Alas, my stay in Israel is over. I'm searched for explosives, checked in, and generally ready for departure.
God and the Department of Homeland Security willing, I will be on the American soil in about 20 hours. But I'm sure I'll have more to tell about this trip as soon as I recover from jetlag.
And, by the way, while the couch is staying in New York, at least temporarily, I am moving to Moscow of the Midwest (unless the above mentioned Department decides to send me back to The Moscow).
Stay tuned.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Relief Found!
With the temperature in the Mediterranean exceeding 30 Celsius (86 F) these days and cold springs in the North off limits for swimming, we headed back to the Dead Sea, where, we'd heard, in the midst of the desert was a wonderful oasis with lush vegetation, unique fauna, and -- most importantly for us at the moment -- cold springs for swimming.
It sounded a little unreal, but turned out not to be a mirage; everything we've been told was true and more!
Just outside of the nature reserve we found ruins of an ancient village and a synagogue with a beautiful mosaic floor (discovered by accident during plowing of an adjacent field).
Nature and culture next to each other. A perfect day that ended with a great meal of fajitas, chumichangas, and beer at a Mexican restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Have I mentioned yet how much I love this country?
It sounded a little unreal, but turned out not to be a mirage; everything we've been told was true and more!
Just outside of the nature reserve we found ruins of an ancient village and a synagogue with a beautiful mosaic floor (discovered by accident during plowing of an adjacent field).
Nature and culture next to each other. A perfect day that ended with a great meal of fajitas, chumichangas, and beer at a Mexican restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Have I mentioned yet how much I love this country?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Going Up North, Testing the Boundaries
Here in Tel Aviv, you often get a false impression that this country is rather homogeneous: everyone is Jewish but secular; cosmopolitan, sophisticated, hip (including elderly gentlemen constantly hanging out in cafes) and a tad rude (at least on the sidewalks). Of course, there is quite a bit of heterogeneity even here: there are blue-eyed Russian Jews and dark-skinned Ethiopian Jews, Ashkenazim (Jews from Europe) and Mizrakhim (from the "Orient"), Sabras (native-born) and Olim (immigrants), descendants of those who came 150 years ago and 30 years ago; you can even spot "Russian" Russians (wearing crosses around their necks) and head-covered and pant-wearing Muslim women (Muslim men are more difficult to identify as they usually do not dress traditionally). Reportedly, there are even enough religious Jews in this city so that one of the beaches has designated days for men and for women. But the diversity of country's population -- as well as landscapes and lifestyles -- becomes really evident once you leave Tel Aviv.
Jerusalem, for one, is a striking contrast to Tel Aviv. And not only its Old City, where three major religious groups (plus Armenians) live side by side -- if often uneasily -- and cross paths every day. But even in West Jerusalem (the Jewish part of the new city) there is a tremendous range of lifestyles and practices: from flip-flop and shorts-wearing youths to wig- and hat-clad religious couples. On a bus ride from the city center to Hebrew University that takes you through several neighborhoods you can encounter at least a dozen different religious groups and levels of observance, judging by people's outfits and head-coverings (wigs, hats, berets, or head scarfs for women; kipot of different hues, fedoras of many shapes and sizes, and fur hats -- yes, even in July! -- for men).
But the most diversity we came across on our trip back north last week (again, in search for cooler weather): a day in the Galilee, a day in the Golan Heights, and central north and northern coast on the way back. On this trip we once again realized that all of this variety of people and vistas is packed into a pretty small country: I've heard that Israel is a size of New Jersey, not the biggest state of the Union in any way; and our drive from the central coast to the most north-eastern part and back -- with backtracking and getting lost couple of times -- was less than 600 km (about 350 miles, shorter than a one-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco).
Our first stop was Nazareth, Jesus's boyhood town. On the way there, we passed what is known as the "Triangle," an area of several Israeli-Arab towns adjacent to the Green Line, the border between Israel and the West Bank. I did not know that this area had a special designation, nor that we were going to go through such a tight cluster of Arab villages. But it was hard not to notice: tall white minarets and golden domes of mosques of each township looked beautiful and dramatic on the green background of the Samarian Hills. I was struck by how wrong my preconceptions of "Arab villages" were: from what I could see from the car window, there were no dirt huts with straw roofs; the houses were modern, several stories high, made of pretty, lime-color stone, and some looked quite affluent. This is not to say that all Arab citizens of Israel are rich (although apparently home-ownership among Arabs in Israel is higher by 20 percent than among Israeli Jews) or even economically on par with Jewish Israelis, but I am not surprised to know that almost two thirds of them are not crazy about the proposal to transfer this "Triangle" with its inhabitants to the Palestinian state in exchange for Israel's retention of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Nazareth itself is the largest Arab city in the country with insignificant non-Arab population, but almost a third of its inhabitants are Christians. Here again my expectations were completely off the mark: I thought we were going to a small, quaint, and charming town that had not changed much since two millennia ago, which would be mobbed by Christian pilgrims. But we actually had trouble locating major landmarks: the access to the center of this sprawling city of 65,000 residents was poorly marked, streets had four-digit numbers instead of names, expected crowds of tourists trekking in the direction of holy sites were nowhere to be found, and the sites themselves were often unmarked and obscured by roofs covering the old-city market. (As I've discovered, in this part of the world, the "old city" often means a vast market -- shuk in Hebrew, or souq in Arabic -- plus a few religious institutions; and more often than not the former takes precedence over the latter in visibility and vibrancy. I don't know whether it's an authentic remnant of the past, an economic necessity for the locals who work at the market, something recreated for the tourists -- either to emulate the bygone days or to make money off them -- or a combination of all, but it's a fact that material and spiritual are inseparable at least in their proximity to each other.)
Nazareth is famous as a place where Mary got the news that she would give birth to Jesus, which in Christian tradition is known as the Annunciation. There are at least two churches in the city marking the place of the supposed event: a smallish Greek Orthodox painted inside in a traditional Orthodox way with colorful depictions of the annunciation, various saints and angels, and Jesus looking down from the dome (and where a woman, even if she is wearing a modest skirt and a long-sleeve shirt is considered indecent if she crosses her legs while sitting down); and an enormous, two-story modern Catholic basilica that incorporates the presumed remnants of Mary's dwelling and displays probably a hundred of her likenesses made by artists from all over the world (one Mary looked Japanese and was clad in a kimono and another was black and wore traditional African garb and turban).
We looked at a few more churches, passed by a couple of mosques, had a lunch of falafel with pickles (an ingenious mix of the Orient and Occident), and headed out of this expansive and not very charming place to find ourselves less than an hour later in another Greek Orthodox Church. But this one was located in such a serene place -- right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret), surrounded by a lush and well-tended garden, with seemingly no one but a family of peacocks and a kitten around -- we could not but linger.
The pretty white church with maroon domes belongs to a monastery of one monk, who showed up soon after our arrival and showed us around and inside the church. We talked to him for almost an hour. He was a man in his forties and a monk for almost twenty years first in his native Greece, then in Jerusalem, and now in this monastery of Seven Apostles. He told us he was fluent in four languages: Greek, English, Russian, and Arabic. The last two are the languages of the two main groups of pilgrims the monastery gets from within Israel; his Hebrew, he said, was so-so since Israeli Jews are rare visitors to the church.
After a short stop for dinner in Tiberius -- the biggest town on Lake Kinneret, which is a popular destination for Christian pilgrims as well as Jewish youth groups from Israel and abroad, all of whom seem to take great pleasure in evening boat cruises with loud music and fireworks -- we headed to our overnight accommodations, guestrooms at Kibbutz Manara, almost all the way to the northern tip of the country. The kibbutz is situated on a cliff nearly 900 meters (about 3,000 feet) above the sea level and can be reached either by cable car or by a narrow and windy road part of which runs right along the Lebanese border (we saw the border, the "No Crossing" signs, and a Lebanese village on the other side of the fence the next morning). When I booked our room at the kibbutz I knew it was a mere 100 meters from the border, but somehow -- ignorance? denial? inability to connect information from the media to reality? -- I did not realize this was one of the areas heavily bombed by Hezbollah during the 2006 war. A nearby town of Kiryat Shmona, with a population of some 22,000 (and a place of the best iced coffee I've head in this country, served by a cute young guy in a local Aroma coffee chain) was hit by over a thousand of Katyusha rockets in a month-long conflict, which forced half of the local population to flee the area and the other half to stay in shelters. But there is hardly any damage visible now, at least to a naked eye; and the locals joke about their proximity to the border: at the kibbutz, we ran into two of its members who suggested that we visit the kibbutz orchard but not be alarmed by a fence on the way, "Lebanon is on the other side of the road," they laughingly reassured us.
We chatted with these two women for a while. We intruded on their late-night drink-and-cigarette but they didn't seem to mind warmly answering our questions about the kibbutz, the area, and themselves. The few others we encountered on the kibbutz were just as nice, warm, and open to the strangers. A little bit too open I thought at one instance: we showed up at Manara's gate (that looked a bit like a border crossing or so it seemed to me then) close to midnight, in the dark, but the guard -- in some sort of uniform and with a machine gun -- just waved us through without asking who we were or why we were there. I had expected a lot more suspicion toward strangers in this conflict-prone area. The reservations manager with whom I'd spoken on the phone to book our room greeted me like a long-time friend when I came by in the morning to ask about local attractions and insisted I have some breakfast even though it officially had been long over. This discrepancy between Israelis' rudeness on the sidewalks and especially on the roads and their warmness and conviviality as soon as you engage them in even the most trivial of conversations boggled my mind until our local friends-sociologists explained that Sabra -- a name for a native-born -- comes from tzabar, a name for a local cactus plants that is rough and thorny on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside. The metaphor seems to be accurate, albeit a bit cheesy for me, but I am still looking for a more solid sociological explanation of this phenomenon.
The view from our room at Manara was truly spectacular: down below -- the Hula valley , much of which was neatly divided into rectangular, different-colored patches of farmland and man-made ponds with occasional insets of towns and nature reserves...
...above -- on the other side of the valley -- peeking though the haze, fog, and clouds were the summits of the Golan Heights mountains, rocky, sparsely populated, and homes to ski resorts with natural snow in the winter, with their backs to the Syrian border.
This narrow strip of land no more than 25 km (about 15 miles) between Lebanese border in the west and Syrian disengagement line in the east is a home to many national park, archaeological and historic points of interest, and holy sites for various religions, as well as wineries and cheese-making facilities. Deciding to buy cheese and wine from the supermarket later, we went to see more ruins and some nature reserves. In just one day we saw remnants of several cultures: Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Middle-Ages Arabic, Crusader, Medieval Jewish, all built next and often on top of each other. Greeks worshiping half-man half-goat, Romans with their aqueducts and cardos, Arabs riding graceful mares, Jews studying the Talmud, and Christian warriors had been there centuries before us and now we came to admire the traces they left and imagine their lives. If there is the place to study history, it must be here.
But some 30 minutes away is a modern marvel: the Hula Valley. Human settlements and land cultivation have been here since prehistoric times, but the area turned swampy, malaria-ridden, and inhospitable some 600 years ago. Since mid-19th century there were a series of attempts to drain the valley, but it was completed only in 1958, ten years after Israel's independence. The drainage of the valley was beneficial for agriculture but caused serious ecological problems harming both humans and the wildlife and in the 1990s the valley was redeveloped to accommodate agricultural needs of the country and preservation of the environment. Today, the valley is a home to vast farmlands and a nature reserve, which is an ornithological crossroads for some 500 million migrating birds a year. The coexistence of farmers and birds is not always easy as they sometimes get in each other's way, but it seemed to us that both sides were willing to compromise as we found the valley to be one of the most tranquil areas of the country whose calm was interrupted only by chirping cranes and softly roaring tractors. This is not the Middle East I knew from the American news coverage.
The next day, from the valleys and mountains of the Galilee and Golan we drove back to the coast. At the advice of a friend, we took the "northern road," a route that goes east to west right by the Lebanese border. It was late morning on Friday, the first day of the weekend (I'm still not quite used to the workweek begin on Sunday and end on Thursday), and even the cows we passed by were taking it easy in trees' shadows. We were looking for yet another ruin -- a 5th century synagogue, but we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in front of a closed unattended gate with a sign "Stop! Border in Front of You." The guards must have gone home for Shabbat.
After exploring the synagogue...
...there were actually two of them side by side in this little ancient town, and the lintel of the second one (which is now at the Louvre) read "Peace in this place and all of Israel. Yosef Halevi son of Levi made this lintel. May his deeds be blessed. Peace" -- and a lunch of bread, cheese, grapes, and wine in the shadows of oak trees, we continued east, to another marvel -- of nature this time -- Rosh Hanikra, whose cliffs and grottoes are a product of thousands if not millions of years of interaction between rocks and water. Unlike sparsely attended attractions in the Golan and Galilee some 100 kilometers away, which seemed to be of interest mostly to local families (often religious and, I assume, Zionist; although once we spotted a lone Muslim couple), this one was packed with Russian, Australian, French, British tourists on bus tours, as well as with Israelis with kids on a weekend getaway.
Inside...
...and outside:
I thought that the white of the rock surrounded by the blue of the water and the sky resembled the colors of Israeli flags displayed only fifty or so meters from the grottoes entrance: Rosh Hanikra is yet another border crossing to Lebanon. In fact, this is where on the first day of our trip the bodies of the two Israeli reservists whose kidnapping started the war of 2006 were exchanged for several Lebanese militants held in Israeli prisons and two hundred bodies of combatants. But two days later, nothing reminded of the exchange. I kept wondering how many of our fellow visitors to the grottoes even knew about it: when you're on vacation, especially in a foreign country whose language you don't know, and don't stray far from the beach, historic sites, or nature attractions, it is easy to be oblivious to the present-day significance of places you visit and lives of people who inhabit them. But one should try lest the trip will become another "been-there, done-that" dot on the map.
Jerusalem, for one, is a striking contrast to Tel Aviv. And not only its Old City, where three major religious groups (plus Armenians) live side by side -- if often uneasily -- and cross paths every day. But even in West Jerusalem (the Jewish part of the new city) there is a tremendous range of lifestyles and practices: from flip-flop and shorts-wearing youths to wig- and hat-clad religious couples. On a bus ride from the city center to Hebrew University that takes you through several neighborhoods you can encounter at least a dozen different religious groups and levels of observance, judging by people's outfits and head-coverings (wigs, hats, berets, or head scarfs for women; kipot of different hues, fedoras of many shapes and sizes, and fur hats -- yes, even in July! -- for men).
But the most diversity we came across on our trip back north last week (again, in search for cooler weather): a day in the Galilee, a day in the Golan Heights, and central north and northern coast on the way back. On this trip we once again realized that all of this variety of people and vistas is packed into a pretty small country: I've heard that Israel is a size of New Jersey, not the biggest state of the Union in any way; and our drive from the central coast to the most north-eastern part and back -- with backtracking and getting lost couple of times -- was less than 600 km (about 350 miles, shorter than a one-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco).
Our first stop was Nazareth, Jesus's boyhood town. On the way there, we passed what is known as the "Triangle," an area of several Israeli-Arab towns adjacent to the Green Line, the border between Israel and the West Bank. I did not know that this area had a special designation, nor that we were going to go through such a tight cluster of Arab villages. But it was hard not to notice: tall white minarets and golden domes of mosques of each township looked beautiful and dramatic on the green background of the Samarian Hills. I was struck by how wrong my preconceptions of "Arab villages" were: from what I could see from the car window, there were no dirt huts with straw roofs; the houses were modern, several stories high, made of pretty, lime-color stone, and some looked quite affluent. This is not to say that all Arab citizens of Israel are rich (although apparently home-ownership among Arabs in Israel is higher by 20 percent than among Israeli Jews) or even economically on par with Jewish Israelis, but I am not surprised to know that almost two thirds of them are not crazy about the proposal to transfer this "Triangle" with its inhabitants to the Palestinian state in exchange for Israel's retention of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Nazareth itself is the largest Arab city in the country with insignificant non-Arab population, but almost a third of its inhabitants are Christians. Here again my expectations were completely off the mark: I thought we were going to a small, quaint, and charming town that had not changed much since two millennia ago, which would be mobbed by Christian pilgrims. But we actually had trouble locating major landmarks: the access to the center of this sprawling city of 65,000 residents was poorly marked, streets had four-digit numbers instead of names, expected crowds of tourists trekking in the direction of holy sites were nowhere to be found, and the sites themselves were often unmarked and obscured by roofs covering the old-city market. (As I've discovered, in this part of the world, the "old city" often means a vast market -- shuk in Hebrew, or souq in Arabic -- plus a few religious institutions; and more often than not the former takes precedence over the latter in visibility and vibrancy. I don't know whether it's an authentic remnant of the past, an economic necessity for the locals who work at the market, something recreated for the tourists -- either to emulate the bygone days or to make money off them -- or a combination of all, but it's a fact that material and spiritual are inseparable at least in their proximity to each other.)
Nazareth is famous as a place where Mary got the news that she would give birth to Jesus, which in Christian tradition is known as the Annunciation. There are at least two churches in the city marking the place of the supposed event: a smallish Greek Orthodox painted inside in a traditional Orthodox way with colorful depictions of the annunciation, various saints and angels, and Jesus looking down from the dome (and where a woman, even if she is wearing a modest skirt and a long-sleeve shirt is considered indecent if she crosses her legs while sitting down); and an enormous, two-story modern Catholic basilica that incorporates the presumed remnants of Mary's dwelling and displays probably a hundred of her likenesses made by artists from all over the world (one Mary looked Japanese and was clad in a kimono and another was black and wore traditional African garb and turban).
We looked at a few more churches, passed by a couple of mosques, had a lunch of falafel with pickles (an ingenious mix of the Orient and Occident), and headed out of this expansive and not very charming place to find ourselves less than an hour later in another Greek Orthodox Church. But this one was located in such a serene place -- right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret), surrounded by a lush and well-tended garden, with seemingly no one but a family of peacocks and a kitten around -- we could not but linger.
The pretty white church with maroon domes belongs to a monastery of one monk, who showed up soon after our arrival and showed us around and inside the church. We talked to him for almost an hour. He was a man in his forties and a monk for almost twenty years first in his native Greece, then in Jerusalem, and now in this monastery of Seven Apostles. He told us he was fluent in four languages: Greek, English, Russian, and Arabic. The last two are the languages of the two main groups of pilgrims the monastery gets from within Israel; his Hebrew, he said, was so-so since Israeli Jews are rare visitors to the church.
After a short stop for dinner in Tiberius -- the biggest town on Lake Kinneret, which is a popular destination for Christian pilgrims as well as Jewish youth groups from Israel and abroad, all of whom seem to take great pleasure in evening boat cruises with loud music and fireworks -- we headed to our overnight accommodations, guestrooms at Kibbutz Manara, almost all the way to the northern tip of the country. The kibbutz is situated on a cliff nearly 900 meters (about 3,000 feet) above the sea level and can be reached either by cable car or by a narrow and windy road part of which runs right along the Lebanese border (we saw the border, the "No Crossing" signs, and a Lebanese village on the other side of the fence the next morning). When I booked our room at the kibbutz I knew it was a mere 100 meters from the border, but somehow -- ignorance? denial? inability to connect information from the media to reality? -- I did not realize this was one of the areas heavily bombed by Hezbollah during the 2006 war. A nearby town of Kiryat Shmona, with a population of some 22,000 (and a place of the best iced coffee I've head in this country, served by a cute young guy in a local Aroma coffee chain) was hit by over a thousand of Katyusha rockets in a month-long conflict, which forced half of the local population to flee the area and the other half to stay in shelters. But there is hardly any damage visible now, at least to a naked eye; and the locals joke about their proximity to the border: at the kibbutz, we ran into two of its members who suggested that we visit the kibbutz orchard but not be alarmed by a fence on the way, "Lebanon is on the other side of the road," they laughingly reassured us.
We chatted with these two women for a while. We intruded on their late-night drink-and-cigarette but they didn't seem to mind warmly answering our questions about the kibbutz, the area, and themselves. The few others we encountered on the kibbutz were just as nice, warm, and open to the strangers. A little bit too open I thought at one instance: we showed up at Manara's gate (that looked a bit like a border crossing or so it seemed to me then) close to midnight, in the dark, but the guard -- in some sort of uniform and with a machine gun -- just waved us through without asking who we were or why we were there. I had expected a lot more suspicion toward strangers in this conflict-prone area. The reservations manager with whom I'd spoken on the phone to book our room greeted me like a long-time friend when I came by in the morning to ask about local attractions and insisted I have some breakfast even though it officially had been long over. This discrepancy between Israelis' rudeness on the sidewalks and especially on the roads and their warmness and conviviality as soon as you engage them in even the most trivial of conversations boggled my mind until our local friends-sociologists explained that Sabra -- a name for a native-born -- comes from tzabar, a name for a local cactus plants that is rough and thorny on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside. The metaphor seems to be accurate, albeit a bit cheesy for me, but I am still looking for a more solid sociological explanation of this phenomenon.
The view from our room at Manara was truly spectacular: down below -- the Hula valley , much of which was neatly divided into rectangular, different-colored patches of farmland and man-made ponds with occasional insets of towns and nature reserves...
...above -- on the other side of the valley -- peeking though the haze, fog, and clouds were the summits of the Golan Heights mountains, rocky, sparsely populated, and homes to ski resorts with natural snow in the winter, with their backs to the Syrian border.
This narrow strip of land no more than 25 km (about 15 miles) between Lebanese border in the west and Syrian disengagement line in the east is a home to many national park, archaeological and historic points of interest, and holy sites for various religions, as well as wineries and cheese-making facilities. Deciding to buy cheese and wine from the supermarket later, we went to see more ruins and some nature reserves. In just one day we saw remnants of several cultures: Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Middle-Ages Arabic, Crusader, Medieval Jewish, all built next and often on top of each other. Greeks worshiping half-man half-goat, Romans with their aqueducts and cardos, Arabs riding graceful mares, Jews studying the Talmud, and Christian warriors had been there centuries before us and now we came to admire the traces they left and imagine their lives. If there is the place to study history, it must be here.
But some 30 minutes away is a modern marvel: the Hula Valley. Human settlements and land cultivation have been here since prehistoric times, but the area turned swampy, malaria-ridden, and inhospitable some 600 years ago. Since mid-19th century there were a series of attempts to drain the valley, but it was completed only in 1958, ten years after Israel's independence. The drainage of the valley was beneficial for agriculture but caused serious ecological problems harming both humans and the wildlife and in the 1990s the valley was redeveloped to accommodate agricultural needs of the country and preservation of the environment. Today, the valley is a home to vast farmlands and a nature reserve, which is an ornithological crossroads for some 500 million migrating birds a year. The coexistence of farmers and birds is not always easy as they sometimes get in each other's way, but it seemed to us that both sides were willing to compromise as we found the valley to be one of the most tranquil areas of the country whose calm was interrupted only by chirping cranes and softly roaring tractors. This is not the Middle East I knew from the American news coverage.
The next day, from the valleys and mountains of the Galilee and Golan we drove back to the coast. At the advice of a friend, we took the "northern road," a route that goes east to west right by the Lebanese border. It was late morning on Friday, the first day of the weekend (I'm still not quite used to the workweek begin on Sunday and end on Thursday), and even the cows we passed by were taking it easy in trees' shadows. We were looking for yet another ruin -- a 5th century synagogue, but we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in front of a closed unattended gate with a sign "Stop! Border in Front of You." The guards must have gone home for Shabbat.
After exploring the synagogue...
...there were actually two of them side by side in this little ancient town, and the lintel of the second one (which is now at the Louvre) read "Peace in this place and all of Israel. Yosef Halevi son of Levi made this lintel. May his deeds be blessed. Peace" -- and a lunch of bread, cheese, grapes, and wine in the shadows of oak trees, we continued east, to another marvel -- of nature this time -- Rosh Hanikra, whose cliffs and grottoes are a product of thousands if not millions of years of interaction between rocks and water. Unlike sparsely attended attractions in the Golan and Galilee some 100 kilometers away, which seemed to be of interest mostly to local families (often religious and, I assume, Zionist; although once we spotted a lone Muslim couple), this one was packed with Russian, Australian, French, British tourists on bus tours, as well as with Israelis with kids on a weekend getaway.
Inside...
...and outside:
I thought that the white of the rock surrounded by the blue of the water and the sky resembled the colors of Israeli flags displayed only fifty or so meters from the grottoes entrance: Rosh Hanikra is yet another border crossing to Lebanon. In fact, this is where on the first day of our trip the bodies of the two Israeli reservists whose kidnapping started the war of 2006 were exchanged for several Lebanese militants held in Israeli prisons and two hundred bodies of combatants. But two days later, nothing reminded of the exchange. I kept wondering how many of our fellow visitors to the grottoes even knew about it: when you're on vacation, especially in a foreign country whose language you don't know, and don't stray far from the beach, historic sites, or nature attractions, it is easy to be oblivious to the present-day significance of places you visit and lives of people who inhabit them. But one should try lest the trip will become another "been-there, done-that" dot on the map.
Monday, July 14, 2008
What We Do to Escape Hot and Humid Tel Aviv
One thing that I have eliminated from my daily routine lately is checking the weather. For the past month and a half, it's been a steady 88 degrees F (around 30 C). And I haven't seen a drop of rain since my second day here in late April; the only precipitation has been fat drops of condensation on outdoors restaurants' furniture in the evenings. Even though Tel Aviv is located a bit closer to the equator than New York, its summers are not much hotter, if at all: it might shock some folks back home, but the difference in average temperatures is only 2 degrees F. (Winters, however, are quite different, with TA boasting a lot milder ones: apparently, they haven't seen snow here since 1950!).
But this is not to say that it's not hot here now. With rarely a cloud in the sky, the sun is vicious and we've had our noses, shoulders, and chests burned quite a few time; and we sure sweat a lot each time we go outside during the day. Until two weeks ago, the sea, only two blocks away, was a great and easy relief. But recently it's become too warm to be really refreshing; more importantly though, it's now invaded by gigantic jellyfish -- we both are still nursing wounds from being stung.
So what do we do? We get up at six in the morning, board a bus with dozens of other tourists from all over the world (although I was the only Russian), and go south, to the Judean Desert, where the high that day was expected to be 108 F (42 C). Truthfully, I was somewhat reluctant to go, but everyone was trying to convince me that the dry heat of the desert is much easier to deal with than the coastal humidity of Tel Aviv; besides I did not want to miss my chance to see Masada and the Dead Sea, two main attractions of the region, even if it meant enduring the desert heat for half a day.
After picking up more tourists in Jerusalem and an unplanned detour to near Ramallah in the Palestinian territories (the driver took a wrong turn), we arrived to Masada right before high noon. Masada is an isolated cliff 400 meter tall that sits right next to the Dead Sea. Since the sea is the lowest point on earth -- 400 meter below the sea level -- the top of the cliff actually lies at the sea level, but you won't ever guess it looking at it:
While the cliff was discovered and turned into a fortress (Masada is a romanized transliteration of the Hebrew word for fortress) a few centuries BCE, it was Herod the Great -- a client king of Judea under the Romans and a prolific builder of impressive castles, fortresses, and temples -- who erected (or rather had slaves erect for him) a glorious three-level palace with water cisterns, storerooms for food, and bathhouses. Masada was supposed to be his winter residence and a refuge in case of a revolt against him: according to some sources, he suffered from paranoia, but it is also a well-known fact that the Jews -- his subjects -- did not like him too much; and who could blame them -- Herod was not simply a lackey for the Romans, but a cruel and murderous ruler. Ironically, he never even visited the palace (maybe because he never got cold enough in Jerusalem) to see it for himself in all its glory, which is evident even today.
But Masada is an important Israeli symbol not for Herod's palace, but because it was a last holdout during the late-first-century (CE) uprising of the Jews against the Romans. Hundreds of Zealots -- members of a militant Jewish sect and political movement -- fled Jerusalem after its destruction to here and endured a months-long Roman siege, in the end of which they committed mass suicide so that not to be captured and enslaved by the succeeding Romans. It's a powerful story (even though some of its details are disputed based on archaeological findings, according to one Israeli archaeologist we've met) and no wonder that Masada is the only fortress we've been to here that displays national flags.
For most of the two millennia since the uprising (except for a monastery that lasted for about 200 years), the fortress was uninhabited, forgotten, and lost, if you can believe that such an imposing cliff can be "lost." It was rediscovered in the mid-19th century, when most of the fortress was in ruins. Only what's below the black line in the next picture was still standing:
Because of the scorching heat, our tour guide and most of fellow tourers were eager to get back to our air-conditioned bus or the gift shop. But we roamed around a bit more and even considered taking the snake path, instead of a cable car, down the cliff. But it was too hot, we were sweating enough as it was, and we didn't have enough water for the half-hour hike down. But we promised each other that next time -- with any luck or, rather, better planning, during a colder season -- we would hike up the mountain. Hopefully, we'll be back before long: the hike seems quite strenuous even for relatively fit and youthful 30-somethings.
And after all, didn't we come here to get a break for the heat of the city?! The other stop on our trip was the Dead Sea beach at Ein Gedi Spa, owned and operated by a nearby kibbutz. The spa offered massages and hot mineral springs, but since we just had had the latter on our previous excursion, and we don't yet have arthritis, we headed straight to the sea. It was almost as hot as the springs though, not at all refreshing, and quite slimy. But it was fun nonetheless. The water pushes you all the way to the surface and all you can do is float on your back, not even swim. Any other position is almost impossible to hold and, I think, is prohibited.
The sea is so salty, that minutes after emerging from the water and drying up, CAG had serious salt deposits on him and had he not insisted on taking a shower before heading back to Tel Aviv, we would have brought probably about half a pound of sea salt for our cooking.
In addition to salt therapy, I went for the mud treatment which is supposed to be exfoliating, southing, and generally rejuvenating, but I can't tell yet whether it had any effect.
The shower to wash off the mud was the most refreshing experience of the day. As the sun was moving down behind the Judean Hills, we piled into our bus and headed back from the shores of the Dead Sea...
...through the mountainous Judean Desert...
...to the sun-burned eastern slopes...
...and green western slopes of the Judean Hills...
...back to the coastal Tel Aviv. After a day in the desert, the driver cranked up the AC so much that in the end of a two-hour drive (plus half an hour in pre-Tel Aviv traffic), I was ready for some hot and humid air of the big city. Who said it's unbearable here? He must have not been to the desert in mid-July!
But this is not to say that it's not hot here now. With rarely a cloud in the sky, the sun is vicious and we've had our noses, shoulders, and chests burned quite a few time; and we sure sweat a lot each time we go outside during the day. Until two weeks ago, the sea, only two blocks away, was a great and easy relief. But recently it's become too warm to be really refreshing; more importantly though, it's now invaded by gigantic jellyfish -- we both are still nursing wounds from being stung.
So what do we do? We get up at six in the morning, board a bus with dozens of other tourists from all over the world (although I was the only Russian), and go south, to the Judean Desert, where the high that day was expected to be 108 F (42 C). Truthfully, I was somewhat reluctant to go, but everyone was trying to convince me that the dry heat of the desert is much easier to deal with than the coastal humidity of Tel Aviv; besides I did not want to miss my chance to see Masada and the Dead Sea, two main attractions of the region, even if it meant enduring the desert heat for half a day.
After picking up more tourists in Jerusalem and an unplanned detour to near Ramallah in the Palestinian territories (the driver took a wrong turn), we arrived to Masada right before high noon. Masada is an isolated cliff 400 meter tall that sits right next to the Dead Sea. Since the sea is the lowest point on earth -- 400 meter below the sea level -- the top of the cliff actually lies at the sea level, but you won't ever guess it looking at it:
While the cliff was discovered and turned into a fortress (Masada is a romanized transliteration of the Hebrew word for fortress) a few centuries BCE, it was Herod the Great -- a client king of Judea under the Romans and a prolific builder of impressive castles, fortresses, and temples -- who erected (or rather had slaves erect for him) a glorious three-level palace with water cisterns, storerooms for food, and bathhouses. Masada was supposed to be his winter residence and a refuge in case of a revolt against him: according to some sources, he suffered from paranoia, but it is also a well-known fact that the Jews -- his subjects -- did not like him too much; and who could blame them -- Herod was not simply a lackey for the Romans, but a cruel and murderous ruler. Ironically, he never even visited the palace (maybe because he never got cold enough in Jerusalem) to see it for himself in all its glory, which is evident even today.
But Masada is an important Israeli symbol not for Herod's palace, but because it was a last holdout during the late-first-century (CE) uprising of the Jews against the Romans. Hundreds of Zealots -- members of a militant Jewish sect and political movement -- fled Jerusalem after its destruction to here and endured a months-long Roman siege, in the end of which they committed mass suicide so that not to be captured and enslaved by the succeeding Romans. It's a powerful story (even though some of its details are disputed based on archaeological findings, according to one Israeli archaeologist we've met) and no wonder that Masada is the only fortress we've been to here that displays national flags.
For most of the two millennia since the uprising (except for a monastery that lasted for about 200 years), the fortress was uninhabited, forgotten, and lost, if you can believe that such an imposing cliff can be "lost." It was rediscovered in the mid-19th century, when most of the fortress was in ruins. Only what's below the black line in the next picture was still standing:
Because of the scorching heat, our tour guide and most of fellow tourers were eager to get back to our air-conditioned bus or the gift shop. But we roamed around a bit more and even considered taking the snake path, instead of a cable car, down the cliff. But it was too hot, we were sweating enough as it was, and we didn't have enough water for the half-hour hike down. But we promised each other that next time -- with any luck or, rather, better planning, during a colder season -- we would hike up the mountain. Hopefully, we'll be back before long: the hike seems quite strenuous even for relatively fit and youthful 30-somethings.
And after all, didn't we come here to get a break for the heat of the city?! The other stop on our trip was the Dead Sea beach at Ein Gedi Spa, owned and operated by a nearby kibbutz. The spa offered massages and hot mineral springs, but since we just had had the latter on our previous excursion, and we don't yet have arthritis, we headed straight to the sea. It was almost as hot as the springs though, not at all refreshing, and quite slimy. But it was fun nonetheless. The water pushes you all the way to the surface and all you can do is float on your back, not even swim. Any other position is almost impossible to hold and, I think, is prohibited.
The sea is so salty, that minutes after emerging from the water and drying up, CAG had serious salt deposits on him and had he not insisted on taking a shower before heading back to Tel Aviv, we would have brought probably about half a pound of sea salt for our cooking.
In addition to salt therapy, I went for the mud treatment which is supposed to be exfoliating, southing, and generally rejuvenating, but I can't tell yet whether it had any effect.
The shower to wash off the mud was the most refreshing experience of the day. As the sun was moving down behind the Judean Hills, we piled into our bus and headed back from the shores of the Dead Sea...
...through the mountainous Judean Desert...
...to the sun-burned eastern slopes...
...and green western slopes of the Judean Hills...
...back to the coastal Tel Aviv. After a day in the desert, the driver cranked up the AC so much that in the end of a two-hour drive (plus half an hour in pre-Tel Aviv traffic), I was ready for some hot and humid air of the big city. Who said it's unbearable here? He must have not been to the desert in mid-July!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Headline of the Week
"July 1. Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Closed due to Traders' Strike."
I know, collectivism and solidarity in this country are not what they used to be 30, 40, or 50 years ago, but where else are traders and other financiers unionized???
This country seems to be in a constant "labor action": the postal workers just ended an Italian strike, bus and taxi drives blocked a major highway protesting high gas prices a couple of weeks ago (gasoline is about $8 per gallon here, so if anyone back home is complaining -- please be quiet, we just spent about $80 filling up the tank of a small and supposedly fuel-efficient Hyundai Getz), college students are threatening to sabotage upcoming school year because tuition is supposed to go up by $150 per year, not to mention well documented strikes of school teachers and university professors.
Now, we are awaiting -- with eagerness and terror at the same time -- the looming strike of the sanitation workers. With eagerness because they very much like to roar their trucks right outside of our bedroom window at five in the morning and we are hoping to get some peace and quite while we sleep; with terror -- well, the temperature has been at a steady 87 degrees and we are frightened to learn first hand what tons of garbage smell like after sitting uncollected for an indefinite period of time.
Of course, even here, where about half of the labor force is unionized, unions don't always get everything they want especially, sadly, in education . But recently, the Finance Minister rolled back some unpopular tax reform because of a mere threat of a general strike.
Surprisingly, in this land of perpetual labor actions, I have not seen a single picket line. Can it be because strikers go to the beach or cafes instead? Both are always crowded... And who would blame them in this weather!
I know, collectivism and solidarity in this country are not what they used to be 30, 40, or 50 years ago, but where else are traders and other financiers unionized???
This country seems to be in a constant "labor action": the postal workers just ended an Italian strike, bus and taxi drives blocked a major highway protesting high gas prices a couple of weeks ago (gasoline is about $8 per gallon here, so if anyone back home is complaining -- please be quiet, we just spent about $80 filling up the tank of a small and supposedly fuel-efficient Hyundai Getz), college students are threatening to sabotage upcoming school year because tuition is supposed to go up by $150 per year, not to mention well documented strikes of school teachers and university professors.
Now, we are awaiting -- with eagerness and terror at the same time -- the looming strike of the sanitation workers. With eagerness because they very much like to roar their trucks right outside of our bedroom window at five in the morning and we are hoping to get some peace and quite while we sleep; with terror -- well, the temperature has been at a steady 87 degrees and we are frightened to learn first hand what tons of garbage smell like after sitting uncollected for an indefinite period of time.
Of course, even here, where about half of the labor force is unionized, unions don't always get everything they want especially, sadly, in education . But recently, the Finance Minister rolled back some unpopular tax reform because of a mere threat of a general strike.
Surprisingly, in this land of perpetual labor actions, I have not seen a single picket line. Can it be because strikers go to the beach or cafes instead? Both are always crowded... And who would blame them in this weather!
Periphery vs. Center
When my parents visited Israel a few years back, they weren't too impressed -- it was too "Third World" for their tourist appetites spoiled by former imperial capitals of Rome, Madrid, and London. I think, in Tel Aviv it is hard to remember that you are *not* in Europe: the architecture, the people, the fashions, the food are pretty much like elsewhere in the West, adjusted for the weather of course -- the Bauhaus buildings and chicken schnitzels are, no doubt, of European descent, although there are a lot fewer blonds around here than, say, in Sweden. But once you leave the city, you do get a different, non-European (although by no means non-civilized) feel to the land. Where in Europe will you come in contact with banana plantations, pomegranates, or an orange tree in the middle a town?
I keep recalling a poem by my favorite poet, Joseph Brodsky, which is worth reproducing here in its entirety (although this is not the best translation I've seen, and it's even better in the original Russian):
It must be the amazingly tasty and rich food, the good wine, the ubiquitous Roman ruins, the warm and incredibly blue Mediterranean sea, the cypresses, olive and fig trees, and especially the chirping birds and buzzing insects that make me think of this poem.
Here is CAG cheering imaginary -- and apparently flying -- chariots at the Roman Hippodrome in Qesarya:
Remains of Roman thermal baths in Khamat Gader, where Roman legionaries soothed their battle wounds:
Sunsets into the sea (you can never have too many of those -- simply breathtaking):
The source of our sustenance, olives and grapes:
A perfect final resting place -- a cemetery on the shore of Lake Kinneret:
If you don't read the news and just take in the magnificent views of the yellow hills, blue waters, green orchards, and orange sunsets you would think this is indeed the place of internal serenity. Or would you?
The border fence separating Israel and Jordan and the adjacent Golan Heights bear frequent signs warning of land mines, which remind of many military battles fought here over the past 60 years and of the disputed status of the Golans (captured by Israel from Syria in 1967 and now a subject of peace negotiations between the two countries -- yes, Syria and Israel are still officially at war, the border between them is called a disengagement line, and many roads along it on the Israeli side are marked on our road map as for "military use only").
The Jordanian border fence:
A little sign on the left says "Danger: Mines" (we didn't dare to leave the car):
One of the area kibbutzim -- a purely agricultural, albeit collective enterprise -- sports a Syrian tank at the entrance as a reminder of a massive attack by the Syrian army it endured and repulsed during the 1948 War of Independence:
So even if you aren't up to speed on current events, you still get the sense that this land is less than tranquil, as it maybe used to be two thousand years ago as imagined by a Jewish poet in the Soviet Union. For better or worse, the periphery of an empire has become the center of the world attention.
On a lighter note: While we were visiting the thermal baths (close to Jordan but still on the Israeli side), CAG received a text message on his cell phone welcoming him to a Jordanian mobile network and wishing us pleasant stay in the country. There might be a fence, and perhaps even a mine field, between the two countries, but modern technology is truly beyond borders. Maybe there still is hope?
I keep recalling a poem by my favorite poet, Joseph Brodsky, which is worth reproducing here in its entirety (although this is not the best translation I've seen, and it's even better in the original Russian):
Letters to a Roman Friend
Now it's windy and the waves are running crisscross.
Soon it will be fall, and nature's face will alter.
Shifts in these bright colors stir me more profoundly,
Postumus, than changes in my lady's wardrobe.
To a certain point a girl can satisfy you --
if you don't go farther than her knees or elbows.
But how much more joyous the unbodied beauty
of an autumn wood: no kisses, no betrayals!
-----------------
Postumus, I'm sending books, I hope you'll like them.
How's Imperial Rome? -- A soft bed, hard to sleep on?
How fares Caesar? What's he up to? Still intriguing?
-- Still intriguing, probably, and overeating.
In the garden where I sit a torch is burning.
I'm alone -- no lady, servant, or acquaintance.
Not the humble of this world, nor yet its mighty --
nothing but the buzzing of an insect chorus.
-------------------
In this graveyard lies a merchant out of Asia.
He was clever, able, yet he passed unnoticed.
He died suddenly, of fever. Not to this end
did he sail here, but to make a profit.
Underneath unpolished quartz there lies beside him
an Imperial legionnaire, renowned in battle.
Target of a thousand thrusts, he lived till eighty.
Rules here, Postumus, are proved by their exceptions.
--------------------
Birds aren't very bright, my Postumus, that's certain;
but there's misery enough even for bird-brains.
If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire
let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore.
One who lives remote from snowstorms, and from Caesar,
has no need to hurry, flatter, play the coward.
You may say that local governors are vultures.
I, for one, prefer a vulture to a vampire.
-----------------
I'm prepared, hetaera, to wait out this downpour
in your company. But let us have no haggling.
Snatching silver coins from this, my covering body,
is like ripping shingles from the roof above you.
This roof's sprung a leak, you say? But where's the puddle?
I have never left a wet spot; no, not ever.
Better go and find yourself a proper husband:
he will do it to your sheers and pay the laundry.
---------------------
Here we've spent -- I swear it -- more than half our lifetimes.
As a slave -- now white-haired -- told me near the tavern:
"When we look around is, all we see is ruins."
A barbarian perspective, though a true one.
I'm back from the mountains carrying fresh wildflowers.
I'll get out a jug and fill it with cool water.
What's the latest from that Libya nor wherever?
Are we still engaged in all that desert fighting?
--------------------
Friend, do you remember our Proconsul's sister --
rather skinny, though her calves were heavy?
You had slept with her...Well, she became a priestess--
priestess, Postumus, with gods for her companions.
Come and visit me, and we'll drink wine together.
Plums are ripe and bread is good. You'll bring the gossip.
I shall make your couch up in the star-swept garden
and teach you to name our local constellations.
-------------------
Soon, dear Postumus, your friend who loves addition
will pay his debt, his old debt, to subtraction.
Take my savings, then, from underneath my pillow --
though not much, they'll pay the cost of my interment.
Post on your black mare to the House of Hetaeras
hard against the wall of our provincial city.
Give each girl the sum for which she once embraced me:
let them mourn me for the same amount of money.
-------------------
Dark green laurels on the verge of trembling.
Doors ajar. The windowpane is dusty.
Idle chairs and the abandoned sofa.
Linen blinded by the sun of noonday.
Pontus drones past a black fence of pine trees.
Someone's boat braves gusts out by the promontory.
On the garden bench a book of Pliny rustles.
Thrushes chirp within the hairdo of the cypress.
(Translated by George L. Kline, from A Part of Speech)
It must be the amazingly tasty and rich food, the good wine, the ubiquitous Roman ruins, the warm and incredibly blue Mediterranean sea, the cypresses, olive and fig trees, and especially the chirping birds and buzzing insects that make me think of this poem.
Here is CAG cheering imaginary -- and apparently flying -- chariots at the Roman Hippodrome in Qesarya:
Remains of Roman thermal baths in Khamat Gader, where Roman legionaries soothed their battle wounds:
Sunsets into the sea (you can never have too many of those -- simply breathtaking):
The source of our sustenance, olives and grapes:
A perfect final resting place -- a cemetery on the shore of Lake Kinneret:
If you don't read the news and just take in the magnificent views of the yellow hills, blue waters, green orchards, and orange sunsets you would think this is indeed the place of internal serenity. Or would you?
The border fence separating Israel and Jordan and the adjacent Golan Heights bear frequent signs warning of land mines, which remind of many military battles fought here over the past 60 years and of the disputed status of the Golans (captured by Israel from Syria in 1967 and now a subject of peace negotiations between the two countries -- yes, Syria and Israel are still officially at war, the border between them is called a disengagement line, and many roads along it on the Israeli side are marked on our road map as for "military use only").
The Jordanian border fence:
A little sign on the left says "Danger: Mines" (we didn't dare to leave the car):
One of the area kibbutzim -- a purely agricultural, albeit collective enterprise -- sports a Syrian tank at the entrance as a reminder of a massive attack by the Syrian army it endured and repulsed during the 1948 War of Independence:
So even if you aren't up to speed on current events, you still get the sense that this land is less than tranquil, as it maybe used to be two thousand years ago as imagined by a Jewish poet in the Soviet Union. For better or worse, the periphery of an empire has become the center of the world attention.
On a lighter note: While we were visiting the thermal baths (close to Jordan but still on the Israeli side), CAG received a text message on his cell phone welcoming him to a Jordanian mobile network and wishing us pleasant stay in the country. There might be a fence, and perhaps even a mine field, between the two countries, but modern technology is truly beyond borders. Maybe there still is hope?
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