So, first a couple of things I neglected to mention imediately after shabbat. They gave me a metal key rather than fix my electronic lock. On my walk back to the hotel after visiting the beach, I saw two interesting things. One was a rundown house a block from the beach, along some of the most expensive real estate in Israel, with chickens in the yard. The second was a new apartment building going up, probably very expensive, wih a billboard in front, promoting a radio station contest called "Eifoh hakesef" - Where is the money? Indeed.
On Sunday, we first went to Caesarea. The Roman ruins spoke to me - they said, "Nothing, no edifice, no nation, is forever." And I wondered, how long can the state of Israel last, especially as it is presently constituted? How long can this nation built on the suffering of its ancestors continue to exist while it imposes suffering on another people? Perhaps a hopeful answer to that question follows below.
Later, in Haifa, we saw the beautiful Bahai Gardens, built by a group that teaches that all true religious paths, together, lead to the same place, to the same God, to a place of shalem (completeness) and shalom (peace). Wishful thinking, or truth? God only knows.
Akko was depressing. The Crusader and Turkish structures tell the same story one finds all over Israel - nation after nation, people after people, fighting over this little piece of sand and rock. Same as it ever was. The Arab population in the alleys leading to the wharf looked at us with nothing less than hatred - in their eyes, we clearly had no right to be there. The muezzin called out the prayers of late afternoon, and regardless of whether Islam is a religion of peace or of jihad, they seemed to want no part of it. None took out their prayer rugs, and only two men could be seen in the little mosque as we walked past.
A stop at Tishbi Winery. As I had warned our fellow travelers at the outset, the whites were drinkable, the reds were plonk. The reds in the Golan are much better. Rain, real rain. Nice. The rooms and dinner at Kibbutz Lavi, one of the few remaining true kibbutzim, and a religious one at that, were delightful.
Monday. First, Tzefat, with its kabbalism and its famous rabbis and its changed population. The municipal art center has a number of works by Nicky Imber, a truly amazing personality. The only person to escape from Dachau. He sculpted for himself a mask of one of the SS officers, stole a uniform, and walked out of the camp. That is maybe the ballsiest Shoah story I have ever heard. In the shuk, we run into a colleague from Los Angeles who made aliyah a few years ago. Got some kippot for Robert, and ate an amazing Yemenite sandwich made from teff, the Ethiopian grain. A real treat - there is culinary creativity in Israel.
A jeep trip in the Golan, via another true agricultural kibbutz, the name of which escapes me. One of the drivers made herbal tea from the plants he grows in his garden, The best! Above Quneitra, at a high point overlooking Syria, we learn that there is often gunfire below, between various rebel groups, and those groups and the Assad army. If shells from them wander into Israel, always by accident, rockets are launched by the Israelis to remind them to watch their fire. I don't see how Israel could ever return Golan to Syria. Will Syria even exist in a few years? We run back to the bus because we've been caught in an amazing thunderstorm!
Tuesday, so it must be Tverya (Tiberias). The grave of the Rambam is a mess - so disrespectful. Also buried there is the Shlah - Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz. His grave is no better off. Tverya is rundown. Off the beaten path, there is little industry there. At Beit Alpha, near the place where King Saul fell on his sword, on the grounds of another working kibbutz, there is a fully intact mosaic synagogue floor from the Byzantine era. The craftsmanship is fair, the use of astrological symbols, like in Tzippori, is astonishing.
On to Jerusalem!
After driving through more rain (!), we are greeted by a cool breeze and bright sunshine. In Tverya, I had bought a bottle of J&B, so at the overlook at Mt. Scopus, we make a l'chaim and a shechechianu. I'm drinking more of it now - you can't take it with you! The mosques and churches stand out - the synagogues are invisible, thought there are hundreds in Jerusalem. The Dan Panorama has been fixed up - much nicer than the last time I was here. For dinner, I look for the rundown falafel/shwarma place I used to visit on Ben Yehudah, but it's gone. Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. Dinner at Rimmon is pretty good.
Wednesday. At HaKotel HaMa'arivi, the Western Wall, we take the tunnel tour. I wonder how many people died building the Second Temple and the rest of the edifices to satisfy the megalomania of Herod the Great. All gone. The local tour guide, a religious woman, claims in all sincerity that at this very spot, Cain killed Abel, Noah built his ark, and Abraham attempted to slaughter Isaac. She fails to say that this is all midrash. Dan and I have to unpack all of this with the group after we emerge and walk back through the Arab Quarter. More eyes shooting daggers at us. Back at the Wall, the members of the group, but neither Dan nor I, go to the wall to pray. I consider it avodah zara, stange worship, and I think also of the houses that were destroyed in order to expand the plaza.
At Robinson's Arch and the completed excavations on the south end, one gets another sense of scale - of both the hugeness of the Temple Mount and of the total warfare waged by the Romans. Apparently, the rabbanut wants to take this place too and turn it into an ultra-Orthodox synagogue. Jewishly speaking, it's their way or the highway. Diversity is a word unknown to them.
The Hurva (destroyed) synagogue, most recently trashed by the Jordanians, has been rebuilt for a third time. It's magnificent. The Four Sephardi synagogues, each beautiful in its own way, have been taken over by Ashkenazic worshippers. More evidence of who's in charge here.
After a drink with a colleague who made aliyah decades ago, dinner with congregants at an Asian Fusion restaurant. The bao are Vietnamese sliders - I have one with roast duck, one with asado, and wash it down with sake. Excellent!
Thursday. Two of our travelers, and our guide, have the trots. This does not bode well. At the Knesset, our guide tells one of my favorite jokes about Israel. There were two brothers who loved each other. At the spot where they fell into each others' arms, the Temple was built. There were two brothers who hated each other. At the spot where they beat the crap out of each other, the Knesset was built.
Israel Museum is a lot of fun. The scale model of Second Temple Jerusalem is cool, and the exhibit of Neolithic and Chalcolithic Ancient Israel is really good. At the synagogue exhibit, I notice again, as I had at the Istanbuli Synagogue in the Old City, that the Sephardi Torah breastplates are in the shape of a half-moon and star - Muslim symbols. Interesting syncretism. I wander off to the sculpture garden at the top of the museum. The sculptures are hideous - the view is simply awesome. I eat a sandwich while overlooking the scale model of Second Temple Jerusalem. And I nosh some Bamba - one must have Bamba.
On to Yad Vashem. As always, revisiting the Shoah does not make me cry - it makes me hate Germans, and despair of the way people treat each other. Until I see a reference to Andre Trocme - the Hugenot pastor whose people in Le Chambon Sur Lignon saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of Jews under the noses of the Nazis. I could never hope to be such a religious leader. I will have to screen the film about them, "Weapons of the Spirit", again. It's been a while.
More hope to conclude the day. We go to Jerusalem City Hall and meet a member of the City Council - she's a member the Meretz Party and a professor at Hebrew University. I tell her she is a true optimist. She refers to two states of Israel and Palestine and a fair division of Jerusalem along the lines of the existing Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods. "Nothing's really changed since the Clinton Plan, and it's inevitable. The city is otherwise ungovernable, as are the territories." I dunno. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
