Climbing Mount Sinai

Sunrise from the summit of Mount Sinai, photo by eviljohniusr — Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Excerpt from “Crossing Cairo: A Jewish Woman’s Encounter with Egypt” by Ruth H. Sohn

Although we could have taken a one-hour flight, we decided to travel from Egypt to Israel by way of the Sinai desert, where we planned to climb Mount Sinai.

We would be celebrating Passover with friends in Jerusalem, and we were in fact following part of the journey our ancestors began with the Exodus from Egypt that we celebrate with this holiday.

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites arrived at Sinai three months after leaving Egypt, and then continued on their long trek to the Promised Land. The journey that took our ancestors 40 years would take us just a few days. And where they had trudged slowly over hot desert sands, we would make the trip in an air-conditioned bus.

The night sky was breathtaking. The stars strewn across the sea of black jumped out as dazzling points of light and looked almost close enough to touch.

For the next two hours, we made our way up the gradual but steady incline. We were walking with Barbara and Yazeed, travel companions we had met on the bus from Cairo. Barbara was a young Greek Orthodox woman from Australia, and Yazeed was a young Muslim of Indian descent who had grown up in the U.S. and was in graduate school in Qatar.

Here we were, American Jews on our way to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem, together with a religious Christian and a religious Muslim, all of us spiritual seekers from these different faiths, climbing Mt. Sinai together, hoping to make it there in time for the sunrise.

We tried to keep up a good walking pace. Men and boys of all ages in long white jalabiyyas (robes) stepped forward out of the darkness every few minutes, offering politely to take us up on their camels. Each time we declined with a shake of our heads.

As we passed other hikers, we tried to guess what languages they were speaking from the brief snatches of conversation we heard. The smorgasbord of languages included French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russian, and several different Slavic and African tongues.

As we neared the top of Mount Sinai, we found it harder and harder to keep moving forward because the path was growing increasingly crowded with other hikers. To our dismay, it was already starting to get light.

I feared that we would not make it to see the sunrise from the summit—and then suddenly the space opened up and there we were, looking out at a sea of mountains, layer after layer, blues fading into grays into the distant horizon.

In the next moment, oohs and aahs rose around us, as just a hint of glowing red peeked out from above the top of one of the most distant mountains. In moments, the scene before us was transformed as the sun slowly floated up into full view.

The expansive mountain ranges that spread before us in every direction were suddenly bathed in luminous pinks and oranges and golden tones. The flow of molten rock eons ago had captured twists and turns in ribbons of color that seemed to still pulse with life.

I thought of the beautiful words of Psalm 97:5: “The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.”

Next to us, a group of Africans started singing another prayerful and joyous psalm, their voices strong and clear.

It was moving to see people of so many different faiths and ethnic backgrounds standing together, similarly struck by the natural beauty and the spiritual depth of this special place that Jews and Christians from the West call Mount Sinai and that Muslim and Christian Arabs call Jebel Musa (“Mount Moses”).

To my mind, the second half of the verse from Psalm 97 also fit the moment: “The heavens proclaim God’s righteousness and all peoples see God’s glory.”

We walked around, quietly taking in the spectacular views from every angle. Within an hour, the sun was high enough in the sky that it was already getting hot.

On the climb up, we had gotten separated from Barbara, but Yazeen was still with us as we started to make our way back down.

This time we decided to take a different route, marked by a sign that warned us that we were embarking on a descent of over 3000 steps!

Fossils and more dramatic rock formations greeted us at every turn. We took our time, but sooner than we expected we found ourselves back at St. Catherine’s monastery at the base of the mountain.

We almost turned back when we saw how crowded it was. Then we noticed our Barbara, just ahead of us, and we decided to explore the monastery with her.

Afterwards, we walked back to our Bedouin campsite for a hearty breakfast, followed by a long nap.

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