South

I am way behind here. Michal and Mara have been on my case. (We motivate each other. Michal even dedicated one blog to me and Mara after we bugged her about not updating!) But…I am on a 4-day weekend, so get ready to read a lot. I’ll try to keep posts to short-novel length, so there should be at least a couple of them this weekend. First up: the HUC trip to the Negev.

We left for the south early last Wednesday (as in, a week-and-a-half ago Wednesday, the same day my parents headed back home). We drove south, sleeping on the bus as much as possible, stopping briefly at Ben Gurion’s grave, mostly to pick up our guides for the next few days. We went down to visit the grave; Ben Gurion wanted to be buried looking over his beloved Negev Desert, rather than on Har Herzl, which is like Israel’s Arlington Cemetery. Most insightful comment during our 10-minute see graves, bathroom stop, stretch your legs stop, although I don’t remember who said it: I wonder how Ben Gurion’s wife felt about being buried here. She hated the desert. She’s now stuck there for eternity. In truth, the desert is incredibly peaceful. Forget everything you think you know about deserts though. The Negev is not sandy, flat, or uninhabited. It is rocky, mountainous, and filled with desert animals and plants, and scattered kibbutzim and Bedouin villages. We also took a short 2-hour hike on the way south, getting us ready, sort of, for the next day’s hike.

We arrived at Kibbutz Yahel, our home for the next few days, in time for a brief tour, shower and dinner. The kibbutz is beautiful and remarkable. It’s one of the Reform movement’s two kibbutzim in Israel. (The other is Lotan, which we also visited. I’ll explain further down.) Yahel calls itself a desert oasis, and it truly is. There are flowers, trees, grass, and all kinds of plants growing on the kibbutz. I’m sure it would be easy to tell from above exactly where the kibbutz ends, because it goes back to looking like desert. They proudly told us that Yahel is a multi-million-dollar business. They grow pomelos, peppers, melons, onions, dates, and raise lots of dairy cows. We got a tour of the pomelo grove. What’s a pomelo? It’s the biggest of the citrus fruits, a little larger than a grapefruit. They have never been popular in the US, although they are here. They have an incredibly thick (at least an inch) skin. I had never tasted one, but did so out in Yahel’s field! It was really good, like a grapefruit but much sweeter; we were also eating the ones leftover from the harvest, so they were overripe and therefore sweeter. The desert kibbutz also feels like the last refuge of early Zionism. These people settled in the desert and literally made it bloom. They settle right on the border, and the location of several of the kibbutzim did help define Israel’s borders after some of the wars. While we were in the pomelo grove, we were told not to step on the road that is about 6 yards outside the pomelos. On the far side of the one-lane road was a dust track. If there are footprints on the dust track, the Israeli investigates them. On the other side of the dust track is the barbed wire fence marking one side of the border with Jordan. (There is a no-man’s land before Jordan’s fence.) That was the first time this trip that I could see into another country.

On Thursday, we were given a choice of two hikes. On our itinerary, they were billed as “medium” and “hard.” Apparently they decided the hard one wasn’t hard enough, so they made that the medium hike, and added a harder one. I went on the harder one. It was a great hike! We were hiking for 7 hours. We went up a mountain, across a mountain-time barrier, up some more, and then down for several hours. The time barrier was basically that there was one mountain range, but somehow through geological processes that are foreign to me, two parts of the range were offset from each other (possibly through an earthquake), leaving the newer rock exposed on one part, and the older rock on the other part. We were literally hiking on reddish-tannish sandstone, took a step, and we were on black granite/igneous rock. And then we kept going. On the top of the mountain, we could see down into Eilat, across the Red Sea into Jordan, and a little further down the Red Sea, into Saudi Arabia. By turning slightly, we could also see into the Sinai Desert of Egypt. We also proved, yet again, a universal truth: food tastes better on top of a mountain. Lunch wasn’t that remarkable, but it tasted SO GOOD. The hike was a challenge, especially for those of us who aren’t so excited about heights. On the way up, there were places where we were walking along a narrow ledge. There was a railing on one side to help. Except, the railing was on the mountain side, not the cliff side! The idea was to lean toward the railing, but I got pretty freaked out during that part of the hike. I had no idea what was coming. Parts of the walk down were through dry waterfalls. Water tends to fall in the most direct way, though. Straight down. There were places where we had to use handholds or steel rope to help navigate the way down or across the side of the cliff. I had a lot of trouble on one of them, when I realized that I was holding a rope on my right, I could not find where my feet should go next, and turned to see that a wrong step or letting go of the rope meant a really, really long fall with an ugly splat at the bottom. But our guide was amazing, and she took me through it, helping me find the invisible places for my feet. And since I was right near the front, she then helped the next 40 people through it as well. We stayed there for a while, until everyone got across and down this one part, which was certainly the hardest part of the hike, although it was not the only place where we waited for everyone to get through before moving on. We felt good and tired after this one!

And then we arrived at our next destination: the fake Bedouin tent. The idea of the tent was to get an idea of Bedouin culture. Except that this tent is a tourist site, run by Jews. The food is kosher, there was a bar with alcohol and ice cream, there were bathrooms right outside the tent with toilets and showers and a sink, and there was a mezuzah on the door. That means there was a door. And walls. Their food was really good, but the floor for the night was not all that comfortable. There were about 75 of us sleeping in one room. Most of us got up in the morning and decided we were too old for that.

Friday we visited the other Reform Kibbutz, Kibbutz Lotan. Lotan is an environmentalist’s dream. (Monica: you might have just stayed.) They run a lot of Israel’s recycling. They have a whole eco-village where they are trying new ideas. They have buildings and playgrounds made of trash. Seriously, they are trash covered with mud, and sealed with used falafel oil. We got to have the experience of making mud bricks. Dirt + sand + straw + water = gooey mess that actually dries into bricks. They have composting toilets. There is a toilet seat on top of a really deep pit. You do your thing, and then throw in some straw. And that’s it. There’s no flushing. The most amazing part: it doesn’t smell at all. And also, that someone thought this was a good idea. On our tour of Lotan, it sounded like they had a lot of amazing ideas. They are really trying to change the world, and you can smell the idealism in the air. (No, it’s really not the composting toilets.) But the pessimist – or the realist – in me is skeptical of how well it will work. Unlike Yahel, they don’t really make all that much money, and they keep the kibbutz running in part through government subsidies and donations. And yet, what they are doing is so admirable. I’m torn.

We left Lotan and its idealism and headed to Eilat, the city at the southern tip of Israel. We had a couple of hours to enjoy the beach and go snorkeling at their coral reef. I had never been snorkeling! The water was freezing though, and almost prevented me from getting in. The coral was beautiful, if a really small area for so much cold water effort. Aside from that, it was really nice to be on a beach for a little while. Even with the mild Jerusalem winter, I’m ready for spring! (Our whole trip south, it was warm, probably low 80s, during the day, and cool but beautiful at night. Jerusalem is still its confused mix of beautiful sunny days and cold rainy ones.)

Shabbat on the kibbutz felt like what Shabbat is supposed to be. We had a nice service, dinner with kibbutz members, although at separate tables, and an inspiring (if a little cheesy) evening program. Two visiting rabbis who both have prominent URJ positions talked to us about their lives and their journey and advice for the future. The whole thing was also interspersed with songs. Saturday was so relaxing. We spent the afternoon sitting outside, playing cards, reading, and just enjoying a day of rest. A lot of us wish our Shabbats in Jerusalem were so relaxing, but the unfortunate reality is that when sitting in our apartments, with school the next day, it is really hard not to do work, and we tend to have enough due on Sundays to make it feel nearly impossible. Being away was a great break though.

Getting back to Jerusalem late Saturday night was almost disappointing. It was great to be back at my computer and in touch with the world, but we realized how stressed we all were when we left, and how relaxed we were when we returned. And then we got back, and everything we had to do came rushing back. But that’s another blog. Pictures are now posted of this trip! I didn't take all that many; I was concentrating a lot on not falling off of a cliff and things like that. Some of the pictures are from Michal and Mara. I'll add more if I find others. Pictures of the parents' trip will be posted once they get them to me!

Shabbat shalom!