A View from the North

Rabbi Michael Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, MD

Yesterday was an important reminder...
When you are in Jerusalem, and the golden light surrounds you, and the ancient stones beckon, and you run into half of the people you've ever met...  Jerusalem is more than a feeling of home.  It feels like a pre-Copernican experience.  The world revolves around it.  It feels like the center of the universe.

Except, of course... that it is not the beginning and end of everything.
It is not even... all of Israel.

How many times I have travelled the country?  (This is my 9th trip here, but two of them were for entire years.)  And yet there is power in every tree for me, every barren and dusty hill.

I have been in a bus, or even on foot.  Rarely have I had a car, and driven the roads myself.  (That is a good thing, given the fact that Israeli drivers make the agressive drivers of Washington look polite, but that is another matter.)  It does give it a new feel...

The choice we faced yesterday, in heading north, was quite clear.  Through the heart of Israel, every traffic light and falafel stand and bus route and busy modern intersection?  (Actually I am exaggerating, and the new highways even take some of the local flavor away.)  Or: through the territories, through the West Bank; save an hour or more and travel right along the Jordanian border.

Our guide was direct and clear.  We'd be crazy to go through the center of the country.
So off we went, through the (new) tunnel leaving Mt. Scopus, past the machson (checkpoint), whizzing by Ma'ale Adumim (sitting atop a hillside of suburban Jerusalem, it is by far the largest of the "settlements" -- and also widely expected to remain in Israeli hands after any potential peace deal with the Palestinians), winding our way down towards the Dead Sea (a brief glimpse in a dusty distance), passing by the camels and cows and goat herders and pottery stands... veering away from the Allenby Bridge into Jordan, turning left to head north, fifty miles of Judea and Samaria... Palestinian towns, settler farmland... and not a blink of an instant of a problem.  (Not that we went into Ramallah, nor into the winding hill country of Samaria...  We just stuck with the flat, relatively straight highway. The most activity we saw on the way were in the towns and cities of Jordan we glimpsed in the distance.)

And then the north.  Beit She'an, Belvoir (a Crusader castle on top of a hill which I had onced hiked up and which Daniel wanted us to divert to)... and Kinneret.  The Sea of Galilee.

We stopped for lunch at Degania Aleph, the first ever kibbutz, the place where the sucessful communal enterprise was born and given to the world.  They have rennovated parts of the kibbutz, and are gearing up for their centennial celebration this coming October.  Lunch was terrific in a small cafe with no English speakers.  Really, a feeling of being "in Israel."  (Jerusalem is more other-worldly than the rest of Israel, it is true... but it is at the same time more American.  En route yesterday, though, even the few McDonald's signs were written in Hebrew instead of English.)  And then...

Well, one of our colleagues told us about it, and we have a personal connection there anyway (because 30 years ago Julie was a volunteer there)... Then we went to Degania Bet.  Where after a second trip in we found what we had heard about -- a chocolate factory with an experiential component... a chance for the kids to make their own chocolate (after an educational film about the entire process, from seed to tree to bean to bar.)  Best chocolate she ever had, Julie said on tasting it.  (Or among the best: my theory is that she believes that chocolate is like a camera -- the best one is the one you have with you when you want it!)  She noted that the cows looked the same as they did 30 years ago.  But the chocolate experience did not.  (How new is it?  Not sure.  I come to Israel every two years now, and am still seeing new things every time I come.)

Traffic jam in Tiberius (where are all these people from, after the solitude of the rest of the trip, and where are they going), passing by (not stopping) Decks (one of the best restaurants in Israel), and Nof Ginnosar (where we will be staying with the group next week)... then winding our way up into the mountains, great views of the lake from the switchback trails, towars S'fat but veering north.  We are staying in kayak country, at Kibbutz HaGoshrim... tucked just near the Lebanese border to the north and Golan Heights to the east... planning on spending a few days hiking, swimming, exploring...  (Overnight scare of missing iPhone successfully resolved!)


Jerusalem is... well... home.  But this is a different kind of home.  It is "real" Israel.  Even Golan.  So very hard to imagine how it can ever be given back... you have to see it to know how much of a gut feeling that is... but even setting politics aside it is so wonderful.  I know it will have to go, someday, but today is today.  And we are here.  And it is real.  And I am happy.