Last Blog: Trip to Lake Kinneret (also known as Sea of Galilee) Stan:
March 26-28: Finished first week of army volunteer program on Thursday after lunch, got taken to train station in Be’er Sheva, took train directly to Haifa where Son Aaron picked us up in rental car and went to hotel Hof on Mt Carmel overlooking the beautiful Haifa coast line towards the north. Next morning we started the adventure driving to Bet She’an National Park. Bet She’an is 400 acres of archeological ruins starting from 16th Century BCE as an Egyptian capital in this area; the name Bet She’an is known in hieroglyphics from a 1478 BCE carving. Later King Saul was killed at nearby Mt. Gilboa (that we visited earlier) and his head/body brought here for display. Residents of a neighboring city that Saul had saved from the Philistines came at night and took his body for a proper burial (burning). King David finally conquered Bet She’an and much later the town was destroyed by the Assyrians in 732 BCE. Later the city was a Greek city and then conquered by the Hasmoneans and became Jewish again. During the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66 CE, the Jewish residents were murdered. But the town recovered and grew with much Roman construction, which has now been uncovered and is very impressive. The Romans certainly knew how to entertain with a large 7000 person theater still intact. Next to the theatre, they had an interesting toilet system with 20 toilets for both men and women together lined up in a row against one wall. A person put his tush on 2 stones separated by a few inches. There was a running water drainage system between the 2 stones. The Romans also had an elaborate sauna and steam bath house with a very clever heating system. The Roman temples, columns, market places were quite impressive. In 749 CE a major earthquake destroyed the city that was then buried until serious excavations started in 1986. A large Tel site on the edge of the Roman city with 20 layers of settlements has not been excavated completely. A modern city with the same name was built nearby in 1948 with the founding of the state.
2. We then drove a short distance to Bet Alpha National Park where a 6th Century CE synagogue was uncovered in 1828 on a kibbutz Hefzi-Ba. The mosaic floor completely intact is one of the most beautiful in Israel and consists of a zodiac circle with inscriptions in Hebrew and Aramaic, biblical features, Jewish religious objects such as menorahs, and lions. At one end of the floor is a fabulous inscription by the artists who built the floor thanking the elders who hired such inexperienced stone workers for the job and paid them 100 measures of grain in 520 CE. The museum had a good film showing how the contract was negotiated by the elders who had to keep up with the synagogue built by their neighbors in Tiberias a little north. The synagogue was probably destroyed by the same earthquake that hit Bet She’an 4 km away.
3. We then drove north on #90 to Kohav Hayarden National Park, which has the Crusader fort Belvoir (‘fine view’ in French) that was built on top of an ancient Jewish town Kochav. This site, at the top of a 550m mountain reached by a long winding one lane road, which has to stretch when a bus passes-good grief-- was very beautiful with wild flowers and a flock of very unusual and stunning birds. Unfortunately we could not identify this stork-like bird with a long narrow beak, long legs, and a body of white with black wingtips. The fort was built by the Hospitaller Knights in 1168. In 1180’s the Arabs under Saladin conquered Jerusalem, Acre, and Safed and most of the area from the Crusaders but not Belvoir. But after an additional 1.5 year siege the Knights did surrender in 1189 and, because they put up an heroic struggle, they were not massacred as was the Arabs’ custom. Much of the lowers walls of many buildings are still standing including the moat which was built because of tradition and not because they had water at the top of this mountain. The rocks removed from the moat served to construct the entire fort. A few years later the fort was razed to prevent its use in a future Crusade. In the 18th century an Arab village was started here and in 1948 the invading Iraqi soldiers stationed here were defeated by the famous Golani Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces. Most interesting is the fact that the Iraqis never signed the armistice agreement in 1949 that the invading Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, and Lebanese signed which makes the Iraqis technically still at war with Israel to this very day.
4. We drove north again to Lake Kinneret passing the Jordan River at Yarden where we saw many people being baptized in white robes in the river. We turned east around the Lake to Maagan Holiday Village where we stayed for the night. It is owned by a kibbutz who put their land to more profitable use with this very beautiful resort right on the Lake. We had Shabbat dinner here with some fine Israeli wine from this area. Most of the guests were foreign and not Jewish. After a great Israeli breakfast we started off to enjoy more ancient sites.
5. We went to the ancient city of Tiberias that has an unique history since the city was purchased by a Jewish woman Donna Gracia HaNasi in 1500 or so from the Sultan of Turkey for a fee and yearly charge. She wanted it as a place of refuge for Jews fleeing from the Inquisition, that had hounded her from Portugal to the Netherlands to Italy. She also broke the Pope’s embargo of a port in Italy to Jewish vessels or merchandise because she had the support of so many businessmen in many countries. A hotel in town is named after her and it is constructed in a renaissance style with a renaissance lobby and a museum dedicated to her that we visited.
5. We saw two Tombs, of many in this city, that of the famous Maimonies, Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, of whom it is said ‘from Moses to Moses there is no other Moses.’ He was the greatest Jewish philosopher, one of the greatest Torah scholars, scientist, and physician. He left Spain in 1150’s and spent most of his time as the Sultan’s doctor in Egypt where he wrote most of his many works. He was buried in Tiberias in 1204. His tomb site has a large metal work above of unknown significance and was unimpressive and tacky. Religious Jews pray here 24/7.
The other Tomb was that of Rachel not the biblical one but wife of the famous Rabbi Akiva. He was an uneducated shepherd and she was the daughter of a very rich man, Kalba Sauva. She married him when he was 40, he left to get educated and came back many years later with 20,000 students as his followers. He wrote much but in 135 CE he thought Bar Kochba would lead the Jewish people to victory over the Romans. After a few years of Bar Kochba’s success the Romans got very angry and massacred the Jews again. Akiva was captured and martyred very cruelly at Caesarea. He was wrapped in a wet Torah and burned at the stake. His students yelled to him swallow the flames to die quicker but he replied no I can see the words of the Torah going up to Heaven. Rachel was supposed to be very educated in Jewish Law also. The stories are better than the site. Religious Jews pray here everyday. Unfortunately it was also a very tacky site—this brought an end to the tombs Aaron and Roberta were willing to visit.
6. Just south of Tiberias is Hamat Telverya National Park which has a 4th century synagogue with its mosaic floor totally preserved. This was really high quality workmanship unlike that of the Bet Alpha synagogue. The mosaic seven branched candelabrum/menorah was spectacular. This site had a hot springs that attracted Romans in great numbers even before Tiberias was founded by the Romans in 20 CE. The ancient ruins were only discovered in 1920 while a road was being constructing. An earlier 3rd century synagogue was also located here. The mosaic floor has Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew inscriptions and a large Zodiac with the sun god Helios in the center, showing the heavy Greek influence even at this late date. This must have been a wealthy community to have such a beautiful building as this floor would suggest. The hot spring next door may have something to do with their success. Some parts of the 4th century village are also visible.
7. Headed north again to the northern part of the Lake to Capernaum National Park the site of Jesus’ preaching and some miracles and of Peter’s home. Capernaum in Jesus’ time was a small Jewish fishing village with a synagogue which is now under a very impressive late 4th century synagogue. The latter has beautiful columns and stone work with praying facing Jerusalem as all synagogues do even in Israel. Peter’s home has large modern church over it. The same earthquake in 749 destroyed the town and an earlier church over Peter’s house. The area was excavated by Catholic archeologists and it seems the church owns the land too. Priests live here in an impressive building with beautiful grounds. A very large number of Christian tour buses were here.
8. Just a few kms north is Korazim National Park with another ancient synagogue and a town known for its good wheat as mentioned in the Talmud. In the Christian scriptures Korazim is mentioned as a city condemned by Jesus. The town however dates from the first or second century CE. By the 3rd-4th century the town grew and one can see many buildings from this period including a synagogue and homes. This synagogue did not have a mosaic floor but did have many massive columns and capitols and carved roof beams suggesting a very large congregation in a large building. In the 16th century a traveler reported Jewish fisherman here. The town had some small number of residents until the start of the 20th century when it was abandoned again. It has a great view of the lake down the hill.
9. We then drove to Rosh Pina a town founded in 1880 by the Rothchilds for farming and silk production, which the latter lasted only for 3 years. The town was on the hill since malaria was present in the valley below when they bought land and started farming. The Arabs only grazed their animals on the hills that were disease free. A doctor was brought in to fight the malaria and great progress was made. A fabulous chocolate restaurant, near the 1880 synagogue, that was the doctor’s home, is called Chocolatte. It has the most spectacular dish--chocolate soup that we had last year and again this visit. It is made with dark chocolate and some hot spice that gives it just a little kick and is so rich and delicious. The inside has old stone arches all around and has so much atmosphere. The old part of town is quite quaint.
10. We then drove to the ancient town of Katzrin in the Golan not far from the Lake Kinneret. After 1967 when Israel captured the Golan archeologists started looking for ruins and one got lucky spotting a stone archway sticking up in the Bedouin village of Katzrin. The name is recent and the ancient name is unknown. A whole town was buried here with a large synagogue, oil press, and assorted oil processing equipment. During the Byzantine period 400-700 CE the area flourished with 25 villages. They found an inscription from Uzi who built homes so one reconstructed home is called Uzi’s home. Most unusual is that one home is finished with a roof and one could go inside to see how people lived 1500 years ago. They had a bed suspended from the roof that was let down at night. The cooking area was shown in detail. Again the most elaborate building in the village was the synagogue with impressive columns, capitols, lintels with nice carved pomegranates. It was the center of all life in the village.
11. We drove back to Haifa by way of route #85 which passes several Druze and Arab towns alongside of the hills on the north side of the highway. We stopped in Acco at the Moroccan Synagogue, this is not ancient but started in 1949 by one young refugee from Morocco who wanted to recreate the big synagogue in his home town. In 1949 there were no Jews in the city; in fact the British used the old Arab prison here and hanged some Jewish prisoners here because there were no Jews to protest. Now many Jews live here along with many Arabs and until one bad incident earlier in 2009, coexistence was real here. The key here is that the synagogue he built is now amazing with mosaics on all floors walls, ceiling all designed by one simple guy with a big dream. The mosaics portray all aspects of Jewish history, Israel life and nature. We were very lucky to get in and did only because his grandsons were coming to study Talmud just as we tried all the locked doors.
12. That evening we had dinner in the German Colony section of Haifa that is all restaurants and bars now. Stayed at Hotel Hof again and enjoyed the view of the harbor. Took train at 7am to get to Tel Aviv Central bus station only 3 blocks west of train station by 10am.
March 26 Sar El tour described in earlier blog
April 2-3. Finish army volunteer program on Thursday early because Army base was having a memorial weekend for fallen soldiers of the Paratrooper Brigade and they wanted to clean up the base completely without us. Took train to Tel Aviv, cab to hotel, and then took cab to Israel Museum with incredible stuff, cab back, collapse in bed to get up at 3AM to get cab to airport for 6am flight to London. One funny at airport checking in, our luggage was too heavy, so we backed up and removed paper and books into our carry on backpacks until the luggage just made the weight limit. My pack was 25 pounds and Roberta’s was 20. Then nonstop to SFO and Santa Rosa Airporter back to Santa Rosa airport and cab back to home sweet home. Thank Gd we’re safe and the blog is now finished!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Our last month except for one great weekend
Blog March 5-April 3, 2009
March 5, SR: We had our first overnight guest, Stan’s friend and fraternity brother from college at Purdue, Paul Duckor. Paul came to visit us in Santa Rosa and we told him about our great time in Sar-El, volunteering the Israel Army that he decide to do it also. He stayed with one night before moving to the ‘Little Inn in the German Colony’ just 1 block from our place. After dinner at our place we went to a concert at Beit Avichai, which is a new cultural center situated in the center of the city on King George street. This cultural center believes in gathering the voices heard in the Jewish-Israeli dialogue, to give them a facility and to allow them to be heard and have an effect on Israeli society and culture. We heard Ladino music with 2 wonderful singers and band of 5 with some very unusual instruments.
March 6, SR
We had Roberta’s friend from previous Sar-El volunteer experiences, Gerry Gelber over for lunch.
We had dinner with our Temple Shomrei Torah tour group visiting Jerusalem. We meet them at the Reform Congregation, Shir Hadash for a wonderful Shabbat service and then walked with most of the group to their Hotel Mt. Zion for dinner. The buffet was expensive but good.. The hotel has a great view of the Old City and is very old but very luxurious hotel still in the old style.
March 7: I took Paul to 4 synagogues for Shabbat. First the very modern one on Emek Refa'im across the street from our place, then, The Great Synagogue, then the Conservative synagogue, and
then the Italian synagogue, just in time for the Kiddish with good pastries. After lunch we took a cab to the Israel Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls and the fabulous model of Jerusalem as it might have looked in 60 CE before its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. We had a great dinner at La Boca on Emek Refa'im which was excellent. Paul left the next morning to go to the airport to start his Sar-El experience.
Hadassah Hospital, March 10, 2009. Roberta:
We took the #19 bus to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem—there is a second Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. These are really huge complexes of hospitals of many specialties. The Ein Kerem campus contains the synagogue with the beautiful stained glass windows by Chagall where we got a private tour thanks to my life membership in Hadassah
The organization, Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization founded 100 years ago, was nominated for a Noble prize a few years ago. Although the prize went elsewhere, this was a well-deserved honor, the only non-governmental organization (ngo) so honored. Hadassah Hospital serves people of all ethnic, national, and religious affiliations including Israeli Muslims, Christians, and Jews, as well as people from Arab counties ( although they like to keep that quiet). Patients are assigned rooms based only on medical need so it is not unusual to find a Jewish Israeli and a Arab Muslim Israeli in the same hospital room.
Doctors at Hadassah Hospital also come from many places in the world to work, do research, and/or learn. There are physicians from Turkey and from the Palestinian Territories. A Palestinian Muslim is chief pediatric oncology nurse for the past twenty five years who works the chief Jewish Israeli pediatric oncologist. There are no figures on religion or ethnicity or nationality of patients or doctors. It is obvious from the dress of patients’ families that many groups come here.
The pediatric hospital is seven stories built around a courtyard. Each balcony is decorated with whimsical figures made of neon lights. There are two glass elevators (like the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco)—I love riding in glass elevators especially feeling the sensation of growing tall riding up and growing short riding down. Each kids patients’ room has computer so the child can talk with his family and schoolmates as well as play games. If the home or school doesn’t have a computer they provide that too.
Unfortunately Hadassah is one the groups swindled by Madoff so times are financially difficult. The woman who guided us around took a 2% cut in pay and will work for no pay two days per year. Those earning more took a 4% cut and are working four days per year without pay. Nevertheless I felt morale was high and people believed in what they were doing.
The Ein Kerem campus is so large that there is a shopping mall with shops and restaurants. More buildings are going up. The national bird of Israel nests here, the building crane—OK, give me a big groan.
We walked through the Emergency Department—looks like every other modern ED. However there is one room called the VIP Suite because if a famous person needs to be in the ED, the doors can be shut so the patient has privacy. Ari Sharon was treated in this room. When Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was about to visit Israel, her staff came to look at the facility to be sure it would be ok in the event of a medical emergency.
We left Hadassah Hospital to see the village of Ein Kerem. It was far from the hospital—we did not realize this and started to walk—and walk—and walk. Finally saw a cab who stopped for us; the cabby wondered what we were even doing on this route which resembled a highway without pedestrian walkways. Ein Kerem was picturesque favorite spot for Christian tourists since Mary was born there and visited with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, hence the Church of the Visitation up the side of the mountain which we visited also. Many foreign tourist groups were there—Spanish speaking, Italian, Polish. Some of the groups sang beautiful faith-filled songs. Mary’s Well is also here. We caught the #17 bus back to Jerusalem.
March 11, SR: Purim in Jerusalem is a day later than elsewhere since it is a walled city and in the Book of Esther in the capitol city of Persia was the walled city Shushan. The Jews were fighting the locals who had wanted to kill them on the regular day of Purim so they celebrated the following day. Thus to memorialize the defeat of the enemy of the Jews, walled cities celebrate Purim one day later as was done at that time. We were invited to Marcia and Dennis Gelpe home for a Purim shludat festive lunch. They usually prepare a Italian feast from one area of Italy with special recipes. However their daughter Yafa and Sean (in Nursing school) had twins Bracha and Eliana and one just came from the hospital that day so in place of feast we had pizzas that Dennis made. A lot of fun to see new parents so proud and confident of their skills.
March 12-15 Trip to Eilat, then Jordan for day in desert in Wadi Rum and day in Petra-
THIS IS INTERESTING!
Roberta And Stan in Italics:
We took the 7am bus #444 from Jerusalem to Eilat—four and a half hours traveling south along the western coast of the Dead Sea (aka The Salt Sea in Israel). The distance is 200 miles; the fare 35 shekels each ($9 senior rate). We could see across to Jordan. Eilat is a beach city on the Red Sea, famous for snorkeling and diving wonders, coral and brightly colored fishes. The Oceanaquarium provides wonderful views of these after you’ve descended thirty or forty feet under the water surface.
There are shark tanks in another area and well as tanks with sea horses, sea turtles, and big fish. There was an exciting movie about a boy joining his marine biologist father in the sea to study sharks. Nature photography was wonderful. The seats in the theatre moved as if one were on the boat or diving under the sea. In case you are wondering in the movie—the bad shark poachers did not get their prey, a 15 foot whale shark the oceanographers were tracking, thanks to father and son who cut the poachers net so the shark could escape thru the net. A police flown helicopter captured the poachers and presumably justice triumphed. And then the seats stopped moving.
Friday morning at 7:30 am an Israeli woman from Desert EcoTours picked us up at the hotel and took us to the Jordanian border where we paid $40 to cross into Jordan (only $4 to get back). On the Jordanian side Mr. Mustafa walked us across and introduced us to Ali who would guide us into Wadi Rum, a desert area in the south of Jordan made famous by Lawrence of Arabia. Ali is a Bedouin who learned Bedouin desert ways from his grandfather. After getting a university degree in Chemistry he followed his grandfather’s instructions and joined the Jordanian army. He rose to the rank of major before he retired. During his service he spent a year in Monterey, California, studying at a war college (not the language school) where he learned English. He also learned Yugoslavian during two years as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo with the Jordanian army. This was an educated man.
Wadi Rum was interesting— vast desert with cliffs and rock formations—somewhat like parts of the Southern Utah national parks. Ali was interesting too. He believes that everything a person needs to know what is found in the ‘Holy Book the Koran’. A person with a problem can find the solution in the Holy Book the Koran. He believes in strict interpretation of the law, i.e. if 2 unmarried teenagers have sexual relations they each are hit with 100 blows with a stick; they will probably die but if perchance one lives, it is punishment enough. Adulterers are stabbed to death with everyone throwing 100 knives. A thief’s hand is cut off. These are carried out not by the Jordanian justice system but by the Bedouin community. The honor of each clan is uppermost in the Bedouin society.
Sometimes Bedouin and governmental justice systems overlap. If a Bedouin from one group accidentally does something to another Bedouin from another group, the authorities may jail him; meanwhile the two Bedouin headmen meet and discuss things and if they come to an agreement go through an ancient coffee drinking ritual. They then go to the authorities, say the matter has been resolved; the authorities will then release the man from jail and the agreed upon solution is carried out by the tribe.
Ali is a Sunni Muslim; there is much strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims based on a disagreement over who would be Mohammed’s successor. Mohammed’s son-in law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib was passed over as successor 3 times and only became leader after 2 of the first 3 leaders were assassinated. Ali was in turn assassinated. Shiites (25%) were for Ali and still hope for his return whereas Sunnis(75%) were for the first 3 actual leaders and their non-family successors. Our guide Ali says the schism between the two fractions will never be settled and the Shiites are crazy. According to Ali, suicide bombers go against the teachings of the Koran. He also predicted that over the next few centuries there will emerge a united Arabia which will then rule an Islamic world much bigger than the present one.
Wadi Rum (pronounced with an Italianate u as oo) is beautiful—stark desert, blue sky, and impressive cliffs, caves, a few stone bridges. Roads are often obvious only to Bedouin. We walked up rock formations using trails, while Ali walked straight up like a mountain goat even if he was 50ish. He cooked chicken for lunch over an open fire. The four-wheel drive jeep climbed mountains of sand—sometimes having to approach fast on level ground, picking up speed so it could go up a sand or rock mountain. We drove all around this very large desert area with amazing formations. Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab troops hid here before attacking the Turkish train as shown the movie. The locals doesn’t like that many rock formations are named by him, for example the ‘ The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ also the name of one of his books.
That night we stayed in a very nice Amra Hotel in Wadi Musa—which is a short walk to Petra. The hotel had a great view of the mountains but also of the mosque only 2 blocks away. But at 3;15 am the mosque 100 feet away called the faithful to prayer—and again at 4:15 am and again at 5:15 am. Musa is Arabic for Moshe he said, since the Arabs have a tradition that Moses hit the rock to bring water in this area. Nice of them to name town after Moses our great teacher. He showed us a distant mountain with a white building on top that they believe is the tomb of Aaron.
Petra was amazing. First the colors are beautiful—deep rose colored rock. The Nabateans who lived there from about 200 BCE to 150 CE were probably Bedouins from Saudi Arabia turned traders first of incense from Yemen and later spices from India. They had the trade routes cornered and did very well. However, they left very little in the way of written records—mostly they left buildings carved into rock in very intricate and precise manner. Some buildings were temples, seats of government, and tombs. Recent Bedouins gave names to the buildings like “The Treasury”—this was probably a temple but they called it the treasury because they thought it still contained treasure and the bullet holes demonstrate their effort steps to retrieve the supposed gold in the rocks. We hiked up 900 steps plus incline trails up a mountain to see the “Monastery” building and realized afterwards we should have taken a donkey up as it was quite a walk. By the end of the day we had probably walked eight strenuous miles. The Monastery was amazing similar to a large Greek temple but carved out of solid rock so that all columns, capitols, roofs, & inner rooms are all out of one piece of rock. No mistakes were allowed and every column was perfectly straight.
Some of the tombs were really caves in the rocks and interestingly until 30 years ago people lived in these caves. They had to bring bottle gas up the mountain for heat as well as carry up all food and water. We meet a fellow selling his mother’s book, “I married a Bedouin” and he lived in one of the caves. This area was only a real tourist attraction beginning in 1980’s until the boarder crossing with Israel was settled and a new highway built with World Bank money from Aqaba north. There were 3 towns along 3 sides of the mountains leading to Petra in Wadi Musa that we drove thru. The only real modern buildings recently constructed were 3 hotels. The zoning in each town is very haphazard with buildings in random locations with no side walks, and trash was very common along the road. We saw similar conditions in East Jerusalem and attributed the trash to rebellion against Israel. But since the same was in Jordan, we conclude that it is just the Arab way.
Back to the border by cab—met on the other side by Desert EcoTours who dropped us at the bus station in Eilat. Time for a short supper then boarded the 7:30 pm bus to Jerusalem. Fortunately we had made reservations or we would have been out of luck—there were three buses at that hour and all were filled. We got to Jerusalem at midnight just in time to get the last bus back to our apartment.
It was easy traveling in Jordan—partly this was because we were on a tour and connections worked. In Israel we travel on our own so it is more strenuous—figuring bus departures, routes, hotels, etc.
Good night,
Roberta
March 16: SR: Lunch with cousin Shira Abraham, daughter of Mort and Miriam Steinberg, at Café Hillel on Emek Refa'im. Husband is Steven, a Rabbinic student. This café was blown up by a suicide bomber/murder in the Second Intifada with many killed. I like to go there to show we are not afraid of what happened. Of course, now all restaurants in Israel have guards that check anyone entering and one pays a slight surcharge for this piece of security. It also employees a vast number of people.
March 19: SR: My son Aaron came to visit. He arranged a trip to Israel to collaborate on finishing a review article in physics at the Technion in Haifa. He got here just in time to have dinner with us and we walked to the Wolfson Building where we saw a live taping of a cable TV show called ‘Live from Israel’ run by right wing modern Orthodox young men. It was over the top for this show which didn’t have a comedian or music group unlike what I saw last year. One can see the shows on the web.
March 24, 2009 Volunteers for Israel experience: Roberta and Stan in italics
We meet at the airport to get our assignment. Interestingly there were 31 volunteers from Finland all going to one base. Amazing and wonderful that so many Christians want to help Israel. We joined 9 others to a base close to Gaza in the Negev. One from New Zealand and one from Italy both Christian and both volunteering for 3 months total. Three other Christian Americans very Zionistic who had actually moved to Israel and bought places in Arad. Since they were on tourist visa they had to leave the country for 5 days every 3 months. One was a single 83 very sweet women who is thinking of marrying/living with a Jewish man and wanted our advice on getting together as an older couple. The other was a couple who moved to Israel separately and they tried to get us to make aliya for our own good. Incredible. Amazingly this very nice Christian couple tried to get us to move to Israel for our own good. Only in Israel!!
Our job was to work on clothes, equipment, ammo clips that solders used in the fighting in Gaza and to get it ready for another battle should it come to that. The mess hall was being remodeled so for dairy breakfast and dinner we ate in a building with one wall open to the outside. I called it the aviary since we shared the space with several different kinds of birds.
The soldiers were nice except that some did not want to work. Some only spoke Russian beside Hebrew of course which was a problem sometimes trying to figure out our work duties. We had flag raising at 8 am every day and we each of us got a chance to raise the Israeli flag once. Nice
We are in the Negev Desert on our third day with Volunteers for Israel, also known as Sar El in Hebrew. The first day was hot; suddenly we couldn’t see more than one hundred yards; the hills were obliterated by brown-ness; a ferocious wind blew—this was a sandstorm. Then rain poured from the sky as the wind continued.
My roommate, Eugenia a Russian with a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Moscow, and I were quite warm and dry in our barracks—only possible because of sleeping bag and warm long johns. She left Russia 30 years ago because of the anti- Semitism in her field and the low pay for University faculty. She made more money teaching English on the side.
There are fields of yellow daisies on base. They looked a little bedraggled in the morning after the rain but perked up by afternoon. Eugenia and I are working indoors cleaning and packaging communications equipment. The next week we sorted and readied uniforms and jackets which will go into IDF duffel bags. This tour the 2nd language of the IDF is Russian—fortunately Eugenia is fluent or it would be very difficult to know what to do. We worked with a thirty seven year old man originally from Ethiopia. When he was nine years old, his family of seventy walked from Ethiopia to Sudan where they boarded a plane to Israel; unfortunately many of his family died on the walk from disease, bandits, and sparse supplies. He is very happy to be in Israel and to do his reserve duty on a call-up for the Gaza Incursion.
March 29, 2009 The Sar El Trip
The first stop is the Tank Museum in Latrun. Forget that this sounds as if only over-grown boys would be interested. It’s one of my favorite sites with a beautiful presentation of history as well as a moving memorial to those in the tank core who died, 4657 men, in all the Israel/Arab wars. In 1948 Israelis could not capture this fortified building on a crest that controlled the only road to Jerusalem that was besieged. They were finally able to construct a new road called the Burma road to circumvent Latrun and resupply Jerusalem. In 1967, they decided that had to take this military base from the Jordanians, so they had a big tank force fire on the building but got no response. After another round to shelling with no response, they entered the building only to find the Jordanians had left 2 years before! Even Israeli intelligence sometimes slips up.
Outside are lots of tanks dating from the 1948 War of Independence; these include Sherman and Patton tanks as well as Israeli, Czech, British, and French tanks. On a long wall are chiseled the names of those who fell, organized first by war and then in alphabetical order regardless of rank. The only change is when father and son or brothers died in the same war—their names are together. The lack of rank designation observes that we are all equal in death. It was very moving.
Inside the building is a square room with a ceiling four stories high under a skylight. The floor is glass and reveals stones and water. The sides of the room look like the dark khaki outsides of tanks. Water runs in small streams down the sides leaving rivulets of rust. Five years ago when I was here last, the rust hadn’t formed. It was very foreboding in here as it was to represent challenge and death in a tank.
The building also houses the Museum of Jewish Allied Soldiers of World War II.. No group had such a high percentage of solders, i.e. one and a half million out of a population of eighteen million. Of men between the ages of 18 and 40 years, 24% served under sixteen nations. 500,000 were in the US Army; 550,000 in the Soviet Army from which 40% died and 600 were decorated. 122,000 were in the Polish Army. About 30,000 served in Britain’s Palestinian Brigade (Back then Jews were Palestinians and this was an entirely Jewish unit as only a few hundred Arabs volunteered who were then told to go home).
There was a display for each national group listing the number who served, the number who died, and the number decorated. Each section had pictures of Jewish generals, admirals, and decorated soldiers. The US section showed a few generals (I forget names), Admiral Rickover, and the recipient of the Medal of Honor who escaped from his burning tank, jumped on another one, shot nineteen enemy and captured 250. He was killed in 1944—not clear if it was during this action or another.
I find the Jewish Allied soldier section very moving because it reminds me of my father and some of the other veterans I’ve met.
Then we “did lunch” in Sderot, a desert city in the Negev which is most famous as the recipient of Qassam rockets from Gaza for the past eight years. Because of these daily attacks, the economy and psychology of the inhabitants have suffered. Israelis try to go there to frequent businesses. The outdoor market had beautiful produce but the goods were a bit shoddy.
We paid a spontaneous visit to the Sderot Headquarters of Mogen Dovid Adom—the Red Cross of Israel—where two Sar El volunteers had just donated an ambulance. There was a brief ceremony of handing the keys to the chief medical officer. The names of the couple and a dedication to their parents were written on the ambulance.
The next stop was Kibbutz Sa-ad located about three miles from Gaza. Founded in 1947 by Jews who believed in “Torah and Work.” The kibbutz began as desert and they brought in a pipeline for water along the main road in one night all under the noses of the British. Today they grow wheat, avocados, chicken, sheep, and run a plastics factory. The kibbutz now with many tress all around is famous for preventing Egyptian forces from reaching Tel Aviv in the War of Independence in 1948. A group of 40 young men and women stopped the Egyptian forces for many weeks. During one lull in the fighting the 2 sides meet for chess matches in the field between them. When the fighting resumed the Egyptian force did not fire on the kibbutz and tried to go around it. A son of one of these Israeli’s fighters told us this and many of stories of this heroic battle that helped save the new state. The kibbutz has a small museum with shell marks still on the walls and the roof affording a great view of Gaza.
We then rode by bus to the top of a hill where only a small water reservoir separated us from the Gaza Strip. Bet Younis, the origin of missiles into Sderot was just west of the opposite shore. Gaza City was just beyond—it’s many high rises pink and white-walled against the blue sky.
I think this will be the last I write about Israel 2009. It was quite an experience and we will return.
March 5, SR: We had our first overnight guest, Stan’s friend and fraternity brother from college at Purdue, Paul Duckor. Paul came to visit us in Santa Rosa and we told him about our great time in Sar-El, volunteering the Israel Army that he decide to do it also. He stayed with one night before moving to the ‘Little Inn in the German Colony’ just 1 block from our place. After dinner at our place we went to a concert at Beit Avichai, which is a new cultural center situated in the center of the city on King George street. This cultural center believes in gathering the voices heard in the Jewish-Israeli dialogue, to give them a facility and to allow them to be heard and have an effect on Israeli society and culture. We heard Ladino music with 2 wonderful singers and band of 5 with some very unusual instruments.
March 6, SR
We had Roberta’s friend from previous Sar-El volunteer experiences, Gerry Gelber over for lunch.
We had dinner with our Temple Shomrei Torah tour group visiting Jerusalem. We meet them at the Reform Congregation, Shir Hadash for a wonderful Shabbat service and then walked with most of the group to their Hotel Mt. Zion for dinner. The buffet was expensive but good.. The hotel has a great view of the Old City and is very old but very luxurious hotel still in the old style.
March 7: I took Paul to 4 synagogues for Shabbat. First the very modern one on Emek Refa'im across the street from our place, then, The Great Synagogue, then the Conservative synagogue, and
then the Italian synagogue, just in time for the Kiddish with good pastries. After lunch we took a cab to the Israel Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls and the fabulous model of Jerusalem as it might have looked in 60 CE before its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. We had a great dinner at La Boca on Emek Refa'im which was excellent. Paul left the next morning to go to the airport to start his Sar-El experience.
Hadassah Hospital, March 10, 2009. Roberta:
We took the #19 bus to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem—there is a second Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. These are really huge complexes of hospitals of many specialties. The Ein Kerem campus contains the synagogue with the beautiful stained glass windows by Chagall where we got a private tour thanks to my life membership in Hadassah
The organization, Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization founded 100 years ago, was nominated for a Noble prize a few years ago. Although the prize went elsewhere, this was a well-deserved honor, the only non-governmental organization (ngo) so honored. Hadassah Hospital serves people of all ethnic, national, and religious affiliations including Israeli Muslims, Christians, and Jews, as well as people from Arab counties ( although they like to keep that quiet). Patients are assigned rooms based only on medical need so it is not unusual to find a Jewish Israeli and a Arab Muslim Israeli in the same hospital room.
Doctors at Hadassah Hospital also come from many places in the world to work, do research, and/or learn. There are physicians from Turkey and from the Palestinian Territories. A Palestinian Muslim is chief pediatric oncology nurse for the past twenty five years who works the chief Jewish Israeli pediatric oncologist. There are no figures on religion or ethnicity or nationality of patients or doctors. It is obvious from the dress of patients’ families that many groups come here.
The pediatric hospital is seven stories built around a courtyard. Each balcony is decorated with whimsical figures made of neon lights. There are two glass elevators (like the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco)—I love riding in glass elevators especially feeling the sensation of growing tall riding up and growing short riding down. Each kids patients’ room has computer so the child can talk with his family and schoolmates as well as play games. If the home or school doesn’t have a computer they provide that too.
Unfortunately Hadassah is one the groups swindled by Madoff so times are financially difficult. The woman who guided us around took a 2% cut in pay and will work for no pay two days per year. Those earning more took a 4% cut and are working four days per year without pay. Nevertheless I felt morale was high and people believed in what they were doing.
The Ein Kerem campus is so large that there is a shopping mall with shops and restaurants. More buildings are going up. The national bird of Israel nests here, the building crane—OK, give me a big groan.
We walked through the Emergency Department—looks like every other modern ED. However there is one room called the VIP Suite because if a famous person needs to be in the ED, the doors can be shut so the patient has privacy. Ari Sharon was treated in this room. When Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was about to visit Israel, her staff came to look at the facility to be sure it would be ok in the event of a medical emergency.
We left Hadassah Hospital to see the village of Ein Kerem. It was far from the hospital—we did not realize this and started to walk—and walk—and walk. Finally saw a cab who stopped for us; the cabby wondered what we were even doing on this route which resembled a highway without pedestrian walkways. Ein Kerem was picturesque favorite spot for Christian tourists since Mary was born there and visited with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, hence the Church of the Visitation up the side of the mountain which we visited also. Many foreign tourist groups were there—Spanish speaking, Italian, Polish. Some of the groups sang beautiful faith-filled songs. Mary’s Well is also here. We caught the #17 bus back to Jerusalem.
March 11, SR: Purim in Jerusalem is a day later than elsewhere since it is a walled city and in the Book of Esther in the capitol city of Persia was the walled city Shushan. The Jews were fighting the locals who had wanted to kill them on the regular day of Purim so they celebrated the following day. Thus to memorialize the defeat of the enemy of the Jews, walled cities celebrate Purim one day later as was done at that time. We were invited to Marcia and Dennis Gelpe home for a Purim shludat festive lunch. They usually prepare a Italian feast from one area of Italy with special recipes. However their daughter Yafa and Sean (in Nursing school) had twins Bracha and Eliana and one just came from the hospital that day so in place of feast we had pizzas that Dennis made. A lot of fun to see new parents so proud and confident of their skills.
March 12-15 Trip to Eilat, then Jordan for day in desert in Wadi Rum and day in Petra-
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Roberta And Stan in Italics:
We took the 7am bus #444 from Jerusalem to Eilat—four and a half hours traveling south along the western coast of the Dead Sea (aka The Salt Sea in Israel). The distance is 200 miles; the fare 35 shekels each ($9 senior rate). We could see across to Jordan. Eilat is a beach city on the Red Sea, famous for snorkeling and diving wonders, coral and brightly colored fishes. The Oceanaquarium provides wonderful views of these after you’ve descended thirty or forty feet under the water surface.
There are shark tanks in another area and well as tanks with sea horses, sea turtles, and big fish. There was an exciting movie about a boy joining his marine biologist father in the sea to study sharks. Nature photography was wonderful. The seats in the theatre moved as if one were on the boat or diving under the sea. In case you are wondering in the movie—the bad shark poachers did not get their prey, a 15 foot whale shark the oceanographers were tracking, thanks to father and son who cut the poachers net so the shark could escape thru the net. A police flown helicopter captured the poachers and presumably justice triumphed. And then the seats stopped moving.
Friday morning at 7:30 am an Israeli woman from Desert EcoTours picked us up at the hotel and took us to the Jordanian border where we paid $40 to cross into Jordan (only $4 to get back). On the Jordanian side Mr. Mustafa walked us across and introduced us to Ali who would guide us into Wadi Rum, a desert area in the south of Jordan made famous by Lawrence of Arabia. Ali is a Bedouin who learned Bedouin desert ways from his grandfather. After getting a university degree in Chemistry he followed his grandfather’s instructions and joined the Jordanian army. He rose to the rank of major before he retired. During his service he spent a year in Monterey, California, studying at a war college (not the language school) where he learned English. He also learned Yugoslavian during two years as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo with the Jordanian army. This was an educated man.
Wadi Rum was interesting— vast desert with cliffs and rock formations—somewhat like parts of the Southern Utah national parks. Ali was interesting too. He believes that everything a person needs to know what is found in the ‘Holy Book the Koran’. A person with a problem can find the solution in the Holy Book the Koran. He believes in strict interpretation of the law, i.e. if 2 unmarried teenagers have sexual relations they each are hit with 100 blows with a stick; they will probably die but if perchance one lives, it is punishment enough. Adulterers are stabbed to death with everyone throwing 100 knives. A thief’s hand is cut off. These are carried out not by the Jordanian justice system but by the Bedouin community. The honor of each clan is uppermost in the Bedouin society.
Sometimes Bedouin and governmental justice systems overlap. If a Bedouin from one group accidentally does something to another Bedouin from another group, the authorities may jail him; meanwhile the two Bedouin headmen meet and discuss things and if they come to an agreement go through an ancient coffee drinking ritual. They then go to the authorities, say the matter has been resolved; the authorities will then release the man from jail and the agreed upon solution is carried out by the tribe.
Ali is a Sunni Muslim; there is much strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims based on a disagreement over who would be Mohammed’s successor. Mohammed’s son-in law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib was passed over as successor 3 times and only became leader after 2 of the first 3 leaders were assassinated. Ali was in turn assassinated. Shiites (25%) were for Ali and still hope for his return whereas Sunnis(75%) were for the first 3 actual leaders and their non-family successors. Our guide Ali says the schism between the two fractions will never be settled and the Shiites are crazy. According to Ali, suicide bombers go against the teachings of the Koran. He also predicted that over the next few centuries there will emerge a united Arabia which will then rule an Islamic world much bigger than the present one.
Wadi Rum (pronounced with an Italianate u as oo) is beautiful—stark desert, blue sky, and impressive cliffs, caves, a few stone bridges. Roads are often obvious only to Bedouin. We walked up rock formations using trails, while Ali walked straight up like a mountain goat even if he was 50ish. He cooked chicken for lunch over an open fire. The four-wheel drive jeep climbed mountains of sand—sometimes having to approach fast on level ground, picking up speed so it could go up a sand or rock mountain. We drove all around this very large desert area with amazing formations. Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab troops hid here before attacking the Turkish train as shown the movie. The locals doesn’t like that many rock formations are named by him, for example the ‘ The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ also the name of one of his books.
That night we stayed in a very nice Amra Hotel in Wadi Musa—which is a short walk to Petra. The hotel had a great view of the mountains but also of the mosque only 2 blocks away. But at 3;15 am the mosque 100 feet away called the faithful to prayer—and again at 4:15 am and again at 5:15 am. Musa is Arabic for Moshe he said, since the Arabs have a tradition that Moses hit the rock to bring water in this area. Nice of them to name town after Moses our great teacher. He showed us a distant mountain with a white building on top that they believe is the tomb of Aaron.
Petra was amazing. First the colors are beautiful—deep rose colored rock. The Nabateans who lived there from about 200 BCE to 150 CE were probably Bedouins from Saudi Arabia turned traders first of incense from Yemen and later spices from India. They had the trade routes cornered and did very well. However, they left very little in the way of written records—mostly they left buildings carved into rock in very intricate and precise manner. Some buildings were temples, seats of government, and tombs. Recent Bedouins gave names to the buildings like “The Treasury”—this was probably a temple but they called it the treasury because they thought it still contained treasure and the bullet holes demonstrate their effort steps to retrieve the supposed gold in the rocks. We hiked up 900 steps plus incline trails up a mountain to see the “Monastery” building and realized afterwards we should have taken a donkey up as it was quite a walk. By the end of the day we had probably walked eight strenuous miles. The Monastery was amazing similar to a large Greek temple but carved out of solid rock so that all columns, capitols, roofs, & inner rooms are all out of one piece of rock. No mistakes were allowed and every column was perfectly straight.
Some of the tombs were really caves in the rocks and interestingly until 30 years ago people lived in these caves. They had to bring bottle gas up the mountain for heat as well as carry up all food and water. We meet a fellow selling his mother’s book, “I married a Bedouin” and he lived in one of the caves. This area was only a real tourist attraction beginning in 1980’s until the boarder crossing with Israel was settled and a new highway built with World Bank money from Aqaba north. There were 3 towns along 3 sides of the mountains leading to Petra in Wadi Musa that we drove thru. The only real modern buildings recently constructed were 3 hotels. The zoning in each town is very haphazard with buildings in random locations with no side walks, and trash was very common along the road. We saw similar conditions in East Jerusalem and attributed the trash to rebellion against Israel. But since the same was in Jordan, we conclude that it is just the Arab way.
Back to the border by cab—met on the other side by Desert EcoTours who dropped us at the bus station in Eilat. Time for a short supper then boarded the 7:30 pm bus to Jerusalem. Fortunately we had made reservations or we would have been out of luck—there were three buses at that hour and all were filled. We got to Jerusalem at midnight just in time to get the last bus back to our apartment.
It was easy traveling in Jordan—partly this was because we were on a tour and connections worked. In Israel we travel on our own so it is more strenuous—figuring bus departures, routes, hotels, etc.
Good night,
Roberta
March 16: SR: Lunch with cousin Shira Abraham, daughter of Mort and Miriam Steinberg, at Café Hillel on Emek Refa'im. Husband is Steven, a Rabbinic student. This café was blown up by a suicide bomber/murder in the Second Intifada with many killed. I like to go there to show we are not afraid of what happened. Of course, now all restaurants in Israel have guards that check anyone entering and one pays a slight surcharge for this piece of security. It also employees a vast number of people.
March 19: SR: My son Aaron came to visit. He arranged a trip to Israel to collaborate on finishing a review article in physics at the Technion in Haifa. He got here just in time to have dinner with us and we walked to the Wolfson Building where we saw a live taping of a cable TV show called ‘Live from Israel’ run by right wing modern Orthodox young men. It was over the top for this show which didn’t have a comedian or music group unlike what I saw last year. One can see the shows on the web.
March 24, 2009 Volunteers for Israel experience: Roberta and Stan in italics
We meet at the airport to get our assignment. Interestingly there were 31 volunteers from Finland all going to one base. Amazing and wonderful that so many Christians want to help Israel. We joined 9 others to a base close to Gaza in the Negev. One from New Zealand and one from Italy both Christian and both volunteering for 3 months total. Three other Christian Americans very Zionistic who had actually moved to Israel and bought places in Arad. Since they were on tourist visa they had to leave the country for 5 days every 3 months. One was a single 83 very sweet women who is thinking of marrying/living with a Jewish man and wanted our advice on getting together as an older couple. The other was a couple who moved to Israel separately and they tried to get us to make aliya for our own good. Incredible. Amazingly this very nice Christian couple tried to get us to move to Israel for our own good. Only in Israel!!
Our job was to work on clothes, equipment, ammo clips that solders used in the fighting in Gaza and to get it ready for another battle should it come to that. The mess hall was being remodeled so for dairy breakfast and dinner we ate in a building with one wall open to the outside. I called it the aviary since we shared the space with several different kinds of birds.
The soldiers were nice except that some did not want to work. Some only spoke Russian beside Hebrew of course which was a problem sometimes trying to figure out our work duties. We had flag raising at 8 am every day and we each of us got a chance to raise the Israeli flag once. Nice
We are in the Negev Desert on our third day with Volunteers for Israel, also known as Sar El in Hebrew. The first day was hot; suddenly we couldn’t see more than one hundred yards; the hills were obliterated by brown-ness; a ferocious wind blew—this was a sandstorm. Then rain poured from the sky as the wind continued.
My roommate, Eugenia a Russian with a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Moscow, and I were quite warm and dry in our barracks—only possible because of sleeping bag and warm long johns. She left Russia 30 years ago because of the anti- Semitism in her field and the low pay for University faculty. She made more money teaching English on the side.
There are fields of yellow daisies on base. They looked a little bedraggled in the morning after the rain but perked up by afternoon. Eugenia and I are working indoors cleaning and packaging communications equipment. The next week we sorted and readied uniforms and jackets which will go into IDF duffel bags. This tour the 2nd language of the IDF is Russian—fortunately Eugenia is fluent or it would be very difficult to know what to do. We worked with a thirty seven year old man originally from Ethiopia. When he was nine years old, his family of seventy walked from Ethiopia to Sudan where they boarded a plane to Israel; unfortunately many of his family died on the walk from disease, bandits, and sparse supplies. He is very happy to be in Israel and to do his reserve duty on a call-up for the Gaza Incursion.
March 29, 2009 The Sar El Trip
The first stop is the Tank Museum in Latrun. Forget that this sounds as if only over-grown boys would be interested. It’s one of my favorite sites with a beautiful presentation of history as well as a moving memorial to those in the tank core who died, 4657 men, in all the Israel/Arab wars. In 1948 Israelis could not capture this fortified building on a crest that controlled the only road to Jerusalem that was besieged. They were finally able to construct a new road called the Burma road to circumvent Latrun and resupply Jerusalem. In 1967, they decided that had to take this military base from the Jordanians, so they had a big tank force fire on the building but got no response. After another round to shelling with no response, they entered the building only to find the Jordanians had left 2 years before! Even Israeli intelligence sometimes slips up.
Outside are lots of tanks dating from the 1948 War of Independence; these include Sherman and Patton tanks as well as Israeli, Czech, British, and French tanks. On a long wall are chiseled the names of those who fell, organized first by war and then in alphabetical order regardless of rank. The only change is when father and son or brothers died in the same war—their names are together. The lack of rank designation observes that we are all equal in death. It was very moving.
Inside the building is a square room with a ceiling four stories high under a skylight. The floor is glass and reveals stones and water. The sides of the room look like the dark khaki outsides of tanks. Water runs in small streams down the sides leaving rivulets of rust. Five years ago when I was here last, the rust hadn’t formed. It was very foreboding in here as it was to represent challenge and death in a tank.
The building also houses the Museum of Jewish Allied Soldiers of World War II.. No group had such a high percentage of solders, i.e. one and a half million out of a population of eighteen million. Of men between the ages of 18 and 40 years, 24% served under sixteen nations. 500,000 were in the US Army; 550,000 in the Soviet Army from which 40% died and 600 were decorated. 122,000 were in the Polish Army. About 30,000 served in Britain’s Palestinian Brigade (Back then Jews were Palestinians and this was an entirely Jewish unit as only a few hundred Arabs volunteered who were then told to go home).
There was a display for each national group listing the number who served, the number who died, and the number decorated. Each section had pictures of Jewish generals, admirals, and decorated soldiers. The US section showed a few generals (I forget names), Admiral Rickover, and the recipient of the Medal of Honor who escaped from his burning tank, jumped on another one, shot nineteen enemy and captured 250. He was killed in 1944—not clear if it was during this action or another.
I find the Jewish Allied soldier section very moving because it reminds me of my father and some of the other veterans I’ve met.
Then we “did lunch” in Sderot, a desert city in the Negev which is most famous as the recipient of Qassam rockets from Gaza for the past eight years. Because of these daily attacks, the economy and psychology of the inhabitants have suffered. Israelis try to go there to frequent businesses. The outdoor market had beautiful produce but the goods were a bit shoddy.
We paid a spontaneous visit to the Sderot Headquarters of Mogen Dovid Adom—the Red Cross of Israel—where two Sar El volunteers had just donated an ambulance. There was a brief ceremony of handing the keys to the chief medical officer. The names of the couple and a dedication to their parents were written on the ambulance.
The next stop was Kibbutz Sa-ad located about three miles from Gaza. Founded in 1947 by Jews who believed in “Torah and Work.” The kibbutz began as desert and they brought in a pipeline for water along the main road in one night all under the noses of the British. Today they grow wheat, avocados, chicken, sheep, and run a plastics factory. The kibbutz now with many tress all around is famous for preventing Egyptian forces from reaching Tel Aviv in the War of Independence in 1948. A group of 40 young men and women stopped the Egyptian forces for many weeks. During one lull in the fighting the 2 sides meet for chess matches in the field between them. When the fighting resumed the Egyptian force did not fire on the kibbutz and tried to go around it. A son of one of these Israeli’s fighters told us this and many of stories of this heroic battle that helped save the new state. The kibbutz has a small museum with shell marks still on the walls and the roof affording a great view of Gaza.
We then rode by bus to the top of a hill where only a small water reservoir separated us from the Gaza Strip. Bet Younis, the origin of missiles into Sderot was just west of the opposite shore. Gaza City was just beyond—it’s many high rises pink and white-walled against the blue sky.
I think this will be the last I write about Israel 2009. It was quite an experience and we will return.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
March 2 to March 9, 2009 Many Trips
March 2, 2009 Stan; What great day and a record setting one: 3 lectures, 1 museum, and 1 concert and we still had time to eat.
After morning lectures at Pardes, we took #21 bus to the Herzl Museum on the bottom of Mt Herzl. One follows Herzl life from one stage to another as one goes from one room to another. Also displayed his is complete library transported from Vienna. They also recreate in smaller scale the Basel venue of the first of several International Zionist convention where an actor on film delivers some of his speeches. The tour ends with a wonderful travel log thru current Israel showing an amazing landscape and diversity. Most moving! Without his vision it is hard to see how Israel would come into being after only 50 years from his dream and goal. On the National Cemetery above, Herzl has the most prominent burial site. His whole family is also buried here along with a memorial to his daughter killed in the Holocaust. Next is Jabotinsky as the second most prominent tomb followed by Rabin , then all the Prime Ministers of the early period and key Zionist Presidents. We also visited the soldiers graves from1949 thru 1973 wars. Very emotional experience there.
Took #13 bus to Jerusalem Theater for concert by Meitar Ensemble , piano, clarinet, bassoon, violin, & cello and 2 soloists playing modern music by Steinberg ( ‘Magregot Hanistar’) and Seroussi ( ‘The Yearning of a Duck’, 2008 premiere). This Monday 5pm series always has at least one Israeli composer and today all 4 pieces were by Israelis. Very interesting and unique.
We walked home, eat, and went to David Hartman’s lecture on Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan and his unsuccessful attempt to change 20th Century Judaism in America. Hartman tried to do the same with orthodoxy
March 3, Tuesday Stan: Concert at Jerusalem Music Center for choral acapella group named the Prophets for the Perfect Fifth. Wonderful music from 5 singers in an interesting venue in Yemin Moshe area. This community was one of the first built outside of the Old City in 1880’s for working people. It turned very bad over time, was neglected for a long time, and then restored after 1967 to the incredible quaint homes with no streets just stone walkways with incredible views of the Old City just across the valley.
March 4 , Wednesday, Roberta: Trip to Bibleland Museum
Just as the Jewish people has had a major influence on the world, so have other cultures influenced us. A huge museum, The Bibleland Museum, documents cultures and records of ancient peoples of the area of modern Israel and the Middle East. I have to admit I thought "Bibleland" would be a theme park for families where you could ride chariots, view David slaying Goliath, etc. But it is nothing of the sort.
There were twenty rooms, each dedicated to either a time period or a non-Jewish culture. Two findings intrigued me. One was a picture from very early, pre-Abraham Egypt showing two grown men being circumcised.
The second was an exhibit of ancient seals with references to the Canaanite period about 6000 years ago. The seals were cylinders about the size of a large modern postage stamp rolled up. One rolled the cylinder on wet clay (like a rolling pin without handles). This established the authenticity of the document, which had been written on a clay tablet or an urn containing wine or food. So the reference in Genesis 38:18 when Judah gives his seal, cord, and staff to Tamar refers to his pledge or word and identifies him.
People who did not have seals gave their word by placing fringes of their wearing apparel on the tablet or document, like placing the fringes of the talit on the Torah on the spots where the Torah reading will begin and again when it ends. The particular details of the fringe also served to identify a particular people (like a national costume). The blue thread on the talit was prescribed by Moses as an identification of the Jewish people by their clothing. (I don't have the exact reference--somewhere in Exodus)
We never lived in a vacuum.
Stan: went to concert at YMCA of same group heard yesterday this time with a musical accompaniment. This YMCA is a famous 1920’s building which was a pioneer in construction style and location outside the Old City. The concert hall was very beautiful with great acoustics. Roberta: Singing was in the renaissance style in Hebrew Latin, Italian and Ladino. The quintet consisted of two counter tenors, two tenors, and a bass—all had wonderful voices. They sang in two choirs from the back and front of the hall with a spectacular sound. Among the composers were Gabrielli, Monteverdi, Rossi, and Carlo Grossi. The latter two used Hebrew texts from the Hebrew prayer book and from psalms in a renaissance style which I usually associate with Latin texts.. A lively encore of “Had Gadyo” in Ladino ended a wonderful and unusual program.
March 5, Thursday evening , Roberta: Our 4th straight night of concerts! This was a program entirely of Ladino songs—Ladino is Spanish of the renaissance era with some Hebrew thrown in. The music sounds romantic and passionate. The ensemble was fabulous, especially the two singers, Ofer Klaf and Esti Kenan. The instrumentalists were excellent and included a woman who played the “ethnic cello” which is a cello-like stringed instrument with many string pegs—it is difficult to describe because I was too far away to see in more detail. Jerusalem is a city of music.
March 5, Thursday. Stan: Trip to Land of the Philistine Boarded with Judea in the time of Joshua, the Prophets, and Samson.
Pardes arranged this day trip with Shulie Mishkin as guide. We traveled southwest from Jerusalem to Tel Bet Shemish where the tribe of Dan fought against this Canaanite city, which was originally founded in 1500 BCE and destroyed 100 years later by a lawless tribe of Ipirus—whether these became Hebrews is controversial. There is an ancient clay tablet which records a plea from the king of this city to the Egyptian king asking for help to repel these wild invaders. (from Roberta: The Egyptian king seems to have put it in the ancient equivalent of a circular file.) By 900 BCE the city was Jewish and functioned as a fortress/border town against the Philistines who wanted to expand from the coast inland. Samuel 1:4 describes a large battle against the Philistines in the valley around Bet Shemesh where Samuel brought the Arc of the Covenant from Shiloh to the battlefield. Unfortunately the Philistines won the battle and captured the Arc. Mysteriously the Philistine god, Dagon, fell and broke causing the Philistines to test the power of the Arc of the Covenant by tying it to nursing cows and letting them loose. If they returned to the cart carrying the Arc to the Israelites instead of their calves, they would know the power of the Arc. In Samuel 2: 13, the Arc was carried into Bet Shemesh and the people rejoiced.
Saul and later Samson fought the Philistines here. In 701 BCE the Assyrians conquered and destroyed the city, which was rebuilt only in the last fifty years.
Next we traveled to Tel Tsafit, a huge capitol Philistine city in the time of King David. David hid from King Saul here.
We then traveled to Tel Lachish, a major city bordering the Philistine land and the second most important city in the Kingdom of Judea. You can see the attack ramp the Assyrians constructed with 13,000 tons of stones in 705-701 BCE. The ramp is very similar to the one constructed by the Romans at Masada 770 years later, although slightly smaller. Pictures of this battle were found in the ruins of Ninevah. After the Assyrian destruction, the Jews returned and rebuilt the city.
One hundred and fifty years later, the Babylonians attacked the area. In the “Room of the Letters” archeologists discovered a piece of pottery saying, “we can’t find the lights of Azekah and hope to see the lights of Lachish.” Of the four city on this side of Judea , only Lachish survived after the destruction of Azekah, but soon fell to the mighty Babylonians and their torch lights of Lachish were no more.
Roberta: What happened to the Philistines? The Philistines, originally from Cyprus and other Greek islands, immigrated to the coast of Gaza and Israel sometime after the time of Moses. Their culture seems to have been warlike and they were able to conquer lands far inland. They were a very adaptive people according to the leader of our trip. They took on many aspects of cultures who conquered them, ie their pottery changed from a Greek to a Canaanite style. This guide felt they were so adaptable that they simply became part of the conquering Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. They were probably not identifiable as a people from the time of the Babylonian conquest (about 550 BCE).
When the Romans defeated Bar Kochba in 136 CE., they were so angry about revolt that they determined those areas which revolted, i.e. Judea, Samaria, Israel, Syria, would be eliminated forever, literally wiped off the map. They named the area Syria-Palestina, the latter being the Roman name for Philistines, as a major insult to the remaining Jews. Thus the name Palestine was born—named after an already extinct culture. The name stayed through the ownership of the Ottoman Empire and through the British mandate. Oddly enough, anyone born in the area whether Jew, Christian , or Muslim was legally a Palestinian. The Jewish Brigade in the British Army of World War II was named the Palestinian Brigade although it had only Jews from then Palestine. When Israel became a state in 1948, the leaders did not want to keep a name imposed by an enemy and named after a former enemy; So they chose the name Israel. Yassar Arafat who was born in Egypt (not Palestine) decided to use the term Palestinian so that the world would think only the Arab Muslim Palestinians were the true historical owners of Israel—it was a brilliant public relations move.
March 9 , Monday, Stan: We went to Kfar Saba a city of 400,000 about 20 miles north of Tel Aviv by taking the #437 bus to Haifa and exiting at Ra’anana, the adjacent city bus terminal. We visited Dina and Zvika, old friends of Roberta’s friend Sonia both Sabras and musicians. They live in lovely home with a great garden. Kfar Saba was originally a town for Yemenite immigrants in 1949. Since then the town has grown tremendously, the Yemenites have developed and their homes have gone thru modernization so that the town looks great and of course has many high rise apartment buildings as every city in Israel. Dina played beautiful piano pieces by Schumann, Bach, Chopin, and Mozart.
From there we took the train to B’nai Brak and got lost walking toward B’nai Brak and were rescued by taking a cab to 28 Rav Kook home of Joe and Mazel Resnick, a first cousin of my mother, once removed. Their grandson Miro and beautiful wife Mo and new very cute and sweet son were there. After homemade humantashen and other pastries made by Mazel we left for Tel Aviv. We took #62 bus to Dizengoff street. We walked toward the sea and walked north to the edge of the boardwalk several miles to Benny The Fisherman restaurant at the old harbor. We had a wonderful salad dinner and then walked 3 miles to Arlozorov bus terminal for #480 bus to Jerusalem
After morning lectures at Pardes, we took #21 bus to the Herzl Museum on the bottom of Mt Herzl. One follows Herzl life from one stage to another as one goes from one room to another. Also displayed his is complete library transported from Vienna. They also recreate in smaller scale the Basel venue of the first of several International Zionist convention where an actor on film delivers some of his speeches. The tour ends with a wonderful travel log thru current Israel showing an amazing landscape and diversity. Most moving! Without his vision it is hard to see how Israel would come into being after only 50 years from his dream and goal. On the National Cemetery above, Herzl has the most prominent burial site. His whole family is also buried here along with a memorial to his daughter killed in the Holocaust. Next is Jabotinsky as the second most prominent tomb followed by Rabin , then all the Prime Ministers of the early period and key Zionist Presidents. We also visited the soldiers graves from1949 thru 1973 wars. Very emotional experience there.
Took #13 bus to Jerusalem Theater for concert by Meitar Ensemble , piano, clarinet, bassoon, violin, & cello and 2 soloists playing modern music by Steinberg ( ‘Magregot Hanistar’) and Seroussi ( ‘The Yearning of a Duck’, 2008 premiere). This Monday 5pm series always has at least one Israeli composer and today all 4 pieces were by Israelis. Very interesting and unique.
We walked home, eat, and went to David Hartman’s lecture on Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan and his unsuccessful attempt to change 20th Century Judaism in America. Hartman tried to do the same with orthodoxy
March 3, Tuesday Stan: Concert at Jerusalem Music Center for choral acapella group named the Prophets for the Perfect Fifth. Wonderful music from 5 singers in an interesting venue in Yemin Moshe area. This community was one of the first built outside of the Old City in 1880’s for working people. It turned very bad over time, was neglected for a long time, and then restored after 1967 to the incredible quaint homes with no streets just stone walkways with incredible views of the Old City just across the valley.
March 4 , Wednesday, Roberta: Trip to Bibleland Museum
Just as the Jewish people has had a major influence on the world, so have other cultures influenced us. A huge museum, The Bibleland Museum, documents cultures and records of ancient peoples of the area of modern Israel and the Middle East. I have to admit I thought "Bibleland" would be a theme park for families where you could ride chariots, view David slaying Goliath, etc. But it is nothing of the sort.
There were twenty rooms, each dedicated to either a time period or a non-Jewish culture. Two findings intrigued me. One was a picture from very early, pre-Abraham Egypt showing two grown men being circumcised.
The second was an exhibit of ancient seals with references to the Canaanite period about 6000 years ago. The seals were cylinders about the size of a large modern postage stamp rolled up. One rolled the cylinder on wet clay (like a rolling pin without handles). This established the authenticity of the document, which had been written on a clay tablet or an urn containing wine or food. So the reference in Genesis 38:18 when Judah gives his seal, cord, and staff to Tamar refers to his pledge or word and identifies him.
People who did not have seals gave their word by placing fringes of their wearing apparel on the tablet or document, like placing the fringes of the talit on the Torah on the spots where the Torah reading will begin and again when it ends. The particular details of the fringe also served to identify a particular people (like a national costume). The blue thread on the talit was prescribed by Moses as an identification of the Jewish people by their clothing. (I don't have the exact reference--somewhere in Exodus)
We never lived in a vacuum.
Stan: went to concert at YMCA of same group heard yesterday this time with a musical accompaniment. This YMCA is a famous 1920’s building which was a pioneer in construction style and location outside the Old City. The concert hall was very beautiful with great acoustics. Roberta: Singing was in the renaissance style in Hebrew Latin, Italian and Ladino. The quintet consisted of two counter tenors, two tenors, and a bass—all had wonderful voices. They sang in two choirs from the back and front of the hall with a spectacular sound. Among the composers were Gabrielli, Monteverdi, Rossi, and Carlo Grossi. The latter two used Hebrew texts from the Hebrew prayer book and from psalms in a renaissance style which I usually associate with Latin texts.. A lively encore of “Had Gadyo” in Ladino ended a wonderful and unusual program.
March 5, Thursday evening , Roberta: Our 4th straight night of concerts! This was a program entirely of Ladino songs—Ladino is Spanish of the renaissance era with some Hebrew thrown in. The music sounds romantic and passionate. The ensemble was fabulous, especially the two singers, Ofer Klaf and Esti Kenan. The instrumentalists were excellent and included a woman who played the “ethnic cello” which is a cello-like stringed instrument with many string pegs—it is difficult to describe because I was too far away to see in more detail. Jerusalem is a city of music.
March 5, Thursday. Stan: Trip to Land of the Philistine Boarded with Judea in the time of Joshua, the Prophets, and Samson.
Pardes arranged this day trip with Shulie Mishkin as guide. We traveled southwest from Jerusalem to Tel Bet Shemish where the tribe of Dan fought against this Canaanite city, which was originally founded in 1500 BCE and destroyed 100 years later by a lawless tribe of Ipirus—whether these became Hebrews is controversial. There is an ancient clay tablet which records a plea from the king of this city to the Egyptian king asking for help to repel these wild invaders. (from Roberta: The Egyptian king seems to have put it in the ancient equivalent of a circular file.) By 900 BCE the city was Jewish and functioned as a fortress/border town against the Philistines who wanted to expand from the coast inland. Samuel 1:4 describes a large battle against the Philistines in the valley around Bet Shemesh where Samuel brought the Arc of the Covenant from Shiloh to the battlefield. Unfortunately the Philistines won the battle and captured the Arc. Mysteriously the Philistine god, Dagon, fell and broke causing the Philistines to test the power of the Arc of the Covenant by tying it to nursing cows and letting them loose. If they returned to the cart carrying the Arc to the Israelites instead of their calves, they would know the power of the Arc. In Samuel 2: 13, the Arc was carried into Bet Shemesh and the people rejoiced.
Saul and later Samson fought the Philistines here. In 701 BCE the Assyrians conquered and destroyed the city, which was rebuilt only in the last fifty years.
Next we traveled to Tel Tsafit, a huge capitol Philistine city in the time of King David. David hid from King Saul here.
We then traveled to Tel Lachish, a major city bordering the Philistine land and the second most important city in the Kingdom of Judea. You can see the attack ramp the Assyrians constructed with 13,000 tons of stones in 705-701 BCE. The ramp is very similar to the one constructed by the Romans at Masada 770 years later, although slightly smaller. Pictures of this battle were found in the ruins of Ninevah. After the Assyrian destruction, the Jews returned and rebuilt the city.
One hundred and fifty years later, the Babylonians attacked the area. In the “Room of the Letters” archeologists discovered a piece of pottery saying, “we can’t find the lights of Azekah and hope to see the lights of Lachish.” Of the four city on this side of Judea , only Lachish survived after the destruction of Azekah, but soon fell to the mighty Babylonians and their torch lights of Lachish were no more.
Roberta: What happened to the Philistines? The Philistines, originally from Cyprus and other Greek islands, immigrated to the coast of Gaza and Israel sometime after the time of Moses. Their culture seems to have been warlike and they were able to conquer lands far inland. They were a very adaptive people according to the leader of our trip. They took on many aspects of cultures who conquered them, ie their pottery changed from a Greek to a Canaanite style. This guide felt they were so adaptable that they simply became part of the conquering Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. They were probably not identifiable as a people from the time of the Babylonian conquest (about 550 BCE).
When the Romans defeated Bar Kochba in 136 CE., they were so angry about revolt that they determined those areas which revolted, i.e. Judea, Samaria, Israel, Syria, would be eliminated forever, literally wiped off the map. They named the area Syria-Palestina, the latter being the Roman name for Philistines, as a major insult to the remaining Jews. Thus the name Palestine was born—named after an already extinct culture. The name stayed through the ownership of the Ottoman Empire and through the British mandate. Oddly enough, anyone born in the area whether Jew, Christian , or Muslim was legally a Palestinian. The Jewish Brigade in the British Army of World War II was named the Palestinian Brigade although it had only Jews from then Palestine. When Israel became a state in 1948, the leaders did not want to keep a name imposed by an enemy and named after a former enemy; So they chose the name Israel. Yassar Arafat who was born in Egypt (not Palestine) decided to use the term Palestinian so that the world would think only the Arab Muslim Palestinians were the true historical owners of Israel—it was a brilliant public relations move.
March 9 , Monday, Stan: We went to Kfar Saba a city of 400,000 about 20 miles north of Tel Aviv by taking the #437 bus to Haifa and exiting at Ra’anana, the adjacent city bus terminal. We visited Dina and Zvika, old friends of Roberta’s friend Sonia both Sabras and musicians. They live in lovely home with a great garden. Kfar Saba was originally a town for Yemenite immigrants in 1949. Since then the town has grown tremendously, the Yemenites have developed and their homes have gone thru modernization so that the town looks great and of course has many high rise apartment buildings as every city in Israel. Dina played beautiful piano pieces by Schumann, Bach, Chopin, and Mozart.
From there we took the train to B’nai Brak and got lost walking toward B’nai Brak and were rescued by taking a cab to 28 Rav Kook home of Joe and Mazel Resnick, a first cousin of my mother, once removed. Their grandson Miro and beautiful wife Mo and new very cute and sweet son were there. After homemade humantashen and other pastries made by Mazel we left for Tel Aviv. We took #62 bus to Dizengoff street. We walked toward the sea and walked north to the edge of the boardwalk several miles to Benny The Fisherman restaurant at the old harbor. We had a wonderful salad dinner and then walked 3 miles to Arlozorov bus terminal for #480 bus to Jerusalem
Monday, February 23, 2009
Febr uary 19-20, 2009 Zichron Ya'acov, Jerusalem Future
February 19, 2009 from Stan:
Day in Tel Aviv and touring with Ilan Hamel, Chairman of the Dept. of Pathology, Tel Aviv University Medical School. We took the #480 bus to Tel Aviv, Arlozorov Station and then walked around the corner to Mordechai Namir Street and took the #27 bus to Tel Aviv University. Walked through the beautiful campus with many sculptures and flowers. While waiting for the bus we wanted to verify that the #27 was the correct bus so I asked a man with a briefcase, “Are you a professor going to the university?” He replied, “No, but are you. But I am going to the university and you can come with me.” He told us he was an illustrator for the “Jerusalem Report” magazine and also for many books. His name is Avi Katz and is well known, especially as an illustrator of children’s books. Two days later at dinner with our friends, Don and Barbara Rush, Barbara mentioned that an illustrator was coming to her home in a few days from Tel Aviv to discuss illustrating one of the children’s books she is writing. Guess the illustrator! It’s a small world here.
Ilan took us on a tour of his laboratories. We saw a confocal laser microscope, which can take pictures of a living cell layer by layer, even getting to see the individual structures of the nucleus. The entire department is state of the art with some very exciting research going on.
Our first stop was Apollonia National Park on the Mediterranean halfway between Tel Aviv and Netanya. Apollonia, then called Arsuf, was first settled by the Phoenicians at the end of the sixth century BCE. One of their main products was a rare and valuable blue dye made from snails. The Greeks in the fourth century BCE re-named it after the god Apollo. The historian Josephus mentioned in ~150 BCE that Appolonia was ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty of the Maccabee (think Chanukah) family. The town went through Roman then Byzantine then Islamic rule. The Muslims re-named it back to the original Arsuf. The Crusaders conquered it and ownership for the next century and one half alternated between Muslims and Crusaders until Mameluke Sultan Bibars destroyed it in 1265. The city was abandoned until it is excavated.
We then drove to Zichron Ya’acov one of the earliest Jewish agricultural settlements of modern times on land was purchased in1880 by Baron Rothschild to begin the re-building of a Jewish homeland. The town was built on top of a small mountain for security. The original main street is now a lovely pedestrian mall with many shops and restaurants including the Tishbi Winery and Restaurant where we had a delightful lunch and some fine wine.
Down the block are the Aaronsohn House and N.I.L.I. Museum, which tells an incredible story of a family’s ingenuity, bravery, and longing for freedom. The Aaronsohn family by 1915 had become relatively well to do and educated. The children studied in French universities. Their oldest son Aaron Aaronsohn became a well-known agronomist after discovering the location of wild wheat. He cross-bred the wild wheat and made many useful advances in wheat production and then set up agricultural stations across Palestine with the help of the Ottoman Empire which since 1516 ruled Palestine and the entire Middle-East.
In 1915, during World War I and a locust infestation that caused widespread famine in Palestine, the Turks, fighting with the Germans, instituted an extra tax on Jews and required a new loyalty oath. Thirty thousand Jews could not pay the tax or would not take the loyalty oath and were exiled. Aware of the Armenian genocide (that they witnessed first hand), the Aaronsohn family decided that rule under the British would be better than rule of the Turks and decided to spy for the British. At this time Aaron was travelling all over Palestine and could observe the movements of the Turkish Army and document water sources. The British reluctantly accepted their offer of information and sent a boat (ship?) every once in a while to get the information. After some success with this method of transferring information, the British boat came no longer due to the presence of German submarines. Two members of this small spy network decided to walk to Egypt to deliver their information. On the way Bedouins in the Sinai Desert attacked them and killed Avshalom Feinberg; the other man although wounded arrived in Cairo.
Incredibly when Israel captured the Sinai in the 1967 War, their effort to find his grave was successful as Bedouins still knew where the “Jew Grave” was. A date tree grew at the spot where it had sprouted from dates he carried in his pocket. His personal effects were identified and his remains received full honors and military burial in Israel on Mount Herzl. A love poem in Hebrew, written to his fiancée Rivka Aaronsohn, is on display in the Aaronsohn house.
Meanwhile, the family did not know if the two had gotten through to Egypt. Aaron went to Egypt by way of London and delivered current information to the British. The British sent sacks of silver and gold coin to help support the starving remaining Jewish Palestinians. Unfortunately the gold coins were stamped with a 1915 date. When the Turks discovered such coins in the market, they realized there must be a spy network. A British carrier pigeon landed in a Turkish military post and focused Turkish attention on the Aaronsohns. They arrested Sara Aaronsohn (one of Aaron’s 5 siblings) and two others and tortured them. None revealed the spy network or the location of the secret tunnel in the Aaronsohn home, which contained names and other information. After three days of torture, Sara convinced the Turks to let her go home to choose fresh clothes to die in. As soon as she entered the house, she reached into a hidden compartment by the door and pulled out a gun and shot herself. The two others were hanged.
The tour of the house showed the secret compartment that held the gun and the secret tunnel under the floor. It was quite moving to see these and realize the bravery of these Jews. Also on display are letters from the British Army stating how helpful their information was in conquering Palestine from the Turks. There was a major battle in Gaza with large number of British casualties. Capturing the rest of the country produced few casualties because of information from their group named N.I.L.I. an abbreviation for: “The glory of Israel will not lie or repent,” I Samuel 15:29.
After this inspiring experience we went to Recanati Winery in the Heffer Valley. After a wonderful tasting, (thanks to our designated driver Ilan ) of many wines we bought a Reserve petite syrah/ zinfandel blend. Naturally cheese and bread were next and we went to Jacob’s Dairy Farm, which has the biggest herd in Israel and makes a number of fine cheeses. We bought two kinds and a challah. In a half hour we were back at Tel Aviv University where we said good-bye to Ilan and accidentally took his cheese as well as our own. Then we boarded the #27 bus towards downtown Tel Aviv to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. By mistake we got off three miles ahead of time so had a pleasant evening walk. Of course, the bus driver made the error and called out Museum for us. But alas it was the wrong museum. The “right” museum was open late for a concert that Roberta insisted we attend. Neither she nor I realized that Ensemble Nikel of Israel along with Ensemble Mosaic of Germany were playing world premieres of works of the 23rd century—in other words, the music was very far-out. Fortunately before the concert and during intermission we were able to view the museum’s many wonderful paintings of Picasso, Chagall, Monet, Renoir, and many other impressionists. In 50 minutes on the #380 bus we were back in Jerusalem
All in all, it was an incredibly interesting day.
Friday, February 20, 2009 Stan:
We took a 4-hour tour of Jerusalem sponsored by Ir-Amim or in English ‘A Family of Peoples ( or Nations)’. We found this organization his week from my friend Ela Greenberg just got a job with them the week before. She is the daughter of my advisor at Michigan who made aliya, married an Israeli, and got her Ph.D. in History recently from Hebrew University. Last year I was invited to their home for dinner and meet her lawyer husband and 2 cute girls. They are on the left side of Israeli politics and send their daughter to a school composed equally Jews and Muslims and each learns the language of the other. Things go well at the school until teen-age years when the Jewish parents pull their kids out for social reasons. The goal of Ir Amin organization is to pave the way for a peaceful spilt of Jerusalem when the 2 state solution comes about. Realistic joke/saying heard today concerning this issue. “Hopefully the Jews and Arabs will live in peace in Gds lifetime!”
A Jewish Israeli guide took about 25 tourists from all over and 2 Israelis through many parts of Jewish Jerusalem where new communities have built in the last 10 years including Gilo and Har Nof on the south. These are very nice with all the street and community facilities. Har Nof is very close to Bethlehem in fact. We then drove into Arab Jerusalem where trash was all over except the trash bins, there were few sidewalks, and the area looked bad, but certainly no worse than slums in large US cities. There is a large shortage of schools in the Arab areas but no willingness of the Arabs to provide land for schools since land ownership is very (and more ) important to the Arab culture than their kids education. Israel has built many new schools but not nearly enough. One such girl school is supposed to produce some of the best students in all Israel. But the emphasis on education is just not there. One reason that the government does not spend the same money on Arab areas of East Jerusalem is that the Arabs refuse to vote for city elections and thus have no representation in city government. Interestingly they do vote in national elections and have about 12% of the Knesset. Some Arab Knesset members have actually spoken about the overthrow of the Jewish State and have even spied for the Hamas & Hezbolla. Several years ago one such Arab Knesset member was caught spying and left/exiled/ escaped (?) to Lebanon where incredibly he is still getting his Israel pension. Only in Israel!
Back to the tour, we drove along the wall separating certain areas of Jerusalem from others. The apparent illogic of some of the wall placement was pointed out. The overall wall is 60% complete and the result is no suicide attacks since it went up. Whether this is the only reasons such attacks have stopped can not be proven but it is extremely important to recall that 1000 Israelis and some Americans were murdered in the second Intifada. Making the conversion to the US, that would be the equivalent of 50,000 killed in a few years. NO government would do nothing in response to such an lethal attack.
Both the Israelis and the Arab are now fighting a demographic battle to see who can have the most kids, who can build the most homes in greater Jerusalem that has grown tremendously by annexation. The wall tries to keep Arabs communities on the outside and include inside new Jewish communities as much as possible. However there is one area that has Arabs living on the west side on northern side and Jews living on the eastern side of this finger like projection in the north but both inside the wall. Some Arab areas were upper middle to well to do and other area very poor and not well kept. Jews have purchased some tracts of land in previously Arab sections despite the Palestinian Authority law prohibiting any sale of land to Jews. Some sales have gone thru initial sale to buyers in the Caribbean and then to the Jews, other sales included a one way ticket out of the country for the Arab owner. One sale went bad with the Arab seller ending up in the truck of car after being tortured. Unfortunately, he didn’t plan the sale properly. Nevertheless some substantial complexes of apartments have been completed or are in progress with Jews living among Arabs.
How all this will play out if a settlement to split Jerusalem is anyone’s guess. We then drove to the one refugee camp in Israel in Jerusalem which actually looks like a slum section of a city with no tents are any thing temporary only 3-4 story apartment buildings but with unfinished concert walls. The area, supported to some degree by the UN, is flanked on each side of this large hillside by rather nice areas with large high rise apartments. The fact hat this center refugee area is still there since 1948 is a big blot on the Jordanians who ruled this land from1949 to1967 and the Israelis since then.
Vast land to the east has been annexed to Jerusalem and now has several communities Ma’ale Adomim and Kfar Adumim, all designed to increase the percentage of Jews in the new greater Jerusalem. All these new communities do provide a security belt around the city.
The key numbers are that until 1967 Jerusalem had only 60,000 Palestinians and in 1948 the population was 250000 for the entire city with 75% Jewish. Thus with the amazing growth since 1967 to the present 800,000 total with 35% (?) or 280,000 Arab is a result of Jerusalem becoming the real and permanent capitol of Israel and the tremendous expansion of tourism resulting in this large influx of Palestinians into the area for economic reasons. If and how the city could be divided between two countries who are not at complete peace with each other similar to the US and Canada, is very hard to imagine despite all the peace talks going on (in my humble opinion). But one can only hope and pray that leaders on both sides can be found that could orchestrate a change in societies so that peace could be derived.
Day in Tel Aviv and touring with Ilan Hamel, Chairman of the Dept. of Pathology, Tel Aviv University Medical School. We took the #480 bus to Tel Aviv, Arlozorov Station and then walked around the corner to Mordechai Namir Street and took the #27 bus to Tel Aviv University. Walked through the beautiful campus with many sculptures and flowers. While waiting for the bus we wanted to verify that the #27 was the correct bus so I asked a man with a briefcase, “Are you a professor going to the university?” He replied, “No, but are you. But I am going to the university and you can come with me.” He told us he was an illustrator for the “Jerusalem Report” magazine and also for many books. His name is Avi Katz and is well known, especially as an illustrator of children’s books. Two days later at dinner with our friends, Don and Barbara Rush, Barbara mentioned that an illustrator was coming to her home in a few days from Tel Aviv to discuss illustrating one of the children’s books she is writing. Guess the illustrator! It’s a small world here.
Ilan took us on a tour of his laboratories. We saw a confocal laser microscope, which can take pictures of a living cell layer by layer, even getting to see the individual structures of the nucleus. The entire department is state of the art with some very exciting research going on.
Our first stop was Apollonia National Park on the Mediterranean halfway between Tel Aviv and Netanya. Apollonia, then called Arsuf, was first settled by the Phoenicians at the end of the sixth century BCE. One of their main products was a rare and valuable blue dye made from snails. The Greeks in the fourth century BCE re-named it after the god Apollo. The historian Josephus mentioned in ~150 BCE that Appolonia was ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty of the Maccabee (think Chanukah) family. The town went through Roman then Byzantine then Islamic rule. The Muslims re-named it back to the original Arsuf. The Crusaders conquered it and ownership for the next century and one half alternated between Muslims and Crusaders until Mameluke Sultan Bibars destroyed it in 1265. The city was abandoned until it is excavated.
We then drove to Zichron Ya’acov one of the earliest Jewish agricultural settlements of modern times on land was purchased in1880 by Baron Rothschild to begin the re-building of a Jewish homeland. The town was built on top of a small mountain for security. The original main street is now a lovely pedestrian mall with many shops and restaurants including the Tishbi Winery and Restaurant where we had a delightful lunch and some fine wine.
Down the block are the Aaronsohn House and N.I.L.I. Museum, which tells an incredible story of a family’s ingenuity, bravery, and longing for freedom. The Aaronsohn family by 1915 had become relatively well to do and educated. The children studied in French universities. Their oldest son Aaron Aaronsohn became a well-known agronomist after discovering the location of wild wheat. He cross-bred the wild wheat and made many useful advances in wheat production and then set up agricultural stations across Palestine with the help of the Ottoman Empire which since 1516 ruled Palestine and the entire Middle-East.
In 1915, during World War I and a locust infestation that caused widespread famine in Palestine, the Turks, fighting with the Germans, instituted an extra tax on Jews and required a new loyalty oath. Thirty thousand Jews could not pay the tax or would not take the loyalty oath and were exiled. Aware of the Armenian genocide (that they witnessed first hand), the Aaronsohn family decided that rule under the British would be better than rule of the Turks and decided to spy for the British. At this time Aaron was travelling all over Palestine and could observe the movements of the Turkish Army and document water sources. The British reluctantly accepted their offer of information and sent a boat (ship?) every once in a while to get the information. After some success with this method of transferring information, the British boat came no longer due to the presence of German submarines. Two members of this small spy network decided to walk to Egypt to deliver their information. On the way Bedouins in the Sinai Desert attacked them and killed Avshalom Feinberg; the other man although wounded arrived in Cairo.
Incredibly when Israel captured the Sinai in the 1967 War, their effort to find his grave was successful as Bedouins still knew where the “Jew Grave” was. A date tree grew at the spot where it had sprouted from dates he carried in his pocket. His personal effects were identified and his remains received full honors and military burial in Israel on Mount Herzl. A love poem in Hebrew, written to his fiancée Rivka Aaronsohn, is on display in the Aaronsohn house.
Meanwhile, the family did not know if the two had gotten through to Egypt. Aaron went to Egypt by way of London and delivered current information to the British. The British sent sacks of silver and gold coin to help support the starving remaining Jewish Palestinians. Unfortunately the gold coins were stamped with a 1915 date. When the Turks discovered such coins in the market, they realized there must be a spy network. A British carrier pigeon landed in a Turkish military post and focused Turkish attention on the Aaronsohns. They arrested Sara Aaronsohn (one of Aaron’s 5 siblings) and two others and tortured them. None revealed the spy network or the location of the secret tunnel in the Aaronsohn home, which contained names and other information. After three days of torture, Sara convinced the Turks to let her go home to choose fresh clothes to die in. As soon as she entered the house, she reached into a hidden compartment by the door and pulled out a gun and shot herself. The two others were hanged.
The tour of the house showed the secret compartment that held the gun and the secret tunnel under the floor. It was quite moving to see these and realize the bravery of these Jews. Also on display are letters from the British Army stating how helpful their information was in conquering Palestine from the Turks. There was a major battle in Gaza with large number of British casualties. Capturing the rest of the country produced few casualties because of information from their group named N.I.L.I. an abbreviation for: “The glory of Israel will not lie or repent,” I Samuel 15:29.
After this inspiring experience we went to Recanati Winery in the Heffer Valley. After a wonderful tasting, (thanks to our designated driver Ilan ) of many wines we bought a Reserve petite syrah/ zinfandel blend. Naturally cheese and bread were next and we went to Jacob’s Dairy Farm, which has the biggest herd in Israel and makes a number of fine cheeses. We bought two kinds and a challah. In a half hour we were back at Tel Aviv University where we said good-bye to Ilan and accidentally took his cheese as well as our own. Then we boarded the #27 bus towards downtown Tel Aviv to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. By mistake we got off three miles ahead of time so had a pleasant evening walk. Of course, the bus driver made the error and called out Museum for us. But alas it was the wrong museum. The “right” museum was open late for a concert that Roberta insisted we attend. Neither she nor I realized that Ensemble Nikel of Israel along with Ensemble Mosaic of Germany were playing world premieres of works of the 23rd century—in other words, the music was very far-out. Fortunately before the concert and during intermission we were able to view the museum’s many wonderful paintings of Picasso, Chagall, Monet, Renoir, and many other impressionists. In 50 minutes on the #380 bus we were back in Jerusalem
All in all, it was an incredibly interesting day.
Friday, February 20, 2009 Stan:
We took a 4-hour tour of Jerusalem sponsored by Ir-Amim or in English ‘A Family of Peoples ( or Nations)’. We found this organization his week from my friend Ela Greenberg just got a job with them the week before. She is the daughter of my advisor at Michigan who made aliya, married an Israeli, and got her Ph.D. in History recently from Hebrew University. Last year I was invited to their home for dinner and meet her lawyer husband and 2 cute girls. They are on the left side of Israeli politics and send their daughter to a school composed equally Jews and Muslims and each learns the language of the other. Things go well at the school until teen-age years when the Jewish parents pull their kids out for social reasons. The goal of Ir Amin organization is to pave the way for a peaceful spilt of Jerusalem when the 2 state solution comes about. Realistic joke/saying heard today concerning this issue. “Hopefully the Jews and Arabs will live in peace in Gds lifetime!”
A Jewish Israeli guide took about 25 tourists from all over and 2 Israelis through many parts of Jewish Jerusalem where new communities have built in the last 10 years including Gilo and Har Nof on the south. These are very nice with all the street and community facilities. Har Nof is very close to Bethlehem in fact. We then drove into Arab Jerusalem where trash was all over except the trash bins, there were few sidewalks, and the area looked bad, but certainly no worse than slums in large US cities. There is a large shortage of schools in the Arab areas but no willingness of the Arabs to provide land for schools since land ownership is very (and more ) important to the Arab culture than their kids education. Israel has built many new schools but not nearly enough. One such girl school is supposed to produce some of the best students in all Israel. But the emphasis on education is just not there. One reason that the government does not spend the same money on Arab areas of East Jerusalem is that the Arabs refuse to vote for city elections and thus have no representation in city government. Interestingly they do vote in national elections and have about 12% of the Knesset. Some Arab Knesset members have actually spoken about the overthrow of the Jewish State and have even spied for the Hamas & Hezbolla. Several years ago one such Arab Knesset member was caught spying and left/exiled/ escaped (?) to Lebanon where incredibly he is still getting his Israel pension. Only in Israel!
Back to the tour, we drove along the wall separating certain areas of Jerusalem from others. The apparent illogic of some of the wall placement was pointed out. The overall wall is 60% complete and the result is no suicide attacks since it went up. Whether this is the only reasons such attacks have stopped can not be proven but it is extremely important to recall that 1000 Israelis and some Americans were murdered in the second Intifada. Making the conversion to the US, that would be the equivalent of 50,000 killed in a few years. NO government would do nothing in response to such an lethal attack.
Both the Israelis and the Arab are now fighting a demographic battle to see who can have the most kids, who can build the most homes in greater Jerusalem that has grown tremendously by annexation. The wall tries to keep Arabs communities on the outside and include inside new Jewish communities as much as possible. However there is one area that has Arabs living on the west side on northern side and Jews living on the eastern side of this finger like projection in the north but both inside the wall. Some Arab areas were upper middle to well to do and other area very poor and not well kept. Jews have purchased some tracts of land in previously Arab sections despite the Palestinian Authority law prohibiting any sale of land to Jews. Some sales have gone thru initial sale to buyers in the Caribbean and then to the Jews, other sales included a one way ticket out of the country for the Arab owner. One sale went bad with the Arab seller ending up in the truck of car after being tortured. Unfortunately, he didn’t plan the sale properly. Nevertheless some substantial complexes of apartments have been completed or are in progress with Jews living among Arabs.
How all this will play out if a settlement to split Jerusalem is anyone’s guess. We then drove to the one refugee camp in Israel in Jerusalem which actually looks like a slum section of a city with no tents are any thing temporary only 3-4 story apartment buildings but with unfinished concert walls. The area, supported to some degree by the UN, is flanked on each side of this large hillside by rather nice areas with large high rise apartments. The fact hat this center refugee area is still there since 1948 is a big blot on the Jordanians who ruled this land from1949 to1967 and the Israelis since then.
Vast land to the east has been annexed to Jerusalem and now has several communities Ma’ale Adomim and Kfar Adumim, all designed to increase the percentage of Jews in the new greater Jerusalem. All these new communities do provide a security belt around the city.
The key numbers are that until 1967 Jerusalem had only 60,000 Palestinians and in 1948 the population was 250000 for the entire city with 75% Jewish. Thus with the amazing growth since 1967 to the present 800,000 total with 35% (?) or 280,000 Arab is a result of Jerusalem becoming the real and permanent capitol of Israel and the tremendous expansion of tourism resulting in this large influx of Palestinians into the area for economic reasons. If and how the city could be divided between two countries who are not at complete peace with each other similar to the US and Canada, is very hard to imagine despite all the peace talks going on (in my humble opinion). But one can only hope and pray that leaders on both sides can be found that could orchestrate a change in societies so that peace could be derived.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
February 12-16, 2009
February 15, 2009, from Roberta
Thursday we took the 386 bus from Jerusalem to Masada. The route was partly along the west shore of the Dead Sea (or Salt Sea as it is called here) which divides Israel from Jordan. It is a long narrow blue body of water, which is 23%, salt and may be the lowest point on earth. We passed orchards of date palms growing in an area of desolate gold colored cliffs. On the west side of the highway are cliffs of Quibran , the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. It’s about a 2 hour walk to the caves—we didn’t do it.
The bus stopped at the Ein Gedi Hostel, the Ein Gedi Kibbutz (wh/ also has a guesthouse) and the Ein Gedi Spa—that’s three different stops. We spoke to an 83 year old man who makes the trip to the Spa once a week. He brings a lunch. He likes the sulfur baths—stays in for 30 minutes although a sign tells him 15 minutes are the maximum. Then he gets out and rests on a lounge for a while. He repeats this cycle several times, has lunch, and gets the 4:30 bus back to Jerusalem.
The bus ride to Masada took one and a half-hours. We checked in at the hostel/guest house at the foot of Masada. The room wasn’t ready so we left luggage there and took lunch and water with us. We stopped at the museum wh/ is a very fine mixture of historical detail, artifacts, and statuary depicting life at Masada when it was Herod the Great’s palace and during the siege of 70 CE when families committed suicide rather than be captured by the Romans. There are 2 ways to get to the top, by funicular or by foot up a steep mountain. We took the funicular up but walked down the Snake Trail—all-700 steps and hilly trails. Temperature was temperate, about 70 degrees F—in summer it is very hot. Many areas have been excavated.
For a long time no one knew where Masada was. From sea level it looks like every other flat-topped mountain. A youth group hiked it in 1940. Archeologist Yigal Yadin worked there when he wasn’t working as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Excavations include two Herodian palaces, a synagogue, ritual bath, living quarters for common folk, a dove cote, step wells, storage rooms, many walls of fortification, and even more. The views of the Dead Sea and desert below are breath taking. You can see the stonewalled outlines of the eight Roman camps below, the siege wall and the ramp the Roman Army built to eventually capture the fortress from Jewish rebels around 74 CE. Rather than be captured by the Romans, the 954 rebels committed suicide. The Romanized-Jewish historian, Josephus Flavius, was with the Romans and wrote an account based on what he saw as well as interviews with two women and five children who did not commit suicide.
The next morning we caught the #384 bus to Arad, a city of 20,000 inhabitants, altitude 2000 feet around where the Judean and Negev Deserts meet. Arad has many industries ie cosmetics, towels, Motorola, etc. The high school has 1000 students. Arad also had a hostel; these are modern, scenic buildings; rooms sleep two to six people and each room has its own bathroom and shower. Breakfast is included (this is a wonderful big meal in Israel). Cost is around $100 for two people for the bed and breakfast. Fortunately we arrived early as registration closes from noon to 4pm—perhaps in hot weather this is a siesta time—it wasn’t clear.
Arad is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Numbers 21) as a Canaanite city which took Israelite prisoners and was then defeated by Moses and the ancient Israelites. There is an excavated Tel, which goes back 6000 years; the Canaanites abandoned it for 1500 years and then re-settled there around 2500 BCE. Part of the excavation includes a temple like the ones in Jerusalem and Shechem. King David ordered these destroyed so he could concentrate religious power in Jerusalem. However the one in Arad was not destroyed but buried under earth. We did not get to see it this trip; I would like to return but it’s not exactly part of a central route.
At the suggestion of the hostel hostess we walked to the Arad Glass Museum where the founding artist, Gidon Friedman, showed us how to view his work; his wife ran the gift shop. Works by other artists could also be seen. Mr. Friedman developed his own technique after travels where he saw glasswork, which he did not want to emulate. He spent five years building a kiln-like structure and developing his technique. In the bed of the kiln, he makes a mold of powder. He then puts sheet glass over the mold, closes and heats the kiln. The glass takes the shape of the mold. His work is very beautiful and interesting especially the depth effect he gets from glass. It had been a long walk to the Glass Museum; Mrs. Friedman got us a ride to central Arad with a local family—parents and 15-year-old daughter. One of the great things about small towns is that personal things like this happen.
Friday night we attended services at the Masorti synagogue—there were only thirteen people there. The Haredim were walking to their own synagogue dressed in large round black fur hats (Shtremels), fitted black satin coats to their knees, knee pants and long black socks. There is such variety in Israel, even in this small city in the middle of the desert.
The next day we went on a 4-wheel drive jeep tour of the desert with Oded Hamm, a desert guide and Werner’s cousin’s son. We, or rather he, drove along wadis (dry river beds—arroyos) and cross-country over rocky terrain. We saw many Bedouin encampments with sheep, goats, and camels grazing. Two teenage boys on a donkey were herding camels. This desert has hills, canyons, rocks and boulders. The land is colored golden in the distance. The Judean and Negev Deserts meet here.
An array of white snail shells indicated the burrow of a gerbil rodent. When it rains the snails come out to reproduce (they’re androgynous) and the rodents come out to feed. They leave their “tracks”.
Near a bush called “meluach” or salt plant lives another type of gerbil called the fat sand rat. The US Navy in Egypt studied the animal in a laboratory. The gerbils did not thrive on laboratory food—they developed diabetes and died. However they thrived when they fed on the salt plant (whose leaves do taste salty). Evidently this gerbil has unusual kidneys wh/ can handle the salt.
Instead of the bus to Tel Aviv, we got on a sherut, a 16-person van, to Tel Aviv—same price as a bus and non-stop. It took 1 hour 40 minutes. We caught the 405 to Jerusalem and were at the apartment in another hour.
Sat next to a young man from Darfor going from Arad to Tel Aviv. Israel
took him in and several thousand other Darfarians. He and his wife were expelled from their university in
Khartoum, Sudan, because of their origin. His wife, 2 children, parents,
and brothers live in Khartoum where they are probably safe. He sends
money to them each month but can't send directly from Israel so cuts a
deal with an Egyptian bank so it looks as if the money comes from Egypt.
His life must be very complicated.
February 15, 2009 from Stan. We met Rabbi Ephraim and Esther Zimand for dinner at Polly”s Restaurant on Bet Lechem and Yehuda Streets. A very nice fish/vegetarian kosher dinner. Polly’s is located next to a little hotel called Little House on Baka and is their breakfast room. Bet Lechem is a quaint street with many restaurants and miscellaneous shops.
February 16, 2009: Went to Begin Center for a lecture by former ambassador to USA , now professor, Moshe Arens, who spoke about his new book, “Flags Over the Ghetto” just published in Hebrew but soon to come out in English. He told the story of the role of the Betar movement in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Jabatinsky founded Betar in 1923 as a Zionist secular youth movement, which emphasized military training, love of Zion, alliyah, and self-defense. The history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was written by the socialist Mapai party which governed Israel during its first twenty years and also by Leon Uris” classic novel, “Mila 18”. These two histories ignored Betar (which was not socialist) and emphasized the role of the ZOB group led by Mordechai Anilewitz which fought independently of Betar in the Warsaw Ghetto. The ZOB emphasized ambushes and Betar favored defensive positions. Very young men and women led each group as all the senior people of both groups had escaped earlier to the East. In the major battle of April 19, 1943, Betar raised three Zionist flags, which became the flag of Israel in 1948, on the tallest building in the ghetto. The Nazis reported in the Nuremberg trial that they saw the three flags. However nothing about the flags was made part of the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the two sources mentioned. All the Jews died except for a very few who escaped through the sewers. This is a heroic story that Arens’ book completes.
The lecture was sponsored by the family of Izchak (Elitsur) Friedman as the fourth annual lecture in a series. Elitsur”s story is worth telling. Born 1920 in Czechoslovakia, joined Betar as a teenager, and by 1938 was in a leadership position. When the Nazis arrived in 1938, he fled to Hungary where he began organizing the movement of Jews to Palestine—this was made easier because by age 18 he spoke 10 languages. In 1939 he led a large group of Jews on barges on the Danube toward the Black Sea. After a difficult winter, being delayed by the frozen river, they finally arrived at the Black Sea. They sailed on the Sakarya to British mandated Palestine; Jabotinski’s son Ari commanded the ship. Elitsur was arrested by the British and served six months in a British prison camp. After release he became an Etzel commander, leading many operations against the British. He was captured again by the British and tricked them by using a false name; in fact, the British arrested every Izchak Friedman in Palestine, and sent them all to prison or to Eritrea, Africa. They didn’t know the Izchak Friedman they wanted was already in one of their prisons under the name of the man they thought he was.
He was honored as being wanted by the Nazis as a Czech and British spy and a Zionist agent; by the Czechs and the Hungarians as a British spy and Zionist agent; and by the British as a Zionist agent. He escaped from the British prison in 1947. After the sinking of the Altalena, Elitsur served as battalion commander of the Etzel forces in Jerusalem.
After Israel’s independence, he decided to continue his formal education. He received a Ph D in chemistry and rose to become Chairman of the Chemistry Department and then Dean of the Engineering and Science at Pratt Institute of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. What an incredible life—fighting the Nazis, helping Jews escape successfully, fighting the British, and then switching careers to academic research and teaching in chemistry! His son, Jonathan, spoke about his father and the Betar Movement before Dr. Aren’s lecture
.
Thursday we took the 386 bus from Jerusalem to Masada. The route was partly along the west shore of the Dead Sea (or Salt Sea as it is called here) which divides Israel from Jordan. It is a long narrow blue body of water, which is 23%, salt and may be the lowest point on earth. We passed orchards of date palms growing in an area of desolate gold colored cliffs. On the west side of the highway are cliffs of Quibran , the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. It’s about a 2 hour walk to the caves—we didn’t do it.
The bus stopped at the Ein Gedi Hostel, the Ein Gedi Kibbutz (wh/ also has a guesthouse) and the Ein Gedi Spa—that’s three different stops. We spoke to an 83 year old man who makes the trip to the Spa once a week. He brings a lunch. He likes the sulfur baths—stays in for 30 minutes although a sign tells him 15 minutes are the maximum. Then he gets out and rests on a lounge for a while. He repeats this cycle several times, has lunch, and gets the 4:30 bus back to Jerusalem.
The bus ride to Masada took one and a half-hours. We checked in at the hostel/guest house at the foot of Masada. The room wasn’t ready so we left luggage there and took lunch and water with us. We stopped at the museum wh/ is a very fine mixture of historical detail, artifacts, and statuary depicting life at Masada when it was Herod the Great’s palace and during the siege of 70 CE when families committed suicide rather than be captured by the Romans. There are 2 ways to get to the top, by funicular or by foot up a steep mountain. We took the funicular up but walked down the Snake Trail—all-700 steps and hilly trails. Temperature was temperate, about 70 degrees F—in summer it is very hot. Many areas have been excavated.
For a long time no one knew where Masada was. From sea level it looks like every other flat-topped mountain. A youth group hiked it in 1940. Archeologist Yigal Yadin worked there when he wasn’t working as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Excavations include two Herodian palaces, a synagogue, ritual bath, living quarters for common folk, a dove cote, step wells, storage rooms, many walls of fortification, and even more. The views of the Dead Sea and desert below are breath taking. You can see the stonewalled outlines of the eight Roman camps below, the siege wall and the ramp the Roman Army built to eventually capture the fortress from Jewish rebels around 74 CE. Rather than be captured by the Romans, the 954 rebels committed suicide. The Romanized-Jewish historian, Josephus Flavius, was with the Romans and wrote an account based on what he saw as well as interviews with two women and five children who did not commit suicide.
The next morning we caught the #384 bus to Arad, a city of 20,000 inhabitants, altitude 2000 feet around where the Judean and Negev Deserts meet. Arad has many industries ie cosmetics, towels, Motorola, etc. The high school has 1000 students. Arad also had a hostel; these are modern, scenic buildings; rooms sleep two to six people and each room has its own bathroom and shower. Breakfast is included (this is a wonderful big meal in Israel). Cost is around $100 for two people for the bed and breakfast. Fortunately we arrived early as registration closes from noon to 4pm—perhaps in hot weather this is a siesta time—it wasn’t clear.
Arad is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Numbers 21) as a Canaanite city which took Israelite prisoners and was then defeated by Moses and the ancient Israelites. There is an excavated Tel, which goes back 6000 years; the Canaanites abandoned it for 1500 years and then re-settled there around 2500 BCE. Part of the excavation includes a temple like the ones in Jerusalem and Shechem. King David ordered these destroyed so he could concentrate religious power in Jerusalem. However the one in Arad was not destroyed but buried under earth. We did not get to see it this trip; I would like to return but it’s not exactly part of a central route.
At the suggestion of the hostel hostess we walked to the Arad Glass Museum where the founding artist, Gidon Friedman, showed us how to view his work; his wife ran the gift shop. Works by other artists could also be seen. Mr. Friedman developed his own technique after travels where he saw glasswork, which he did not want to emulate. He spent five years building a kiln-like structure and developing his technique. In the bed of the kiln, he makes a mold of powder. He then puts sheet glass over the mold, closes and heats the kiln. The glass takes the shape of the mold. His work is very beautiful and interesting especially the depth effect he gets from glass. It had been a long walk to the Glass Museum; Mrs. Friedman got us a ride to central Arad with a local family—parents and 15-year-old daughter. One of the great things about small towns is that personal things like this happen.
Friday night we attended services at the Masorti synagogue—there were only thirteen people there. The Haredim were walking to their own synagogue dressed in large round black fur hats (Shtremels), fitted black satin coats to their knees, knee pants and long black socks. There is such variety in Israel, even in this small city in the middle of the desert.
The next day we went on a 4-wheel drive jeep tour of the desert with Oded Hamm, a desert guide and Werner’s cousin’s son. We, or rather he, drove along wadis (dry river beds—arroyos) and cross-country over rocky terrain. We saw many Bedouin encampments with sheep, goats, and camels grazing. Two teenage boys on a donkey were herding camels. This desert has hills, canyons, rocks and boulders. The land is colored golden in the distance. The Judean and Negev Deserts meet here.
An array of white snail shells indicated the burrow of a gerbil rodent. When it rains the snails come out to reproduce (they’re androgynous) and the rodents come out to feed. They leave their “tracks”.
Near a bush called “meluach” or salt plant lives another type of gerbil called the fat sand rat. The US Navy in Egypt studied the animal in a laboratory. The gerbils did not thrive on laboratory food—they developed diabetes and died. However they thrived when they fed on the salt plant (whose leaves do taste salty). Evidently this gerbil has unusual kidneys wh/ can handle the salt.
Instead of the bus to Tel Aviv, we got on a sherut, a 16-person van, to Tel Aviv—same price as a bus and non-stop. It took 1 hour 40 minutes. We caught the 405 to Jerusalem and were at the apartment in another hour.
Sat next to a young man from Darfor going from Arad to Tel Aviv. Israel
took him in and several thousand other Darfarians. He and his wife were expelled from their university in
Khartoum, Sudan, because of their origin. His wife, 2 children, parents,
and brothers live in Khartoum where they are probably safe. He sends
money to them each month but can't send directly from Israel so cuts a
deal with an Egyptian bank so it looks as if the money comes from Egypt.
His life must be very complicated.
February 15, 2009 from Stan. We met Rabbi Ephraim and Esther Zimand for dinner at Polly”s Restaurant on Bet Lechem and Yehuda Streets. A very nice fish/vegetarian kosher dinner. Polly’s is located next to a little hotel called Little House on Baka and is their breakfast room. Bet Lechem is a quaint street with many restaurants and miscellaneous shops.
February 16, 2009: Went to Begin Center for a lecture by former ambassador to USA , now professor, Moshe Arens, who spoke about his new book, “Flags Over the Ghetto” just published in Hebrew but soon to come out in English. He told the story of the role of the Betar movement in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Jabatinsky founded Betar in 1923 as a Zionist secular youth movement, which emphasized military training, love of Zion, alliyah, and self-defense. The history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was written by the socialist Mapai party which governed Israel during its first twenty years and also by Leon Uris” classic novel, “Mila 18”. These two histories ignored Betar (which was not socialist) and emphasized the role of the ZOB group led by Mordechai Anilewitz which fought independently of Betar in the Warsaw Ghetto. The ZOB emphasized ambushes and Betar favored defensive positions. Very young men and women led each group as all the senior people of both groups had escaped earlier to the East. In the major battle of April 19, 1943, Betar raised three Zionist flags, which became the flag of Israel in 1948, on the tallest building in the ghetto. The Nazis reported in the Nuremberg trial that they saw the three flags. However nothing about the flags was made part of the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the two sources mentioned. All the Jews died except for a very few who escaped through the sewers. This is a heroic story that Arens’ book completes.
The lecture was sponsored by the family of Izchak (Elitsur) Friedman as the fourth annual lecture in a series. Elitsur”s story is worth telling. Born 1920 in Czechoslovakia, joined Betar as a teenager, and by 1938 was in a leadership position. When the Nazis arrived in 1938, he fled to Hungary where he began organizing the movement of Jews to Palestine—this was made easier because by age 18 he spoke 10 languages. In 1939 he led a large group of Jews on barges on the Danube toward the Black Sea. After a difficult winter, being delayed by the frozen river, they finally arrived at the Black Sea. They sailed on the Sakarya to British mandated Palestine; Jabotinski’s son Ari commanded the ship. Elitsur was arrested by the British and served six months in a British prison camp. After release he became an Etzel commander, leading many operations against the British. He was captured again by the British and tricked them by using a false name; in fact, the British arrested every Izchak Friedman in Palestine, and sent them all to prison or to Eritrea, Africa. They didn’t know the Izchak Friedman they wanted was already in one of their prisons under the name of the man they thought he was.
He was honored as being wanted by the Nazis as a Czech and British spy and a Zionist agent; by the Czechs and the Hungarians as a British spy and Zionist agent; and by the British as a Zionist agent. He escaped from the British prison in 1947. After the sinking of the Altalena, Elitsur served as battalion commander of the Etzel forces in Jerusalem.
After Israel’s independence, he decided to continue his formal education. He received a Ph D in chemistry and rose to become Chairman of the Chemistry Department and then Dean of the Engineering and Science at Pratt Institute of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. What an incredible life—fighting the Nazis, helping Jews escape successfully, fighting the British, and then switching careers to academic research and teaching in chemistry! His son, Jonathan, spoke about his father and the Betar Movement before Dr. Aren’s lecture
.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Details of the Bruriah Story
Bruriah (Hebrew: ברוריה) is one of several woman quoted as a sage in the Talmud. She was the wife of the Tanna Rabbi Meir and the daughter of Rabbi Hananiah Ben Teradion, who is listed as one of the "Ten Martyrs." She is greatly admired for her breadth of knowledge in matters pertaining to both halachah and aggadah, and is said to have taught the rabbis 300 halachot on a single cloudy day (Tractate Pesachim 62b). Her parents were put to death by the Romans for teaching Torah, but she carried on their legacy.
Bruriah was very involved in the halachic discussions of her time, and even challenges her father on a matter of ritual purity (Tosefta Keilim Bava Kamma 4:9). Her comments there are praised by Rabbi Judah Ben Bava. In another instance, Rabbi Joshua praises her intervention in a debate between Rebbi Tarfon and the sages, saying "Bruriah has spoken correctly" (Tosefta Keilim Bava Metzia 1:3).
She was also renowned for her sharp wit and often caustic jibes. The Talmud (Tractate Eruvin 53b) relates that she once chastised Rabbi Jose, when he asked her "Which way to Lod?" claiming that he could have said the same thing in two words, "Where's Lod?" instead of four, and thereby keep to the Talmudic injunction not to speak to women unnecessarily.
In the Midrash on Psalms 118 it states that Bruriah taught her husband, Rabbi Meir, to pray for the repentance of the wicked, rather than for their destruction. According to the story, she once found Rabbi Meir praying that an annoying neighbor would die. Appalled by this, she responded to him by explaining the verse "Let the sinners be consumed from the earth, and the wicked shall be no more" (Psalms 104:35), that the verse actually states: "Let sin be consumed from the earth," adding that "the wicked shall be no more" because they have repented.
She is also described as having enormous inner strength. The Midrash on the Book of Proverbs tells that her two sons died suddenly on the Sabbath, but she hid the fact from her husband until she could tell him in a way that would comfort him. In response, Rabbi Meir quoted the verse, "A woman of valour, who can find?" (Proverbs 31:10).
In the Talmudic commentaries (e.g. Rashi on Tractate Avodah Zarah, 18b), a story explains how she died. According to the story, she mocked a Talmudic assertion that women were lightheaded. In order to prove her wrong, Rabbi Meir sent one of his students to seduce her. He succeeded, and Bruriah committed suicide (by strangling, according to Rashi) out of shame. Rabbi Meir, who never expected things to spiral out of control in this way, imposed exile on himself and left Palestine for Babylonia.
But Rabenu Nisim brings on a different explanation that is closer to the text. According to him, Rabbi Meir and Bruriah had to flee to Babylonia after the Romans executed her father, sold her mother to slavery and her sister to a brothel (to be rescued by Rabbi Meir) and were looking for her.
Bruriah was very involved in the halachic discussions of her time, and even challenges her father on a matter of ritual purity (Tosefta Keilim Bava Kamma 4:9). Her comments there are praised by Rabbi Judah Ben Bava. In another instance, Rabbi Joshua praises her intervention in a debate between Rebbi Tarfon and the sages, saying "Bruriah has spoken correctly" (Tosefta Keilim Bava Metzia 1:3).
She was also renowned for her sharp wit and often caustic jibes. The Talmud (Tractate Eruvin 53b) relates that she once chastised Rabbi Jose, when he asked her "Which way to Lod?" claiming that he could have said the same thing in two words, "Where's Lod?" instead of four, and thereby keep to the Talmudic injunction not to speak to women unnecessarily.
In the Midrash on Psalms 118 it states that Bruriah taught her husband, Rabbi Meir, to pray for the repentance of the wicked, rather than for their destruction. According to the story, she once found Rabbi Meir praying that an annoying neighbor would die. Appalled by this, she responded to him by explaining the verse "Let the sinners be consumed from the earth, and the wicked shall be no more" (Psalms 104:35), that the verse actually states: "Let sin be consumed from the earth," adding that "the wicked shall be no more" because they have repented.
She is also described as having enormous inner strength. The Midrash on the Book of Proverbs tells that her two sons died suddenly on the Sabbath, but she hid the fact from her husband until she could tell him in a way that would comfort him. In response, Rabbi Meir quoted the verse, "A woman of valour, who can find?" (Proverbs 31:10).
In the Talmudic commentaries (e.g. Rashi on Tractate Avodah Zarah, 18b), a story explains how she died. According to the story, she mocked a Talmudic assertion that women were lightheaded. In order to prove her wrong, Rabbi Meir sent one of his students to seduce her. He succeeded, and Bruriah committed suicide (by strangling, according to Rashi) out of shame. Rabbi Meir, who never expected things to spiral out of control in this way, imposed exile on himself and left Palestine for Babylonia.
But Rabenu Nisim brings on a different explanation that is closer to the text. According to him, Rabbi Meir and Bruriah had to flee to Babylonia after the Romans executed her father, sold her mother to slavery and her sister to a brothel (to be rescued by Rabbi Meir) and were looking for her.
Feb. 7 - Feb. 9 New Stuff
Feb. 7-Stan:
In evening went to a lecture at Pardes School by Rabbi Joshua Berman Lecturer at Bar Ilan University here in Jerusalem. He was launching his new book “Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought.” The thesis is that in many ways the Bible changed the view of the common man in way that was unique in all contemporary civilizations and in fact was unique until the American Revolution. He Bible created a society in which the average man had rights not found in any other society. These included limits to power of King, Vassal treaty rights, separation of religious power and political power, private ownership of the land not in Kings control. The idea of land owned by common people took a long time even to come to western Civilization. All people paid taxes for social purposes including assistance to the poor. Never heard before: New King would cancel all debts to get support and loyalty of common people. Rich people took a hit but equality restarted every new King. The day is rest was a major new idea based not on any observable natural time cycle like the day, month or year. And lastly, the Torah was so be read to the people and learned so all would know it in the original. The improvements in the alphabet meet that the word could spread for al to learnt and read, unlike the hieroglyphics where only a few could master it.
Feb. 8 Sunday-Stan:
Went to Tel Aviv by train with the #4 or 18 bus getting to Malka Train Station. Beautiful ride thru valleys with hills surrounding Jerusalem until reach Bet Shemesh. Trip 20 NIS takes 1.5 hour to Tel Aviv train/bus terminal. We walked to Bauhaus Center and the walked around the neighbor looking at many different styles of apartments built in 1930 and 1940 in the International Style as it properly is called. Tour the Cinema Hotel on Dizengoff Circle which was a movie house built in 1938 and very interesting to see how it was converted to a hotel yet preserving the Bauhaus outside and lobby. Then went to Ben Gurion’s home at saw his library of 10,000 books (my guess) in 5 languages. He was really well read!
Walked along Mediterranean promenade to Bialik home which was closed on Sunday, not correct in guidebook. Then took bus to Rabin’s memorial, which was very sad to see the spot where he was murdered while talking to a crowd along a busy wide street. We then walked to the very large Ha Medina circle with many Paris type fancy shops and ate outside at a nice café. Took #480 bus from Arlozorov terminal to Jerusalem in 50 minutes( 10NIS or half the train and half the time.)
Feb. 10 Monday –Stan:
Went to the free concert at the Jerusalem Theater with piano trio of all Russian musicians playing a great Debussy, a new piece “ A Happy Birthday to you Mr. Bach” by Briener, and Shubert. Then we saw a new Israeli movie ‘Burita’ which was about the 2000 year story in the Talmud where the famous and learned daughter of Rabbi Akiva was challenged by her untrusting husband by getting a friend of his to seduce his own wife. I will report the remainder of the story after I check it out. Today 2 lectures, one concert and one movie-A Great Day.
In evening went to a lecture at Pardes School by Rabbi Joshua Berman Lecturer at Bar Ilan University here in Jerusalem. He was launching his new book “Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought.” The thesis is that in many ways the Bible changed the view of the common man in way that was unique in all contemporary civilizations and in fact was unique until the American Revolution. He Bible created a society in which the average man had rights not found in any other society. These included limits to power of King, Vassal treaty rights, separation of religious power and political power, private ownership of the land not in Kings control. The idea of land owned by common people took a long time even to come to western Civilization. All people paid taxes for social purposes including assistance to the poor. Never heard before: New King would cancel all debts to get support and loyalty of common people. Rich people took a hit but equality restarted every new King. The day is rest was a major new idea based not on any observable natural time cycle like the day, month or year. And lastly, the Torah was so be read to the people and learned so all would know it in the original. The improvements in the alphabet meet that the word could spread for al to learnt and read, unlike the hieroglyphics where only a few could master it.
Feb. 8 Sunday-Stan:
Went to Tel Aviv by train with the #4 or 18 bus getting to Malka Train Station. Beautiful ride thru valleys with hills surrounding Jerusalem until reach Bet Shemesh. Trip 20 NIS takes 1.5 hour to Tel Aviv train/bus terminal. We walked to Bauhaus Center and the walked around the neighbor looking at many different styles of apartments built in 1930 and 1940 in the International Style as it properly is called. Tour the Cinema Hotel on Dizengoff Circle which was a movie house built in 1938 and very interesting to see how it was converted to a hotel yet preserving the Bauhaus outside and lobby. Then went to Ben Gurion’s home at saw his library of 10,000 books (my guess) in 5 languages. He was really well read!
Walked along Mediterranean promenade to Bialik home which was closed on Sunday, not correct in guidebook. Then took bus to Rabin’s memorial, which was very sad to see the spot where he was murdered while talking to a crowd along a busy wide street. We then walked to the very large Ha Medina circle with many Paris type fancy shops and ate outside at a nice café. Took #480 bus from Arlozorov terminal to Jerusalem in 50 minutes( 10NIS or half the train and half the time.)
Feb. 10 Monday –Stan:
Went to the free concert at the Jerusalem Theater with piano trio of all Russian musicians playing a great Debussy, a new piece “ A Happy Birthday to you Mr. Bach” by Briener, and Shubert. Then we saw a new Israeli movie ‘Burita’ which was about the 2000 year story in the Talmud where the famous and learned daughter of Rabbi Akiva was challenged by her untrusting husband by getting a friend of his to seduce his own wife. I will report the remainder of the story after I check it out. Today 2 lectures, one concert and one movie-A Great Day.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Feb 1 to Feb 6, 2009 -What a great week
Feb. 1 Sunday -Stan:
Tonight we went to a dance perform by the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company doing the artistic Director Rami Beter’s new work ‘60 Hz’. It was all about energy, I guess, and was too modern for me. The dancers very good, the props very creative, the lights blinding, and the music and sound very irritating. Roberta said as we left, “Do I owe you one.” I nodded yes.
Feb. 3 Tuesday -Stan
After 2 classes at the Conservative school we walked to the Italian Synagogue and Museum which was very beautiful with the reconstructed arc and bimah dating from the 18th Century taken from a city near Venice that lost all its Jews. The women sit up upstairs behind 200-year latticework. The museum had many beautiful ritual objects all made in Italy. One kituba (wedding contract), of many beautiful ones they had, was very different and had the word Diplomat with the name of a Jewish person and the Title of Emperor of Austria and Hungry across the top in very elaborate script. We asked the person at the desk if this was really a kituba and he came over and said sure, look at the info on the wall. We asked if someone else could look at this and luckily there was an Italian speaking person around who determined that this beautiful large certificate was from the Emperor in 1847 granting this Jew a rank of Count in thanks for donating money to the Emperor. They thanked us for pointing the error in the description and said they would correct the label immediately.
We then walked to the Bezelel Art School founded in 1906 when this area was way far from the protection of the Old City. But it had a large wall around the complex for safety. They had a short movie of the very far sighted founder and his very artistic kids and grandkids. The current art display of the students and staff was far out.
We returned at 4:30 ready for the next adventure in 15 minutes which was a concert at the Jerusalem Theater of a quartet playing Mozart and Schulman. The pianist Ian Fountain of England won the Rubenstein Competition in 1989 and was wonderful. Roberta did not come as she had to rest for her choir practice at 7:15. After the concert I had just enough time to come home, have a quick dinner, and go to lecture at 8 by Zornberg which was incredibly fascinating as usual on the Torah portion of the week. So, today had 3 lectures, 2 museum visits, and one concert. Whata great day and life!!
Feb. 4, Thursday -Stan:
We kook a tiyul (trip) with Pardes to The Valley of Jezreel in the mid north of the country. This area is associated with many events in the Torah including King Saul, The Prophet Deborah and her battle with Sisera, Gideon, and Ahab. The route was due east from Jerusalem on #1 thru the Judean desert where we saw many Bedouin encampments and then north on #90 around Jericho thru the Jordan Valley, which as recent as 1967 was empty except for the Bedouins. After 1967, the Israelis started farming here and now the area has many large farms but the area is very poor still. After crossing out of the ‘West Bank’ into Israel the farms are very large, well developed, and the villages and homes look nice. In 1920 when the Jews bought the land there was nothing but desert but they rapidly transformed it into productive land to the surprise of the Arabs. We visited the tomb of Joshua Hankin, in Ma’yan Harod National Park, who from 1890 to 1920’s purchased this land (at exorbitant prices) and other vast tracts of land all over then Palestine from owners local, in Turkey or Damascus for the Zionist movement. Some land was desert, some malarial swamps that none thought was worthwhile including many Zionist who he forced to pay for his purchases. Later all the land was covered to farms or cities and he was then revered as a foresighted pioneer who really helped the founding of the Jewish State.
In the Valley of Jezreel over 3,000, 000 trees have been planted since then changing the landscape dramatically. We drove to the top of Mount Gilboa, a prominent mountain in religious history. Gideon’s battle against the fierce Midianites (Judges 7:1) is a great story and his successful strategy as a real leader and military genius was repeated by others in the 1948 War of Independence. Mt. Gilboa was always a great escape place if need be against the Midianites or other invaders as the mountain was a defensible position. We when went to En-Dor where the battle took place (Psalms 83:10). Saul also went to En-Dor I (Samuel 28: 3) to get guidance for a diviner after just getting rid of them in Gilboa. He finds out that he and his sons will be killed in battle with the Philistines who had moved from the coast inland to get control of the valuable trade routes that passed thru this Valley of Jezreel from the west to the coast and the Coastal road down to Egypt. Instead of running away, he stays with his men to fight and is about to be captured, tortured and killed. Instead he commits suicide. A 1000 years later a sage said it was acceptable to commit suicide if one knows one is to be tortured and killed. Rabbi Grodner explained that the most famous of the suicides was Masada where 600(?) Jews all died at their own hand rather than be captured by the Romans in 74(?) CE. The Talmud, which discusses every facet of life, does not mention this giant suicide because they didn’t want to condone it as in general suicide is strictly against Jewish law. So the best way the rabbis could handle the issue was to not discuss Masada at all. After Philistines put Saul’s head on display in Bet Shean, the men of Jabesh Gilead, whom he had earlier helped defend against the Philistines, came in the night to retrieve his body and burned it and then fasted for 7 days out of respect (I Samuel 31: 1-13 for entire story of Saul’s death) and II Samuel 1:21 for another reference to Mt. Gilboa and Saul’s anointing as King here. Roberta & I climbed a tower on top of the Mt. to get an even grander view of the fertile fields below and the many villages & cities all round. One could even see Mt Meron with snow on top to the north.
We then visited Ein Harod associated with King Ahab and his wife Jezebel and their evil ways (I Kings 21:1-29). Other sources say Ahab was a great King but in the Torah he is no good as this chapter relates. The Tel Jezreel hasn’t revealed anything about their palace here as nothing apparently survived. But the view was great. Our last stop was the Kibbutz Ein Dor, which had a very fine Museum of Archaeology (www.eindormuseum.co.il). It was an old kibbutz and in the process of farming they discovered all the items in the museum ranging from pottery 10,000 years old to unbroken glass dishes of Roman times and many pieces between. We drove back the same way and the desert was beautiful as the sun set.
Feb 6. Friday. One Fabulous Day! -Stan :
Went to the Israel Museum to see the Blue-White special exhibit. Took #24 bus from Rachel Imenu and Emek Refraim right there. This exhibit which closes the next day had documents from the state of Israel’s history, such as the Declaration of Independence, all the proposals for a flag (the original Zionist flag won out over some pretty neat designs), Arafat’s letter to Rabin in 1993 stating full recognition of Israel, renounce violence, and changing the PLO charter to remove the destruction of Israel as a main part of the PLO constitution. Unfortunately none of this was done and a clue should have been the letter was in English not Hebrew or Arabic. They also had the dairy of Col. Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster. Incredibly his diary survived the fiery destruction and 2 months of Texas weather. The crime lab was able to show what was written, the Kiddush for Friday night he wrote from memory. Another moving exhibit was the recovery of the remains of a Jewish Palestinian soldier/poet working for the British during WWI who was killed by the Bedouins. In 1967, they were able to track his remains as the Bedouins passed the location down thru 50 years. Incredibly a date tree was growing right were he died from dates he was carrying in his pocket. He received a full military burial. Last was the first page of the lengthily manuscript written by Eichman while he was waiting trial and execution. He hoped a major German publisher would publish it, but Israel said no thanks.
We also spend time in the Shrine of the Book where the Dead Sea Scrolls are stored and exhibited. To me the most exciting item is the Aleppo Bible from 925CE written in Tiberias and used by Maimonides in 1150. The magnificent Torah is in book form hence a Codex and has full vowels put into the Torah, by the Masorites a splinter group of Jews who said we need to make sure we know the real word meant in the Torah since without vowels there could be ambiguity. This was not a problem if one was taught the word meaning from someone in an oral tradition going back to its origin, which was done. But as Jews dispersed this was not possible. Absolutely incredible and sad is that no bible in Hebrew is older than this one as all others were destroyed by a variety of forces. But the main incredible thing is the 925 Bible text is the same as the Jewish splinter group, the Essenes, wrote in the desert from about 100 BCE to 100 CE. Roberta mentioned something about lunch and I replied that we didn’t have time for lunch, this is a military operation. She was glad later after we saw the entire Blue and White exhibit.
We got the #9 bus back to center of town and walked back. After lunch, a 30 minute nap, we got ready to go Marcia and Dennis Gelpe’s for Shabbat dinner. We took a cab since buses had stopped running. Had a wonderful time with great food as Dennis had a kosher gourmet bakery in Minneapolis until they came here. Their daughter, Yafa, was ready to deliver her full size (or so it appears) twins any second. The son, Joey, is going to India for a vacation in few days. Marcia looks after Barnard grads in Jerusalem and Flo from Creve Coeur and Brith Shalom was there. 30ish Flo is probably the only person I know who hated her time in St. Louis as turning egalitarian religious, she was left out in the cold. Now she is very happy in Jerusalem. Since everyone is religious we planned to walk back so I prepared a complicated Google route and took notes for it (no printer). Luckily Flo was walking back so she took us back by the best route. For sure we would have gotten lost. It only took 1 hour for a very pleasant walk with the temp about 45F.
Tonight we went to a dance perform by the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company doing the artistic Director Rami Beter’s new work ‘60 Hz’. It was all about energy, I guess, and was too modern for me. The dancers very good, the props very creative, the lights blinding, and the music and sound very irritating. Roberta said as we left, “Do I owe you one.” I nodded yes.
Feb. 3 Tuesday -Stan
After 2 classes at the Conservative school we walked to the Italian Synagogue and Museum which was very beautiful with the reconstructed arc and bimah dating from the 18th Century taken from a city near Venice that lost all its Jews. The women sit up upstairs behind 200-year latticework. The museum had many beautiful ritual objects all made in Italy. One kituba (wedding contract), of many beautiful ones they had, was very different and had the word Diplomat with the name of a Jewish person and the Title of Emperor of Austria and Hungry across the top in very elaborate script. We asked the person at the desk if this was really a kituba and he came over and said sure, look at the info on the wall. We asked if someone else could look at this and luckily there was an Italian speaking person around who determined that this beautiful large certificate was from the Emperor in 1847 granting this Jew a rank of Count in thanks for donating money to the Emperor. They thanked us for pointing the error in the description and said they would correct the label immediately.
We then walked to the Bezelel Art School founded in 1906 when this area was way far from the protection of the Old City. But it had a large wall around the complex for safety. They had a short movie of the very far sighted founder and his very artistic kids and grandkids. The current art display of the students and staff was far out.
We returned at 4:30 ready for the next adventure in 15 minutes which was a concert at the Jerusalem Theater of a quartet playing Mozart and Schulman. The pianist Ian Fountain of England won the Rubenstein Competition in 1989 and was wonderful. Roberta did not come as she had to rest for her choir practice at 7:15. After the concert I had just enough time to come home, have a quick dinner, and go to lecture at 8 by Zornberg which was incredibly fascinating as usual on the Torah portion of the week. So, today had 3 lectures, 2 museum visits, and one concert. Whata great day and life!!
Feb. 4, Thursday -Stan:
We kook a tiyul (trip) with Pardes to The Valley of Jezreel in the mid north of the country. This area is associated with many events in the Torah including King Saul, The Prophet Deborah and her battle with Sisera, Gideon, and Ahab. The route was due east from Jerusalem on #1 thru the Judean desert where we saw many Bedouin encampments and then north on #90 around Jericho thru the Jordan Valley, which as recent as 1967 was empty except for the Bedouins. After 1967, the Israelis started farming here and now the area has many large farms but the area is very poor still. After crossing out of the ‘West Bank’ into Israel the farms are very large, well developed, and the villages and homes look nice. In 1920 when the Jews bought the land there was nothing but desert but they rapidly transformed it into productive land to the surprise of the Arabs. We visited the tomb of Joshua Hankin, in Ma’yan Harod National Park, who from 1890 to 1920’s purchased this land (at exorbitant prices) and other vast tracts of land all over then Palestine from owners local, in Turkey or Damascus for the Zionist movement. Some land was desert, some malarial swamps that none thought was worthwhile including many Zionist who he forced to pay for his purchases. Later all the land was covered to farms or cities and he was then revered as a foresighted pioneer who really helped the founding of the Jewish State.
In the Valley of Jezreel over 3,000, 000 trees have been planted since then changing the landscape dramatically. We drove to the top of Mount Gilboa, a prominent mountain in religious history. Gideon’s battle against the fierce Midianites (Judges 7:1) is a great story and his successful strategy as a real leader and military genius was repeated by others in the 1948 War of Independence. Mt. Gilboa was always a great escape place if need be against the Midianites or other invaders as the mountain was a defensible position. We when went to En-Dor where the battle took place (Psalms 83:10). Saul also went to En-Dor I (Samuel 28: 3) to get guidance for a diviner after just getting rid of them in Gilboa. He finds out that he and his sons will be killed in battle with the Philistines who had moved from the coast inland to get control of the valuable trade routes that passed thru this Valley of Jezreel from the west to the coast and the Coastal road down to Egypt. Instead of running away, he stays with his men to fight and is about to be captured, tortured and killed. Instead he commits suicide. A 1000 years later a sage said it was acceptable to commit suicide if one knows one is to be tortured and killed. Rabbi Grodner explained that the most famous of the suicides was Masada where 600(?) Jews all died at their own hand rather than be captured by the Romans in 74(?) CE. The Talmud, which discusses every facet of life, does not mention this giant suicide because they didn’t want to condone it as in general suicide is strictly against Jewish law. So the best way the rabbis could handle the issue was to not discuss Masada at all. After Philistines put Saul’s head on display in Bet Shean, the men of Jabesh Gilead, whom he had earlier helped defend against the Philistines, came in the night to retrieve his body and burned it and then fasted for 7 days out of respect (I Samuel 31: 1-13 for entire story of Saul’s death) and II Samuel 1:21 for another reference to Mt. Gilboa and Saul’s anointing as King here. Roberta & I climbed a tower on top of the Mt. to get an even grander view of the fertile fields below and the many villages & cities all round. One could even see Mt Meron with snow on top to the north.
We then visited Ein Harod associated with King Ahab and his wife Jezebel and their evil ways (I Kings 21:1-29). Other sources say Ahab was a great King but in the Torah he is no good as this chapter relates. The Tel Jezreel hasn’t revealed anything about their palace here as nothing apparently survived. But the view was great. Our last stop was the Kibbutz Ein Dor, which had a very fine Museum of Archaeology (www.eindormuseum.co.il). It was an old kibbutz and in the process of farming they discovered all the items in the museum ranging from pottery 10,000 years old to unbroken glass dishes of Roman times and many pieces between. We drove back the same way and the desert was beautiful as the sun set.
Feb 6. Friday. One Fabulous Day! -Stan :
Went to the Israel Museum to see the Blue-White special exhibit. Took #24 bus from Rachel Imenu and Emek Refraim right there. This exhibit which closes the next day had documents from the state of Israel’s history, such as the Declaration of Independence, all the proposals for a flag (the original Zionist flag won out over some pretty neat designs), Arafat’s letter to Rabin in 1993 stating full recognition of Israel, renounce violence, and changing the PLO charter to remove the destruction of Israel as a main part of the PLO constitution. Unfortunately none of this was done and a clue should have been the letter was in English not Hebrew or Arabic. They also had the dairy of Col. Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster. Incredibly his diary survived the fiery destruction and 2 months of Texas weather. The crime lab was able to show what was written, the Kiddush for Friday night he wrote from memory. Another moving exhibit was the recovery of the remains of a Jewish Palestinian soldier/poet working for the British during WWI who was killed by the Bedouins. In 1967, they were able to track his remains as the Bedouins passed the location down thru 50 years. Incredibly a date tree was growing right were he died from dates he was carrying in his pocket. He received a full military burial. Last was the first page of the lengthily manuscript written by Eichman while he was waiting trial and execution. He hoped a major German publisher would publish it, but Israel said no thanks.
We also spend time in the Shrine of the Book where the Dead Sea Scrolls are stored and exhibited. To me the most exciting item is the Aleppo Bible from 925CE written in Tiberias and used by Maimonides in 1150. The magnificent Torah is in book form hence a Codex and has full vowels put into the Torah, by the Masorites a splinter group of Jews who said we need to make sure we know the real word meant in the Torah since without vowels there could be ambiguity. This was not a problem if one was taught the word meaning from someone in an oral tradition going back to its origin, which was done. But as Jews dispersed this was not possible. Absolutely incredible and sad is that no bible in Hebrew is older than this one as all others were destroyed by a variety of forces. But the main incredible thing is the 925 Bible text is the same as the Jewish splinter group, the Essenes, wrote in the desert from about 100 BCE to 100 CE. Roberta mentioned something about lunch and I replied that we didn’t have time for lunch, this is a military operation. She was glad later after we saw the entire Blue and White exhibit.
We got the #9 bus back to center of town and walked back. After lunch, a 30 minute nap, we got ready to go Marcia and Dennis Gelpe’s for Shabbat dinner. We took a cab since buses had stopped running. Had a wonderful time with great food as Dennis had a kosher gourmet bakery in Minneapolis until they came here. Their daughter, Yafa, was ready to deliver her full size (or so it appears) twins any second. The son, Joey, is going to India for a vacation in few days. Marcia looks after Barnard grads in Jerusalem and Flo from Creve Coeur and Brith Shalom was there. 30ish Flo is probably the only person I know who hated her time in St. Louis as turning egalitarian religious, she was left out in the cold. Now she is very happy in Jerusalem. Since everyone is religious we planned to walk back so I prepared a complicated Google route and took notes for it (no printer). Luckily Flo was walking back so she took us back by the best route. For sure we would have gotten lost. It only took 1 hour for a very pleasant walk with the temp about 45F.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
January 24-30, 2009 from Stan
Jan. 24, Evening: Stan: We went to the ‘Off the Wall Comedy Basement’ on Ben Yehuda and King George in a real basement. There were two comedians and since this is Jerusalem both were Rabbis!! First was Rabbi David Kilimnick originally from Rochester, NY. His show is called, “after three years here, still can’t find a job or a wife.” He was funny talking about his father had spent $150000 on his rabbinical training and now he chose comedy as a career. What was funnier was that his father (also a Rabbi, but not stated) was in the audience. Second was Rabbi Morty Katz, from Australian and more recent Brooklyn who had 16 kids and had a very dry sense of humor. A great show.
Jan. 25: Stan: We went to a concert at the Jerusalem Theater only to find that the concert had been cancelled because the musicians were out on strike. So we went through display of costumes from the Jerusalem Theater over the last 40 years, which was in part of the lobby. Some of the gowns were quite impressive. It was fun to guess the play from the clothes. Lots of the plays were written by Israeli’s and may have not made to Broadway.
Jan. 30. Stan: We went on a 3.5 hour walk around the Old City with a company that does the tour for free only for tips. We covered all 4 quarters of the Old City. Very interesting but I will spare dear reader by relating only 3 items. The walls around the Old City were built in 1532, by Suleyman the Magnificent to protect the Jerusalem & Muslims from another Crusade. I guess he was too familiar with European history at that time.
The two architects/engineers who built this imposing structure were beheaded because Suyelman didn’t want them to build something equally grand for someone else. Or, he was mad as heck since they left Mt. Zion King David’s Tomb outside the walls. He was soon sorry of his deed that he had their short tombs placed near the entrance where they are to this day.
Second, there is a Christian man named Wendell Jones who has been searching for over 30 years for the Arc of the Covenant lost from the First Temple Destruction in 587 BCE. He has been digging in the desert with a band of followers. When Steve Spilberg came in the early 80’s heard about Wendell and decided it would make a great movie, which it certainly did although the name was changed to Indiana Jones. Interesting Wendell 2 kids converted to Judaism and are now Orthodox. Only in Israel.
Third, 2 weeks ago there was a fistfight in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre between Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Priests over which group has time to do certain religious ceremonies. In fact the church is locked each night and unlocked each morning by a Muslim who has had the key in his family for centuries since the Christian groups can’t agree even on the possession of the key
For Shabbat services I went to Shira Hadasha in the International Cultural Center for Youth on Emek Refayim just 1 block south of our street Cremieux. It is very modern Orthodox with separate seating but equal for men and women with a curtain down the center of the large room. Women lead the Kabbalat Shabbat service, which all sung with Carlebach tunes, which were wonderful. The singing was very loud, happy, and with clapping. Men lead the next service Mincha. On Shabbat morning women are called to the Torah, read from the Torah, and can recite Kaddish. Of course everything is in Hebrew. A very large and young congregation.
For Shabbat dinner we were invited to Allen and Rita Croft on 3 HaMeitz#6 in the German Colony. He was a professor at Amherst for many years in Biochemistry and Biophysics. Also present were Sol and Julia Green. Sol is very active at Pardes and is taking Rabbi Hartman’s class also. A wonderful time.
Jan. 31 Shabbat: Stan: We went to the Conservative Synagogue again. See Jan. 24 description. Cantor Ahuva Batz was incredible as usual and it is wonderful experience to hear pray and sing. She sends her love to Bob and Susie Raful and said she sits in the chair they donated.
We were invited for Shabbat lunch to Jeff and Yemima Finger’s at 6 Molcho #5 in Rachvia off Jabotinsky. Jeff is Roberta’s sister Steffi’s friend from way back when Jeff was getting a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford and they both attended Israeli dance classes. Jeff told this funny story that after he made aliya to Israel he really wanted to get married so he went to a matchmaker (they still have them here). After 62 dates he decided to call it quits. His hard drive was getting full keeping track of all the info on each. Then he met his future wife just walking down the hall in his apartment building where they both lived. Just good luck around the corner. Yemima is very sweet and cute and their 2 year daughter Abigail is also cute. Most incredible she told about one of her grandparents who lived in a small town in Iran as a Muslim! In 1835-9 there was a blood libel in their small town and all the Jews either had to convert to Islam or be killed. The families outwardly were Muslim and secretly Jewish from then until they immigrated to Israel (I think in 1949) when they resumed their Judaism. For over 120 years this family hid their religion but maintained Judaism and are now very religious. Absolutely incredible!! She served a wonderful complete dinner with many different dishes unique to Jerusalem.
Had a delicious lunch--an onion dish something
like a quiche but no crust except its own crispiness on the bottom, grape leave
rolls, tomato and cucumber salad, avocado and pine nut salad with lemon
juice dressing, fried cauliflower, a potato dish with a yellow Indian spice which was neither curry mixture nor tumeric. salmon. Dessert was a fruit compote
and cake. Also had delicious challah from a bakery. He used to bake his
own challah but no longer as Jerusalem is the challah capitol of the
world.:
Jan. 25: Stan: We went to a concert at the Jerusalem Theater only to find that the concert had been cancelled because the musicians were out on strike. So we went through display of costumes from the Jerusalem Theater over the last 40 years, which was in part of the lobby. Some of the gowns were quite impressive. It was fun to guess the play from the clothes. Lots of the plays were written by Israeli’s and may have not made to Broadway.
Jan. 30. Stan: We went on a 3.5 hour walk around the Old City with a company that does the tour for free only for tips. We covered all 4 quarters of the Old City. Very interesting but I will spare dear reader by relating only 3 items. The walls around the Old City were built in 1532, by Suleyman the Magnificent to protect the Jerusalem & Muslims from another Crusade. I guess he was too familiar with European history at that time.
The two architects/engineers who built this imposing structure were beheaded because Suyelman didn’t want them to build something equally grand for someone else. Or, he was mad as heck since they left Mt. Zion King David’s Tomb outside the walls. He was soon sorry of his deed that he had their short tombs placed near the entrance where they are to this day.
Second, there is a Christian man named Wendell Jones who has been searching for over 30 years for the Arc of the Covenant lost from the First Temple Destruction in 587 BCE. He has been digging in the desert with a band of followers. When Steve Spilberg came in the early 80’s heard about Wendell and decided it would make a great movie, which it certainly did although the name was changed to Indiana Jones. Interesting Wendell 2 kids converted to Judaism and are now Orthodox. Only in Israel.
Third, 2 weeks ago there was a fistfight in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre between Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Priests over which group has time to do certain religious ceremonies. In fact the church is locked each night and unlocked each morning by a Muslim who has had the key in his family for centuries since the Christian groups can’t agree even on the possession of the key
For Shabbat services I went to Shira Hadasha in the International Cultural Center for Youth on Emek Refayim just 1 block south of our street Cremieux. It is very modern Orthodox with separate seating but equal for men and women with a curtain down the center of the large room. Women lead the Kabbalat Shabbat service, which all sung with Carlebach tunes, which were wonderful. The singing was very loud, happy, and with clapping. Men lead the next service Mincha. On Shabbat morning women are called to the Torah, read from the Torah, and can recite Kaddish. Of course everything is in Hebrew. A very large and young congregation.
For Shabbat dinner we were invited to Allen and Rita Croft on 3 HaMeitz#6 in the German Colony. He was a professor at Amherst for many years in Biochemistry and Biophysics. Also present were Sol and Julia Green. Sol is very active at Pardes and is taking Rabbi Hartman’s class also. A wonderful time.
Jan. 31 Shabbat: Stan: We went to the Conservative Synagogue again. See Jan. 24 description. Cantor Ahuva Batz was incredible as usual and it is wonderful experience to hear pray and sing. She sends her love to Bob and Susie Raful and said she sits in the chair they donated.
We were invited for Shabbat lunch to Jeff and Yemima Finger’s at 6 Molcho #5 in Rachvia off Jabotinsky. Jeff is Roberta’s sister Steffi’s friend from way back when Jeff was getting a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford and they both attended Israeli dance classes. Jeff told this funny story that after he made aliya to Israel he really wanted to get married so he went to a matchmaker (they still have them here). After 62 dates he decided to call it quits. His hard drive was getting full keeping track of all the info on each. Then he met his future wife just walking down the hall in his apartment building where they both lived. Just good luck around the corner. Yemima is very sweet and cute and their 2 year daughter Abigail is also cute. Most incredible she told about one of her grandparents who lived in a small town in Iran as a Muslim! In 1835-9 there was a blood libel in their small town and all the Jews either had to convert to Islam or be killed. The families outwardly were Muslim and secretly Jewish from then until they immigrated to Israel (I think in 1949) when they resumed their Judaism. For over 120 years this family hid their religion but maintained Judaism and are now very religious. Absolutely incredible!! She served a wonderful complete dinner with many different dishes unique to Jerusalem.
Had a delicious lunch--an onion dish something
like a quiche but no crust except its own crispiness on the bottom, grape leave
rolls, tomato and cucumber salad, avocado and pine nut salad with lemon
juice dressing, fried cauliflower, a potato dish with a yellow Indian spice which was neither curry mixture nor tumeric. salmon. Dessert was a fruit compote
and cake. Also had delicious challah from a bakery. He used to bake his
own challah but no longer as Jerusalem is the challah capitol of the
world.:
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Posted January 29, 2009 from Roberta
January 29, 2009: Roberta in Israel
Roberta heard the same lecture by Dr. Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg Wednesday morning instead of going to the Drama and Poetry class. (As Grandma Annie said, “With one Tuchas you can only dance at one wedding.”)
From the part of Exodus (Parashat Bo) where Moses and Aaron go before Pharoah to request that the Children of Israel leave to the enactment of the 10 plagues, she went into the intellectual/knowing that telling a story brings--that the telling of a story is transformative for the storyteller and for the listener—telling the story brings change to both. Why 10 plagues? Surely 3 would have sufficed—She thinks it makes for more drama and a better story. Another interpretation is that Pharoah has an ideological surrender—shows God’s power; written in future tense so as to provide suspense, provoke anxiety.
This is the section where God hardens Pharoah’s heart. There are lots of interpretation. One I heard is Pharoah was such a bad man that he hardened his own heart. Her explanation was that this is an expression equivalent to someone saying today that something is so stupid it’s inexplainable ie may use expression said in an exasperated manner, “God knows why he did THAT.” IE one could say that about some of our former president’s actions.
This may be more than you want to know about the study of the Hebrew Bible and remember it comes from someone who is really not a believer in God. However I find the method of study very interesting. Nothing is taken literally and everything is interpreted—and this has been going on for 2500 years or so –since the Bible was written down—and maybe before that. Nothing is true just because it is written—it has to be interpreted ie what does it really mean? What does the phrase mean? You could even ask, “what is the word?” as only consonants are written and the vowels are left out so one cluster of letters forming a word may be two to four different words depending on the context and vowels (if they were there, which they are not).
I find these methods of study in all the classes we are taking. Often I am less interested in the topic than in what people do with the topic. For example one class was about celebrating the 2nd day of each festival (I don’t). The teacher raises the question is this one 48 hour day or two 24 hour days. Then he brought up the subject of eating an egg. If it is laid on the day before the festival, you could cook it then and eat it after the festival starts; but if it was laid on the first day of the festival you could neither prepare it or eat it that day; but if the 2nd day is a separate day you could eat it on the 2nd day. But if the 2nd day is contiguous with and the same day as the first day, you could not eat it on the 2nd day. So from a little egg you can derive an entire big picture of the subject of the first and second days of festivals.
I think that this method of thinking and interpreting lends itself very well to modern secular intellectual and even artistic endeavors. Perhaps this background is why Jews are more numerus than their percentage in the general population as Nobel Prize winners, university faculty and students, doctors and lawyers. The lack of this kind of thinking ie looking at challenges from all angles made for many of Bush’s failures as president.
Roberta heard the same lecture by Dr. Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg Wednesday morning instead of going to the Drama and Poetry class. (As Grandma Annie said, “With one Tuchas you can only dance at one wedding.”)
From the part of Exodus (Parashat Bo) where Moses and Aaron go before Pharoah to request that the Children of Israel leave to the enactment of the 10 plagues, she went into the intellectual/knowing that telling a story brings--that the telling of a story is transformative for the storyteller and for the listener—telling the story brings change to both. Why 10 plagues? Surely 3 would have sufficed—She thinks it makes for more drama and a better story. Another interpretation is that Pharoah has an ideological surrender—shows God’s power; written in future tense so as to provide suspense, provoke anxiety.
This is the section where God hardens Pharoah’s heart. There are lots of interpretation. One I heard is Pharoah was such a bad man that he hardened his own heart. Her explanation was that this is an expression equivalent to someone saying today that something is so stupid it’s inexplainable ie may use expression said in an exasperated manner, “God knows why he did THAT.” IE one could say that about some of our former president’s actions.
This may be more than you want to know about the study of the Hebrew Bible and remember it comes from someone who is really not a believer in God. However I find the method of study very interesting. Nothing is taken literally and everything is interpreted—and this has been going on for 2500 years or so –since the Bible was written down—and maybe before that. Nothing is true just because it is written—it has to be interpreted ie what does it really mean? What does the phrase mean? You could even ask, “what is the word?” as only consonants are written and the vowels are left out so one cluster of letters forming a word may be two to four different words depending on the context and vowels (if they were there, which they are not).
I find these methods of study in all the classes we are taking. Often I am less interested in the topic than in what people do with the topic. For example one class was about celebrating the 2nd day of each festival (I don’t). The teacher raises the question is this one 48 hour day or two 24 hour days. Then he brought up the subject of eating an egg. If it is laid on the day before the festival, you could cook it then and eat it after the festival starts; but if it was laid on the first day of the festival you could neither prepare it or eat it that day; but if the 2nd day is a separate day you could eat it on the 2nd day. But if the 2nd day is contiguous with and the same day as the first day, you could not eat it on the 2nd day. So from a little egg you can derive an entire big picture of the subject of the first and second days of festivals.
I think that this method of thinking and interpreting lends itself very well to modern secular intellectual and even artistic endeavors. Perhaps this background is why Jews are more numerus than their percentage in the general population as Nobel Prize winners, university faculty and students, doctors and lawyers. The lack of this kind of thinking ie looking at challenges from all angles made for many of Bush’s failures as president.
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