Monday, May 19th, 2003

Dear Friends,

We returned late Friday afternoon from a week of touring in the Galilee. It was great. We left Monday morning to join our dear friends, Naftali and Rachel Stern (see foto), with whom we also traveled to the south. Our first stop was Bet She'arim, one of five communities that hosted the Sanhedrin (ruling Jewish body) after the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. In Bet She'arim are the remains of a small town and, more famously, a series of crypts in which famous rabbis were buried, including Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi, the editor of the Mishna. Unfortunately, the site is not well signed but it is a beautiful park.

From there, we went to Tsippori (Sephoris) which was another of the five towns. Overlooking the hills and valleys of the Galilee, Tsippori contains the ruins of a synagogue with a beautiful mosaic floor. Like all such floors, it includes the names of the donors (not much changes in Jewish fundraising). Tsippori also contains one of the most beautiful mosaic floors from a private ancient Roman house. The centerpiece is a portrait of a woman who is known as the "Mona Lisa of Israel" (see foto). It is done with breathtaking beauty and detail. In the center of Tsippori there are also the remains of a Crusader castle with a splendid view of the surrounding region, where we ran into a neighbor of ours who was part of a French tour group; small world.

We stayed the night in Kibbutz Lavi, a religious collective settlement. I remember the kibbutz movement, religious and non-religious, as rigorously socialistic: all machinery and houses owned in common, even cars were owned by the cooperative. Clothes were washed in a communal laundry, and food was provided in communal dining rooms. At one point, secular kibbutzim even had special children's houses where children slept, ate, studied, and played together. Parents would visit the children, or children would visit the parents; but they did not live as a family. The work of the kibbutzim was largely agricultural. I remember working in the orchards, the barn, the beehives, as a shepherd, and even in the communal kitchen.

All that has changed. There are no more children's houses. The children live with their parents though, in the morning , we saw parents loading children in carts and bringing them to the revised children's houses where child care was provided all day. There is also no more communal dining room, though Kibbutz Lavi is an exception; it still has a dining hall which is used by everyone on Shabbat, thus generating a real communal meal. At the other kibbutzim we visited (see below), members are given a monthly allowance and are charged for food in the cafeteria. They are also charged for laundering. Also, agriculture is no longer the center. Most kibbutzim have some kind of factory on the premises. At Lavi, they manufacture furniture for synagogues, importing the wood, making the furniture, and exporting it to the States and elsewhere. Lavi also has a guest house (in which we stayed) which is for profit. It was like any other hotel except that the "employees" were all members of the kibbutz and, hence, were shareholders in the facility. They also have a professional chicken farm: half a million chickens.

We had a tour of the kibbutz and it is a very nice way of life now. The are no "roads" as such though there are a few vehicles. The houses are set among trees. Everyone has a garden. The children roam freely. The birds chirp loudly in the morning. As one person put it, "We live in a park." We saw the synagogue, too &endash; a modern, well-designed building with home produced furnishings.

While there, a woman at the reception desk asked for Naftali Stern. It turns out that he knew her parents in Germany! And Ursula, when she went into the hotel shop, found out that the salesperson knew Rabbi Ichay from Atlanta and had been born in Lausanne, Switzerland, which meant that she knew Ursula's relatives there. Small world, yet again.

Tuesday, the Sterns stayed on the kibbutz where Naftali had a former student and we borrowed the car to go to Nazareth. There, we joined a woman from the dialogue group in which I participate. Lana Naseir comes from one of the most distiinguished Christian families of Nazareth, her grandfather having been the mayor. We sat in the garden of her mother's house and had cold drinks, cake, and coffee while we spoke about our respective families (see foto). (It seems that religion and nationality do not protect one against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.) Lana then took us on a tour of the market (shuk) and churches of Nazareth. Because she is so well known, we were greeted everywhere we went. I must say that we feel much more tension in the Arab market of Jerusalem than we did in its parallel in Nazareth. The city claims to be the place where the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce that she was pregnant with Jesus. However, the various communities differ as to which well is the real one. So, there are Latin Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Greek Orthodox wells with churches attached. The Latin Church is the one where the Pope prayed. The Greek Orthodox church is the smallest; it has beautiful icons.

At 11:30 we moved on to our next host: Sheikh Abil-Salaam al-Manasira (see foto). He is the head of the Qadariyya order of sufis (Islamic mystics). I know him through his son, who is one of the leaders of the dialogue group. He and his son (with his family) live in three rooms in the Muslim section of town. (Actually, 75% of Nazareth is Muslim though the reputation of the town is as a Christian place.) The sheikh is also a member of the national council of sheikhs which sits in Jerusalem; so he is there once or twice a week. After the ritual cold drink, which was much needed because of the great heat, he put on his headgear and gown and took us on a Muslim tour of Nazareth. We went up to a mosque above the city with a spectacular view and then to the famous White Mosque. Everywhere we went, he was greeted and we were warmly received. When we arrived at the White Mosque, midday prayers had just begun. I would never have ventured in but the sheikh brought us in to the back of the mosque and, when services and handshaking were over, took us in for a close look at the most sacred parts of the mosque. When Ursula asked how people felt at his bringing non-Muslims into the mosque, the sheikh said that they may think what they want but he is the sheikh and they wouldn't dare to say anything, In addition, his family is descended from the prophet, Mohammad, and numbers about 2.5 million members all over the world. This, too, protects him. After the tour, we returned to his house where we were served dried wheat with delicious yoghurt. The sheikh had been very gracious about keeping our kashrut rules. We also met his grandchildren. Very sweet, and the boys showed off their ability to recite chapters from the Qoran (see foto).

After Nazareth, we picked up the Sterns and we all drove to Kibbutz Shamir which is in the north east corner of Israel. I have remote relatives there with whom I spent much time when I was in Israel in 1959 as a student. In fact, I owe my Hebrew to them since it was the only language of communication for three weeks. My cousin, Meir, has had a stroke and is not as alert as he was years ago but the rest of the family was there and I was glad to see them again. Ursula did very well with her Hebrew though some of the children-in-law and grandchildren speak English. Here too we heard about the "new" kibbutz life: They have a factory that produces optical lenses for export all over the world; one member of the family works there. They also manufacture a material that is intended for one-time use and, from it, they make paper diapers and disposable surgical gowns and masks. The common dining room is a fee-charging cafeteria. Even the doctor charges a fee. The free swimming pool seems to be the only communitarian remnant of this kibbutz which was once socialist, bordering on communist. Again, the children run free. The children's houses are childcare facilities. And the residence for the elderly is very modern and beautiful, also well staffed. "We live in a park."

When I was in Kibbutz Shamir in 1959 and 1963, they were on the Syrian border, just below the Golan Heights (see foto). I remember shepherding the sheep and seeing the Syrian soldiers. I also had an army escort. Now, the Heights are Israeli and there is no tension at all. No infiltrators now but three women were killed that way in Shamir and three beautiful trees mark the spot. The sense of space is enormous.

We spent the night in Kfar Szold, a nearby kibbutz with guest house (not so elegant) and a car airconditioning factory. The following morning, the man in charge of sprinklers came around to set them &endash; a lone remnant of the earlier days I had known.

Wednesday, we rose early and had a very full day. We went first to Tel Dan. This site contains the ancient Canaanite city of Leshem which was captured by the Jews at the time of Joshua and renamed "Dan" for the tribe that occupied that area. The fortifications are massive. More interesting was the local Israelite temple that stood there on which sacrifices to the God of Israel were offered. Also, there was a "high place" for offerings to local Canaanite gods and a holy tree (Asherah). The prophets railed against these institutions, but the archaeological remnants were undeniable. Tel Dan is also situated in a nature park because the Dan River, one of the main tributaries of the Jordan, runs through it. Because of the heavy rain we have had, the water flowed with a force that hasn't been seen in years.

From Tel Dan and its park, we traveled to the Banyas reserve which contains another source of the Jordan River. There is a big waterfall there and, again, because of the rains, it was flowiing freely. From there, we proceeded up to Mount Hermon. As Israel shades northward, it becomes part of the foothills of Mt. Hermon, the tallest mountain in this part of the Near East. Before 1967, it was all in Syrian and Lebanese hands. Now, parts of it belong to Israel and we drove as far as we could, right up to what are the ski slopes during the January-March season. If the cable car had been running, I would have gone up even higher but it broke down just as we arrived. The highest point in Israeli hands is 2000 meters (6,000 feet); the rest of the mountain is controled by the Syrians and Lebanese. There was no snow at 1600 meters though there was plenty of army presence, naturally (see foto). Having been to Mt. Hermon on this trip and to the Egyptian-Israeli border on our trip to Eilat, we have been to the geographic extremes of Israel.

On the way down the mountain, we stopped at Nimrud's Castle. It is a Crusader-like fortress built by the Arabs to keep the Crusaders from invading Syria. It worked. The castle was severely damaged by an earthquake and, for the first time, I saw stones in an arch that were out of line because of the shifting ground (see foto). We, then, visited a large reservoir, Berekhat Ram.

Instead of descending back into Galilee, we spent the next hours touring the Golan Heights. This territory, which was all a military zone under the Syrians, is a beautiful plateau with large expanses of wheat and open brush. The landscape is scattered with volcanic stone but it has a serenity and a beauty about it &endash; almost like pictures of the African savvanah. I do not remember anything like this elsewhere in Israel. Also, there is lots of water &endash; with gorges and waterfalls everywhere. (Why has no one built a safari park here?) The Golan towers over the Galilee and I cannot see how one could ever give it back without an ironclad peace agreement (which in the Middle East is an oxymoron). Very hard tank battles were fought here in 1967 and again in 1973.

One of our stops was at Katzrin, the only real city in the Golan. We visited the Golan Archaeological Museum &endash; a must if you are touring the area. The items on display are well done and there is an exceptionally good multi-media presentation about Gamla (see below). We also visited the ancient talmudic city of Katzrin with its old synagogue. Our late friend, Joy Ungerleider, was involved in restoring this site and we felt very close to her as we have many times during our stay here.

It was very hot and we were tired so we headed to our overnight stop at Kibbutz Ma'agan which is on the southern shore of the Kineret (the Sea of Galilee). The guest facilities there, which include rooms for conferences, are a source of income for the kibbutz (see foto). With great pleasure, I swam in the Kineret which, for the first time in many years, is at its "normal" level because of the heavy rains. (When I was there in October, the water was very low.) We had dinner at Bet Gavriel, a nearby conference facility and restaurant named after Gabriel Sherover, the first AIDS patient to die in Israel; Ursula knows the family.

When one enters any of these national parks and museums, one announces that we are four "gimla'im," that is, four senior citizens. Ursula, who didn't quite catch the pronunciation, announced at one of them that we were four "gemalim" &endash; four camels, which set everyone chuckling.

Thursday, after a morning dip in the Kineret, we set out to go around the Kineret. Our first stop was the grave of Rachel, the wife of Rabbi Akiva, who is buried near Tiberias. As one of my colleagues has shown in a very fine essay, the same customs that are used at the tomb of Rachel, wife of Jacob, which is near Bethlehem, have developed at the "northern" Rachel's tomb. This is because many people cannot make the trip south and because, now, no one can get to the southern Rachel's tomb because of the tension there. We stopped to say various personal prayers. In the area outside the tomb, there were pictures of famous rabbis with some of their sayings, and I was astounded that Ursula was able to recognize several of them.

We drove through Tiberias, skipping the grave of Maimonides which I had visited last time, and went on to Kibbutz Ginosar. There, an adjacent museum, holds the ancient boat recovered from the Kineret when its waters were so low. The story of how the boat was found, excavated, and cared for was fascinating. The boat clearly dates from the time of Jesus and, hence, has meaning to Christians as well as Jews. It is very well displayed. From there, we went to Capernaum (Kfar Nahum) where a synagogue from the time of Jesus still stands. The New Testament reports that Jesus preached there and so this is a holy spot to Christianity. Unfortunately, political considerations have left the site bereft of proper signage and it is hard to tell what one is looking at.

We then proceeded back up to the Golan Heights where, after an obligatory stop at the Golan wineries, we went to Gamla. The story of Gamla is very moving. It was one of the 25 small, unarmed Jewish cities at the time when the Romans invaded to put down the rebellion of 67-73 C.E. It is situated on a crag of rock (see foto) and, while the historian Josephus had told its story, no one knew where it was until after 1967 when an amateur stumbled upon what he thought might be the site. Archaeology confirmed Josephus' account. The Jews of Gamla chose to resist the Romans who laid a long seige on the city. They fought bravely but, finally, the Romans broke through the walls. Many, many people were killed and the rest fled to the pinnacle of the crag. As the Romans worked their way closer, the Jews chose to jump down the steep cliff and 5000 bodies were found at the bottom. A very brave story, not unlike the story of Masada, the last city to resist the Romans in 73 C. E. There, the inhabitants, after a long seige and battle, committed collective suicide rather than be captured or killed by the Romans. (And all this during the pax romana!)

We did not go down the slopes to Gamla itself but we did get to the nearest lookout point where, by chance, we stumbled upon a series of Jordanian officers who were being escorted around by a high-ranking Israeli officer (see foto). Naftali and I also walked to the nearby waterfall.

From Gamla, we proceeded to the southern end of the Golan plateau and made one of the most spectacular descents I have ever made from the Heights to Hamat Gader. Just breathtaking. The descent and the return to the southern shores of the Kineret also runs right along the Jordanian border and the fence and security roads were clearly visible (see foto). The antiquities at Hamat Gader (Roman bathhouses and a synagogue) are closed. We finished the day with a dip in the Kineret and dinner at Bet Gavriel again.

Friday, our last day, we rose early and, after an early morning dip in the Kineret, we set out for Kokhav Ha-Yarden, a Crusader castle located in the Galilee, up on the ridge of the Israeli side. The castle was interesting but the panoramic view was amazing. From there, we went to see the ancient synagogue of Bet Alpha which contains the famous "naïve" mosaics of the binding of Isaac and the usual ritual objects used in decorating third century synagogues. We had skipped the other very famous synagogue from this period, the one south of Tiberias, because we had seen it recently when Benjamin and Alexia had visited. Both mosaic floors contain depictions of Apollo leading his chariot across the sky as well as signs of the zodiac in which the constellations and seasons are depicted with women. One can imagine the discussions in the building committee. From there, we returned to Tel Aviv with the Sterns and then back to Jerusalem in time to prepare for Shabbat.

The trip was wonderful and our heads are still full of images: Tel Dan and the river, Mt. Hermon, the expanses of the Golan, the story of Gamla, the descent to Hamat Gader, the Kineret … But we could not have done this trip without our dear friends, Naftali and Rachel Stern. They set the itinerary, chose the lodgings, drove us safely, and we thoroughly enjoyed being with them, eating and walking with them, and seeing their land.

Ursula has only three more weeks here and there seems to be so much that we have still not done. But these memories will stay with us for a long time.

Meanwhile, this morning at 6:00 a.m. at the Wall, Rabbi Eisenbach, who prays near me and who heads Zakka (the organization that picks up the pieces of the dead) was summoned from prayers to go to the scene of the most recent terrorist attack (7 dead and 40 wounded so far). So much for the Palestinian will for peace. As I was studying Martin Gilbert's "Atlas of the Israeli-Arab Conflict," I realized that things have never really been better. Very sad.

Shalom, U&D