religious Jews, Druze, Bedouins, and foreign pilgrims. The doctor who saw us almost immediately seemed sweet and spoke very little English. He pointed the way to the X-ray department—“Right, right, left! Right, right, left!”

Jane and me at Banias Falls

We got to a double door with huge signs on both doors in big red Hebrew letters saying, “No admittance without a magnetic card.” Very menacing. A small sign over the doors included the word “X-ray” in English letters, and we could see people waiting inside, but we didn’t see the authorized way in. We waited for someone to come out and we walked in, quickly got the X-ray, walked (Right, left, left) back to the exam room. By then the doctor had seen it and determined that something was broken. He got out a medical book to show us pictures to explain it, put a “stockinget” sling on the patient, and sent us back to collect a CD copy of the X-ray to take home to the U.S. doctor.

Heron on lakeshore

That didn’t work. We were supposed to go pay first (amazingly, the whole bill was as small as our wait was short—less than $300, which someone later commented would have been the co-pay just for an MRI back in the U.S.). So after the bill was settled, we returned again to X-ray (right, right, left). This time no one came out the door to let us in. We tried a few things on the keypad before I saw a hand-lettered sign on poster board next to it that said, “For admittance press 5555.” So much for the red-letter signs. So much for locking the doors at all.

While we were waiting for the cab to return to Pilgerhaus, we realized that a doctor who had taken courses at the seminary with me, including an Israel trip, and goes to church with Rebecca, and knows all three of us, and whose son is an orthopedist in Louisville—his phone number was in my Iphone. So we called him, and before we were back to the hotel his son had called and made an appointment with Susan as soon as she returns home.

I’ve been to Zippori and Nazareth a dozen times, and I certainly hoped to stay out of the hospital on this trip, but our patient is doing very well, and visiting the hospital in Poria was an experience not to be missed.The treatment was not characterized by endless protections against any kind of frivolous lawsuit. It was fast, friendly, inexpensive, and according to the specialist in the U.S., accurate.