Spurred on by an overwhelming display of support from my massive base of faithful readers, I am back to posting. The minor hiatus was caused by a combination of factors that I might as well blame on those pesky Jews. It's clear that the breadth and depth of my life in Israel are simply too much to record in full, so my readers will have to, periodically, be satisfied with overviews.
March 15: My Dad and I walked around Jerusalem, and spent a lot of time in the Tower of David Museum. The latter is located in the Old City, near the Jaffa Gate. The fortified complex there is actually not the Tower of David, but that's what it has been mistakingly called forever. It was built by the Ottoman Turks 500 years ago when they set up an administrative center in Jerusalem and wanted and old-school fortress with a good view of the city. Today, within it is located a museum of the history of Jerusalem and makes for a great afternoon for anyone who wants a good grounding the history of this incredible city. That evening, we had dinner at my relatives' place in Givat Tzarfatit, where there was also a family visiting from LA. Nice people, but clueless about Israel to the point of idiocy. As an aside, I consider LA the central cesspool of Western immorality and the harbinger of societal decline. But if there was ever a perfect location for movie studios, expensive mansions and limitless numbers of easy blondes, LA is it.
March 16: I travel to Tel-Aviv with my Dad. We meet up with friends of the family who shows us around and feed us amazing borsch. My Dad is impressed by the number of futuristic looking high-rises that have gone up since the last time he was here in 1999. Frankly, so am I.
March 17: We spend the morning walking around Old Yaffo. It's a must-see by the way. The sea-side part of it has been restored and you get that medievial feel along with a great ocean view. Throw in artist's studios, little museums, a few archeological digs and a vista of the Tel-Aviv skyline, and any tourist should be more than satisfied. In the most ancient section, very close to the sea, is a beautiful Russian Orthodoox Church. My dad buys a mezuza from a little workshop, and we progress to the Tayelet (promenade) in Tel-Aviv proper. The weather is impressive, the kite-surfers are doing acrobatics on the waves, the outdoor cafe provides cold beer and friendly service (!), and the conversation carries into ancient Jewish history. In the late afternoon we make our way out of Israel's only real Western city and arrive in Migdal Ha'Emeq, a small northern town. Shabbat is spent eating the best Russian food outside of my mom's West Hartford, CT kitchen, and we do some laid back walking in the surrounding woods. There are lots of kibbutzim in the area so the views are of well-tended fields and wandering cows. On Motzei Shabbat, the 18th, we come back to the eternal capital of the sovereign nation of Judenrein Palestine, err... I mean... of the Jewish state of Israel.
March 19th: An organized excursion to Tzippori and Tzfat. These are both in the Galilee, a gorgeous, mountainous area close to the Kinneret. Tzippori used to be a major Jewish city in ancient times and is only now being excavated. As always, there's the original Jewish layer, followed by a Roman/Byzantine layer. The site hasn't been used since those times so there are not additional archeological layers. The town was built on a low hill, surrounded by large valleys, with a good view on all possible avenues of approach. It also has one of the best non-Kinneret water sources in the North. The ancients knew what they were doing. We then travelled to Tzfat, which really has to be visited with a knowledgable tour guide, I wouldn't do it justice here.
March 20th: Another excursion, this time to Caesaria, Haifa, Acco. Caesaria was build by King Herod, one of the biggest builders of the kings of Israel. At the time he ruled, he was actually a vassal of the Roman Empire, but Israel enjoyed de facto independence. The Romans were pretty much hands off, and Israel during most of the 2nd Temple period was a good and Jewish place to be. Until the Roman influences were pushed, and the rebellions started. Moral of the story, let the Jewish state live and all will be well, and everyone will be happy and business will prosper. Anyways, Herod built Caesaria as a sea side port where he could entertain the Roman administrators and soldiers. It was built to cater to Roman lifestyle and thus has all the requisite pieces of Roman architecture - aqueducts, a hippodrome, a circus, an arena/theater, baths. It was what Tel-Aviv is to Israel today. A part of Israel, but not really Israeli. And, like Tel-Aviv, it catered to foreign diplomats and businessmen. After the Roman period, the Christian Byzantine period brought some church structures to the site, and during the Crusader period, the European knights built some impressive walls. We then proceeded to Haifa for some in-depth lectures on the Carmelite order of Monks in their Stella Maris monastary and the required walk through the Bahai gardens. Interesting - there were lots of German Christians who moved to Israel in the 19th century and got permission from Ottoman authorities to build a community in Haifa. The main street that runs from the bottom part of the Bahai gardens to the port still has many of the houses of those German families. It's the straightest street in Israel. As befits the Germans, they didn't make any mathematical errors during construction. In 1941 the British Mandate authorities deported the community based on evidence that they were housing Nazi agents. We then went to Acco, which has a great Crusader fortress and the second holiest mosque in Israel. Interestingly, the powerful local Moslem ruler of Saladin's time, in whose honor the mosque was built, Al-Jahbar, was actually a Jew from the Balkans who converted to Islam. He was one of the most brutal military leaders during Seljuk times and is admired by Moslems to this day for his feats in fighting the Christian infidels. I think it's funny every time some Jew becomes the object of idolization by non-Jews.
March 21st: A guided tour of the Old City. Nothing to be said here, aside from the fact that tour guide was good enough so that I learned quite a lot about Christianity's sites in Jerusalem.
March 22nd: We checked the Knesset, the High Court of Justice and the government complexes in general. Good stuff. The Rova cafe in the Old City, although with a good view, is halavi (milk-only), which is annoying as I prefer shawarma to felafel any day.
March 23rd: My Dad gets some quality time with Jerusalem's Arabs and decides that we need to encourage them to emigrate to France. I concur. A huge benefit of having a family member visit is that all of a sudden you're no longer poverty-stricken and you can eat in more expensive restaurants. But, you still prefer to eat in little hummus places owned by crazy Mizrahi guys because the taste of the food is more important that the "atmosphere." The former is for people interested in enjoying local fare, the latter is for tourists and uppity locals trying to act American.
March 24: I go to Rehovot with my Dad, we visit my uncle, Shabbat comes and goes, and on the 25th at midnight Dad flies back to the land where streets are paved with gold. I wish he would have stayed.
March 26th: The first day of the big three day trip to the North with my ulpan. We visit Zichron Yaacov and places and stories of the first wave of Aliyah in the 1880's, along with the Rothchild narrative. That family did a lot for Israel and there's a great museum of the First Aliyah in Zichron that explores the positives and negatives of building up the land in the early years with outside support. Today, Zichron Yaacov is a upper-class town, I am gonna have to marry rich to live there. But the area is beautiful, forested, with gardens and nice views of the Mediterranean. We then travel to the northeast and hang out in a kibbutz on the Kinneret, hike around the Arbel, which is a pair of two identical cliffs that face each other and contain caves where Jewish rebels hid from Roman persecution in the 3rd-5th centuries. It was at this time that the Zohar, a defining work of the Kabbalah was written by Shimon Bar Yochai. The 3rd-16th centuries were the time when Jewish mysticism flourished, and even though the Jews did not hold sovereignty over the land of Israel, there was at that time a continuing stream of scholars flowing into Tsfat and the Galilee in general, and Jewish philosophy was expounded and recorded for us by some of the greatest minds the Jewish people had ever produced. The history of Kabbalistic scholarship and of Tzfat is an amazing topic, worthwhile for anyone to explore.
March 27th: We go up to Metulla in the part of the Upper Galile that sticks out like a finger in the northernmost tip of Israel. Great views of Southern Lebanon and of villages there flying yellow flags in support of Hezbollah. Go Hezbollah! Those people have the most and the best of equipment, personnel and training in the entire world of Moslem terrorists. Except the Chechens, those people are in a class all their own. Israel should be thankful to Hashem every day that our local Arabs aren't inviting Chechen guerillas to fight the IDF. Israel would still win, but the cost would be unbearable. We spend the night in a big hotel on the Kinneret, with partying, dancing and all that. I also watch Broken Wings, which apparently did well in the Cannes festival a few years ago. It sucks, don't watch it, or you may forever lost hope in the Israeli movie industry.
March 28th: We tour the Golan Heights, the bunkers facing Syria with a great view of the border and of the Syrian town of Kuneitra. We visit sites of famous engagements in the 1967 and 1973 wars. We then tour the Yarden Winery. I've never seen the inner workings of a winery, so I really enjoyed it. Especially the wine-tasting at the end. French wines don't stand a chance. On the way back to Jerusalem, we pass by Megiddo Junction where the War of Gog and Maggog will take place at the End of Times, ie the Apocalypse. I can't wait. Meanwhile, Israel's largest prison is located in the area and tons of kibbutzim and moshavim.
Oh yes, Tel Dan, almost forgot. We were there on the 27th, it's a nature reserve with narrow but very clean, clear and powerful streams. I drank the water and it was good.
March 15: My Dad and I walked around Jerusalem, and spent a lot of time in the Tower of David Museum. The latter is located in the Old City, near the Jaffa Gate. The fortified complex there is actually not the Tower of David, but that's what it has been mistakingly called forever. It was built by the Ottoman Turks 500 years ago when they set up an administrative center in Jerusalem and wanted and old-school fortress with a good view of the city. Today, within it is located a museum of the history of Jerusalem and makes for a great afternoon for anyone who wants a good grounding the history of this incredible city. That evening, we had dinner at my relatives' place in Givat Tzarfatit, where there was also a family visiting from LA. Nice people, but clueless about Israel to the point of idiocy. As an aside, I consider LA the central cesspool of Western immorality and the harbinger of societal decline. But if there was ever a perfect location for movie studios, expensive mansions and limitless numbers of easy blondes, LA is it.
March 16: I travel to Tel-Aviv with my Dad. We meet up with friends of the family who shows us around and feed us amazing borsch. My Dad is impressed by the number of futuristic looking high-rises that have gone up since the last time he was here in 1999. Frankly, so am I.
March 17: We spend the morning walking around Old Yaffo. It's a must-see by the way. The sea-side part of it has been restored and you get that medievial feel along with a great ocean view. Throw in artist's studios, little museums, a few archeological digs and a vista of the Tel-Aviv skyline, and any tourist should be more than satisfied. In the most ancient section, very close to the sea, is a beautiful Russian Orthodoox Church. My dad buys a mezuza from a little workshop, and we progress to the Tayelet (promenade) in Tel-Aviv proper. The weather is impressive, the kite-surfers are doing acrobatics on the waves, the outdoor cafe provides cold beer and friendly service (!), and the conversation carries into ancient Jewish history. In the late afternoon we make our way out of Israel's only real Western city and arrive in Migdal Ha'Emeq, a small northern town. Shabbat is spent eating the best Russian food outside of my mom's West Hartford, CT kitchen, and we do some laid back walking in the surrounding woods. There are lots of kibbutzim in the area so the views are of well-tended fields and wandering cows. On Motzei Shabbat, the 18th, we come back to the eternal capital of the sovereign nation of Judenrein Palestine, err... I mean... of the Jewish state of Israel.
March 19th: An organized excursion to Tzippori and Tzfat. These are both in the Galilee, a gorgeous, mountainous area close to the Kinneret. Tzippori used to be a major Jewish city in ancient times and is only now being excavated. As always, there's the original Jewish layer, followed by a Roman/Byzantine layer. The site hasn't been used since those times so there are not additional archeological layers. The town was built on a low hill, surrounded by large valleys, with a good view on all possible avenues of approach. It also has one of the best non-Kinneret water sources in the North. The ancients knew what they were doing. We then travelled to Tzfat, which really has to be visited with a knowledgable tour guide, I wouldn't do it justice here.
March 20th: Another excursion, this time to Caesaria, Haifa, Acco. Caesaria was build by King Herod, one of the biggest builders of the kings of Israel. At the time he ruled, he was actually a vassal of the Roman Empire, but Israel enjoyed de facto independence. The Romans were pretty much hands off, and Israel during most of the 2nd Temple period was a good and Jewish place to be. Until the Roman influences were pushed, and the rebellions started. Moral of the story, let the Jewish state live and all will be well, and everyone will be happy and business will prosper. Anyways, Herod built Caesaria as a sea side port where he could entertain the Roman administrators and soldiers. It was built to cater to Roman lifestyle and thus has all the requisite pieces of Roman architecture - aqueducts, a hippodrome, a circus, an arena/theater, baths. It was what Tel-Aviv is to Israel today. A part of Israel, but not really Israeli. And, like Tel-Aviv, it catered to foreign diplomats and businessmen. After the Roman period, the Christian Byzantine period brought some church structures to the site, and during the Crusader period, the European knights built some impressive walls. We then proceeded to Haifa for some in-depth lectures on the Carmelite order of Monks in their Stella Maris monastary and the required walk through the Bahai gardens. Interesting - there were lots of German Christians who moved to Israel in the 19th century and got permission from Ottoman authorities to build a community in Haifa. The main street that runs from the bottom part of the Bahai gardens to the port still has many of the houses of those German families. It's the straightest street in Israel. As befits the Germans, they didn't make any mathematical errors during construction. In 1941 the British Mandate authorities deported the community based on evidence that they were housing Nazi agents. We then went to Acco, which has a great Crusader fortress and the second holiest mosque in Israel. Interestingly, the powerful local Moslem ruler of Saladin's time, in whose honor the mosque was built, Al-Jahbar, was actually a Jew from the Balkans who converted to Islam. He was one of the most brutal military leaders during Seljuk times and is admired by Moslems to this day for his feats in fighting the Christian infidels. I think it's funny every time some Jew becomes the object of idolization by non-Jews.
March 21st: A guided tour of the Old City. Nothing to be said here, aside from the fact that tour guide was good enough so that I learned quite a lot about Christianity's sites in Jerusalem.
March 22nd: We checked the Knesset, the High Court of Justice and the government complexes in general. Good stuff. The Rova cafe in the Old City, although with a good view, is halavi (milk-only), which is annoying as I prefer shawarma to felafel any day.
March 23rd: My Dad gets some quality time with Jerusalem's Arabs and decides that we need to encourage them to emigrate to France. I concur. A huge benefit of having a family member visit is that all of a sudden you're no longer poverty-stricken and you can eat in more expensive restaurants. But, you still prefer to eat in little hummus places owned by crazy Mizrahi guys because the taste of the food is more important that the "atmosphere." The former is for people interested in enjoying local fare, the latter is for tourists and uppity locals trying to act American.
March 24: I go to Rehovot with my Dad, we visit my uncle, Shabbat comes and goes, and on the 25th at midnight Dad flies back to the land where streets are paved with gold. I wish he would have stayed.
March 26th: The first day of the big three day trip to the North with my ulpan. We visit Zichron Yaacov and places and stories of the first wave of Aliyah in the 1880's, along with the Rothchild narrative. That family did a lot for Israel and there's a great museum of the First Aliyah in Zichron that explores the positives and negatives of building up the land in the early years with outside support. Today, Zichron Yaacov is a upper-class town, I am gonna have to marry rich to live there. But the area is beautiful, forested, with gardens and nice views of the Mediterranean. We then travel to the northeast and hang out in a kibbutz on the Kinneret, hike around the Arbel, which is a pair of two identical cliffs that face each other and contain caves where Jewish rebels hid from Roman persecution in the 3rd-5th centuries. It was at this time that the Zohar, a defining work of the Kabbalah was written by Shimon Bar Yochai. The 3rd-16th centuries were the time when Jewish mysticism flourished, and even though the Jews did not hold sovereignty over the land of Israel, there was at that time a continuing stream of scholars flowing into Tsfat and the Galilee in general, and Jewish philosophy was expounded and recorded for us by some of the greatest minds the Jewish people had ever produced. The history of Kabbalistic scholarship and of Tzfat is an amazing topic, worthwhile for anyone to explore.
March 27th: We go up to Metulla in the part of the Upper Galile that sticks out like a finger in the northernmost tip of Israel. Great views of Southern Lebanon and of villages there flying yellow flags in support of Hezbollah. Go Hezbollah! Those people have the most and the best of equipment, personnel and training in the entire world of Moslem terrorists. Except the Chechens, those people are in a class all their own. Israel should be thankful to Hashem every day that our local Arabs aren't inviting Chechen guerillas to fight the IDF. Israel would still win, but the cost would be unbearable. We spend the night in a big hotel on the Kinneret, with partying, dancing and all that. I also watch Broken Wings, which apparently did well in the Cannes festival a few years ago. It sucks, don't watch it, or you may forever lost hope in the Israeli movie industry.
March 28th: We tour the Golan Heights, the bunkers facing Syria with a great view of the border and of the Syrian town of Kuneitra. We visit sites of famous engagements in the 1967 and 1973 wars. We then tour the Yarden Winery. I've never seen the inner workings of a winery, so I really enjoyed it. Especially the wine-tasting at the end. French wines don't stand a chance. On the way back to Jerusalem, we pass by Megiddo Junction where the War of Gog and Maggog will take place at the End of Times, ie the Apocalypse. I can't wait. Meanwhile, Israel's largest prison is located in the area and tons of kibbutzim and moshavim.
Oh yes, Tel Dan, almost forgot. We were there on the 27th, it's a nature reserve with narrow but very clean, clear and powerful streams. I drank the water and it was good.
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