Neve Shalom: "Oasis of Peace"

On August 12, my colleagues and I visited Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (NSWAS), a village of Jews and Palestinian Arabs of Israeli citizenship, that was founded in the early 1970's on land originally leased from the nearby Latrun Monastery, half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.


Currently NSWAS is home to 55 families, roughly half Jewish and half Palestinian Arabs, and has an eventual goal of including about 140 families. We met privately with one of the village's founders, Abdessalam Najjar, who works at its "Pluralistic Spiritual Center". Here he is speaking to our group during our walking tour of some of the village's many footpaths.



NSWAS is an idealistic attempt to demonstrate the possibility of coexistence between Jews and Palestinian Arabs "by developing a community based on mutual acceptance, respect and cooperation." Its brochure states that it is not affiliated with any political party or movement, that it is "democratically governed and owned by its members." NSWAS was started from an interfaith dialogue group led by a Dominican Catholic priest.

According to Abdessalam, the group learned early on that good will is not enough to make such a community succeed. They experimented with different kinds of group interactions to begin to learn how to reconcile the different visions of the participants. Abdessalam said that the first participants weren't aware of all the complexities of what they were trying to accomplish, but learned quickly as emotions started to surface.

While NSWAS is still very much a work in progress, it has established a number of programs and institutions to extend the reach of its efforts to foster dialogue and cooperation between Jews and Arabs as well as other groups in conflict with one another. These include:

• Four bilingual, binational schools: one each in NSWAS and Jerusalem and two in the Galilee. Here is a sculpture wall comprised of ceramic plaques made by the school children:

• The "School for Peace" a center which conducts "encounter workshops" for teens and for teachers and other professionals to help them learn to interact in more meaningful and effective ways. So far 45,000 teens and 300 adults have received training at the center in group dynamics and conflict resolution. Here is a picture of the center's new building:

• The "Pluralistic Spiritual Center", which provides " a framework for encounter activities, study and reflection, based on the values of equality, justice and reconciliation." The center promotes "alternative understandings" of the scriptures of all three major faiths represented in the State of Israel and conducts seminars on the treatment of strangers, women in Islam, Jewish attitudes about Jesus and how Palestinian Christians read the Hebrew Bible. The center organizes mixed groups of Jewish and Arab youngsters who tour Israel to learn about its religions and history from both sides in the current conflict.

Can NSWAS really make a difference and, if so, how much time will be required before it has a significant impact? These were the questions we asked ourselves as we made our way to our next meeting, a discussion of large-scale geo-political problems and possible solutions with Sheldon Shulman, who has served as a national security advisor to four Israeli prime ministers, two each from the right and the left. His comments will be the subject of my next post.

Historic "Etzion Block" in the West Bank

On Tuesday, August 12, we set out for the Etzion Block, south of Jerusalem. This is an area of four Jewish towns in the West Bank that were lost to the Arabs in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and were recovered in the 1967 Six Day War. They are now thriving communities.

On our way out of Jerusalem we drove through a Jewish hilltop neighborhood called Gilo, which sits above the Israeli Arab village of Beit Safafa in the Kidron Valley. All or most of Beit Safafa was always part of Israel and many of its residents work in tourist areas in Jerusalem. The Arab residents of Beit Safafa are Israeli citizens, who vote in elections and enjoy full social benefits.

Gilo used to be shelled frequently from another Arab village across the valley called Beit Jala, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The shelling has mostly stopped since the hills nearby were annexed to Jerusalem, giving Israeli forces a better view of where any shelling might be coming from. The Arab residents of the annexed areas are now Israeli citizens who enjoy the full range of governmental benefits. As we continued out of town, we saw several Arab neighborhoods, some inside Israel's pre-1967 borders and others in the former Jordanian territories. In all of them, the housing looked pretty good. Here's an example:



Our first stop in the Etzion Block was Kfar Etzion, the Israeli Alamo, where the 1948 defenders made a valiant last stand. We saw a documentary on the loss and rebuilding of the town and visited a bunker, used by the defenders, which could be called Israel’s “Alamo”. When the town fell in 1948, fifteen defenders were taken alive to the main square, lined up as if for a photo and then shot. Today Kfar Etzion is a thriving agricultural and light manufacturing community. Some of its products are fruit, turkeys, shoes and barbecue grills.

The rebuilding of Kfar Etzion began in 1967, shortly after the Six Day War. The resettlement of the other nearby towns began in 1977. Both of Israel’s major political parties, Labor and Likud have recognized that the Etzion Block is a unique area with a history which is very meaningful to many Israelis. Even Ehud Barak wasn’t offering to return it in his negotiations with Yassir Arafat in 2000. In the current government, both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have approved additional Jewish construction in the Etzion Block.

From Kfar Etzion we went to Efrat, a community of roughly 10,000 Jews, of whom 95% are Orthodox. There are 23 synagogues in Efrat. The town is surrounded by a security fence, which was penetrated twice during the Intifada. Palestinians do work in Efrat but they must leave their cars at the checkpoints and either walk the rest of the way or get picked up by their Jewish employers. This is just another example of the tension between security and human needs.

We were shown a new emergency medical center that is under construction in Efrat. Our guide, Dr. Peter Abelow, told us that the Palestinians were invited to participate in the building of the hospital but refused because acceptance would indicate acknowledgement of Israeli rule in the area. Nevertheless, when the hospital is opened, it is intended to serve both Arab and Jewish patients.

In Efrat we met with Lenny Ben David, former Deputy Chief of Station at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Today he runs several Internet news services about Israel, most of which are free. I’m planning to sign up for one called “Daily Alert: which summarizes news about Israel for the Conference of Presidents of Major US Jewish Organizations. The website address is: http://www.dailyalert.org/.

Lenny raised our level of concern about a number of issues: the government’s latest negotiations with the Palestinians, the corruption of Israeli public officials and internal tension between the religious/Zionist and secular/post-Zionist camps. One of Lenny’s biggest issues is the creation of perceived weakness. He said that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 emboldened Yassir Arafat as well as Hezbollah. He said that Israel’s disengagement from Gaza similarly emboldened Hammas and that the recent prisoner exchange with Hezbollah also added to the perception that Israel is weaker than in past periods of conflict.

Lenny was also critical of the US and Europe for being soft on Iran and Russia. He said that US and European inaction concerning Iran’s nuclear program and Russia’s attack on Georgia are being viewed as signs of weakness. He said there are reports that Israel told the US that Iran was the major danger in the Middle East, not Saddam’s Iraq and that the US didn’t anticipate the radical Shiite rebellion in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed from power.

Lenny spoke about the pending leadership struggle within Kadima, the party of Prime Minister Olmert, who has announced that he will step down. Lenny said that of the two candidates to succeed Olmert, Foreign Minister Livni wants to make a peace deal with the Palestinians, while Finance Minister Mofaz doesn’t think that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas can be a partner for peace.

From Efrat we went to Neve Shalom, a joint Jewish/Arab experimental community located in the West Bank. I’ll discuss that in my next post.

Masada, Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea

On Monday, August 11, we experienced one of the spiritual highlights of our trip. At the crack of dawn we climbed Masada, the desert fortress and palace complex, built by King Herod, which was the final stronghold of the Zealots who rebelled against Rome between 66 CE and 73 CE. As the sun rose over the Dead Sea, we held our Morning Prayer service on the summit. Here we are praying, with my colleagues Irwin Huberman, spiritual leader of the Conservative synagogue in Glen Cove, NY, playing guitar, and Enid Lader, spiritual leader of the Reconstruction synagogue in Wooster, OH, playing the violin.

We were surrounded by Birthright and other youth tour groups, some of whom got up earlier than we did and were already on the summit when we arrived. Some of these young people were quite interested in our service and asked questions. We discovered that one of the youth groups was Russian and that some of the members had never seen or heard a spirited, musical egalitarian service like ours before. After prayers we explored the site. Our guide, Dr. Peter Abelow, showed us that it was very much as described by the Jewish/Roman historian Josephus in his epic work “The Jewish War”. Here are some of the very extensive first century CE ruins:

After touring the ruins, we met a representative of Israel’s National Parks Service, who let us use one of the Torah scrolls that are kept on the summit in a fireproof safe. We read from the weekly portion Vaetchanan (Deuteronomy 4:23 to 7:11) which includes a repetition of the Ten Commandments and the first part of the Shema, the fundamental declaration of the Jewish faith. I had the unique privilege of chanting the Ten Commandments on a site which Jews had lost in ancient times but had now recovered as part of the modern State of Israel.

We descended from Masada by cable car and had breakfast at the youth hotel at its base, on the Dead Sea side. We then traveled to the oasis of Ein Gedi, where our tradition says that the young King David hid from his father-in-law and enemy, King Saul. We joined tourists in the natural pool at the bottom of the waterfall and let the water splash our backs. It was very refreshing after the heat and dust of Masada. Here are some of us in the water with other tourists.

From Ein Gedi we traveled to the Ahava factory outlet on the shores of the Dead Sea. This company makes cosmetic and therapeutic skin care products from the special salts that are found in the sea’s waters and the unique mud which is found in its banks. Unfortunately the sea is losing one meter (39 inches) in depth per year and its banks are receding, due to the increased usage, by Israel and Jordan, of water from the Jordan River, by which it is fed. Various plans have been proposed for replenishing the waters of the Dead Sea. These include bringing water from Eilat, on the Gulf of Aqaba, an arm of the Red Sea, over 100 miles by pipeline or canal. As the Dead Sea is the lowest spot on Earth, 1250 ft below sea level, this is practical, but the cost and environmental impact are being studied.

Because the Dead Sea is 33% saline, vs. the oceans which are 3% saline, the water is very buoyant and a person can float very easily. Here is one of my colleagues reading a magazine while floating in the Dead Sea and two others covered from head to toe in therapeutic mud that they scooped up from the banks of the sea by hand.

From the Dead Sea we returned to Jerusalem, where we were on our own for dinner and shopping. A group of us went to Ben Yehuda Street, an area of popular-priced restaurants and souvenir shops. Our colleagues Jill and Ellie, who had been studying and doing charity work in Israel for about a month, met us for dinner. Here’s the group in front of a restaurant called The Red Heifer, a name which refers to the ancient purification ritual described in Numbers 19.


We didn’t eat there, but went instead to a popular corner restaurant with outdoor seating, in an area of "dance pubs", where we had kosher fajitas and burgers and Israeli beer.

After dinner, we went souvenir shopping. Among the most popular items sold on Ben Yehuda
Street are t-shirts with the logos of American and Canadian sports teams and their names in Hebrew letters. I bought a Yankees t-shirt for myself and a Canadiens t-shirt for my colleague Irwin, who grew up in Montreal. I've said "Go Maple Leafs! " to needle him too many times. For my son, Elliot, I bought a Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team t-shirt and another one from the Hard Rock Cafe, which is already in Tel Aviv, with the message "Next Year in Jerusalem".

Yad Vashem -- Israel's Holocaust Memorial, Visit to Ethiopian Jews

The final four days of our trip were a flurry of activity. I’m amazed at how many meaningful experiences, and some fun ones also, we were able to cram into a short time. Most nights I got only four hours of sleep. I’m posting my comments and photos for each of these days from home and will do my best to recall the specifics of each day and the flavor of our experiences.

Sunday, August 10 was Tisha b’Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av), on which we commemorate the destruction of our first Temple, by the Babylonians, in 586 BCE, and our second Temple, by the Romans, in 70 CE. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain, in 1492, occurred on the same date. We began the day with a brief service. It was very subdued compared to our usual spirited singing.

The main event of the day was a trip to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and educational center. Although I’ve been reading about the Holocaust and watching movies and TV programs about it since I was a teenager, the exhibits at Yad Vashem gave me an increased sense of the monstrous evil which the Nazis and their collaborators committed against our people and the uniqueness of the systematic extermination which we suffered.

Among the most compelling aspects of Yad Vashem is the collection of video screens showing Holocaust survivors recounting their personal experiences: people being rounded up for deportation to death camps, parents hiding their children before being carried off themselves, Jewish ghettos officials committing suicide rather than fulfilling the Nazi demand to select people from among their fellow Jews for deportation and people whom firing squads missed crawling out of the mass graves. The survivors spoke about the Nazis’ collaborators: Poles, Latvians and others, who helped with the roundup and slaughter of Jews.

No indoor photos are allowed at Yad Vashem. We were allowed to take photos at the outdoor children’s memorial. Here is a wall sculpture, from that exhibit, of the face of a young boy who was exterminated.

From the same complex, here is a photo of the memorial to Janosz Korczak, a Polish Jew and world-renowned pediatrician and teacher, who revolutionized the education of children by empowering them and encouraging greater understanding of their individual needs and desires. Korczak set up many orphanages, which were known for their caring and sensitivity. When the children from the last of these, in the Warsaw ghetto, were scheduled for deportation to a death camp, Korczak was offered an opportunity to escape. He chose instead to stay with “his” children and provide them what comfort he could in their final days. He went to his death with them.

Here is an actual railroad boxcar of the sort used to transport Jews to the death camps. Note the guard booth which has been added on the end of the car.

The last exhibit I visited at Yad Vashem was the outdoor memorial to entire communities which were wiped out after all the Jews were exterminated. The town in Byelorus where my father was born, Dawidgrodek, is listed on a panel facing the one which lists the town in the Polish Ukraine where my mother was born, Korczek.

Yad Vashem was crowded during our visit. Of course, Tisha b’Av is a public holiday in Israel, so many Israelis were free to go there. But most people in the crowds we saw were tourists, including many Birthright groups of young people. We were told that Yad Vashem is a mandatory stop on every Birthright tour. We saw many Israeli soldiers, for whom a visit to Yad Vashem is also mandatory.

Next we traveled to the West Bank Jewish town of Ma’ale Adumim "red heights" (Joshua 18:17), to meet an Ethiopian Jew named Adina, who came to Israel with her family 22 years ago. She said that they didn’t leave Ethiopia due to persecution, but rather because they wanted to live in the Holy Land of the Jewish people. Adina and her family follow the Torah and an oral tradition which appears to have been influenced by rabbinic teachings. Here she is with our guide, Dr. Peter Abelow.

Ma’ale Adumim is a thriving community of 65,000 Jews which has been built on land that was ruled by Jordan prior to 1967. On the way to Ma’ale Adumim, we passed four Arab towns: two on the Jewish side of the security fence and two on the Palestinian side. If Israel ever makes a “land for peace” deal with the Arabs, it is likely that either Ma’ale Adumim will be on the Arab side of the line or at least two of the Arab towns will be on the Israeli side.

From Ma’ale Adumim we traveled to Arad, a desert town from which we would leave for our early morning climb to the ancient fortress of Masada. Our experiences on top of Masada and nearby will be the subjects of my next post.

The Wall, Shabbat and Tisha b'Av

Shalom from Jerusalem!

I’m writing this on Tisha B’Av –the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av—the date on which we commemorate the destruction of our two Temples, in 586 BCE by the Babylonians and in 70 CE by the Romans, as well as the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 CE. Because last night was Shabbat, I didn’t create a new post. This post represents two days’ activity in Jerusalem.

Yesterday, Friday, we got up early and did our Shacharit (morning) service at the Kotel, the Western Wall of the Temple mount in Roman times. We weren’t at the section that you see most often because it’s run by Orthodox authorities who wouldn’t tolerate a mixed male-female minyan. Instead, we prayed at in area known as Robinson’s arch, after the discoverer of an ancient staircase which carried pedestrians down to the main street of Jerusalem in the days of King Herod. Part of the arch is still attached to the wall. Here we are praying on that former main street, facing the Western Wall:




The reason that the Western Wall is considered the holiest is because it is nearest the location of the “Holy of Holies” in the ancient Temple, where we believe that the Ark of the Covenant was located. It is actually one of four retaining walls that were built by King Herod to support the Temple mount, also called Mount Moriah, the place where tradition says that the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, described in Genesis 22, took place. The “Old City” of Jerusalem is on nearby Mount Zion and the Central Valley, which separates the two mountains, was the main street of King Herod’s Jerusalem. We prayed standing on the original paving stones.

Near Robinson’s arch, we saw the top stone from the southwest corner of the wall. It bears a Hebrew inscription indicating that this is where ancient Levites stood to blow trumpets announcing the beginning of Shabbat and major holidays.

Our next stop was the recently discovered City of David, which is located outside the walls of the Temple mount. Before we could go there, we had to go back to our bus to put away our talisim (prayer shawls) and tefilin (phylacteries—small leather boxes containing Biblical texts, which we strap on for morning prayers). While we were on the bus, which was parked on a hillside, the parking brake gave way and four cars parked behind us were damaged.

The City of David is located in East Jerusalem, which was Jordanian territory until 1967. Archeologists believe that it was the location of King David’s palace and have evidence to support this. One of my previous posts discusses the discovery of the seals of two of King Zedekiah’s ministers, both mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, at this site. Here is our guide, Dr. Peter Abelow standing in front of one of the presumed palace walls and a pillar, which supported the roof of a private home outside the palace walls. He’s speaking from what may be the location of the rooftop on which Bathsheba was seen, by King David, arousing desires which led to his greatest sins, as described in 2 Samuel 11.

From the City of David, we descended into King Hezekiah’s water tunnel. Ancient Jerusalem’s only source of water was in the Kidron Valley, on the east side of the city and outside its walls. We believe that King David captured the city from the Jebusites by penetrating the tunnel which carried water up into the city and taking the defenders by surprise. When the Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, during King Hezekiah’s time, an influx of refugees caused the city to expand. A new water conduit, protected from access by future enemies, was needed. King Hezekiah had a deeper tunnel built, running nearly a mile under the city, to the Pool of Siloam, an ancient reservoir. We walked through the tunnel, where water still flows. The water source and the tunnel are also in East Jerusalem. Here’s a photo of the water source and a replica of an ancient inscription, which described how the tunnel was dug from both ends.

Here’s my seminary colleague, Enid Lader, spiritual leader of a synagogue in Wooster, OH, coming out of the tunnel where it empties out into the Pool of Siloam.

Next we explored the “Old City” of Jerusalem. Here’s where we entered, at the Zion Gate. Also shown are a replica of an ancient Byzantine map of the city and a portion of the Cardo, the main street from the Byzantine era (roughly 350 to 650 CE). The Temple mount is notably absent from the Byzantine map!

After shopping in the underground Jewish mall and the Arab market attached to the Cardo, we went back to our hotel and prepared for Shabbat. We attended Friday evening services at Kehilat Yedid, a modern Orthodox congregation in the Beka section of Jerusalem, where there are a lot of Americans who made aliyah and are now Israeli citizens. Several families invited us to their homes for dinner after services and some lively discussions ensued. Among the things we learned is that some Orthodox Jews in Israel see little difference between Reform and Conservative Judaism in the US. Also, some of them expected us, as liberal clergy, to be less knowledgeable than Orthodox clergy and were surprised to find that was not the case. We explained that while our practices are different, we’re expected to be fully versed in traditional texts—both teachings and legal codes.

On Shabbat morning, we attended services at Shira Hadasha (New Song) a modern Orthodox congregation associated with the Hartman Institute, a graduate school for Jewish clergy and educators. Shira Hadasha is almost egalitarian. Women lead the Torah service, chant Torah and prophetic readings and receive aliyot (opportunities to recite the blessings before and after the Torah readings). Both Shira Hadasha and Kehilat Yedid were pretty fully attended in mid-August. We were impressed with the spirited singing of prayers at both congregations. (Of course, I didn’t take any photos in either place because it was Shabbat.)

After lunch, I went to a nearby park to sit outdoors and finish some reading for my Gratz College course on modern Israel. Our hotel is located in the Abu Tor section, only a few blocks from the pre-1967 border between Israel and Jordan, so there are both Arab and Jewish populations nearby. My trip to the park showed me two sides of the current political issues. In one area, I saw a large Arab group and a large Jewish group picnicking only about 10 yards from each other. Children from both groups played at the same time in the large fountain nearby and didn’t bother each other. Many people strolled through the park: Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and tourists – all simply going about their business. This gave me a faint glimmer of optimism about possible future relations. (I didn't take photos because I didn't want to disturb the scene.)

While I was studying, an elderly Jewish gentleman came by and I struck up a conversation with him. He came to British Palestine, from Germany in 1933, with his parents, grew up in Haifa and fought in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. He told me that we American Jews had done the State of Israel a disservice by not moving there in large numbers. If we had, he said, the Palestinian Arabs could have been pushed out of more of the original British mandate territory and, in his opinion, Israel wouldn’t have the problems it faces today in its occupation of the West Bank. Clearly his views represent the other side of the issue, and he's not alone in this.

I returned to the hotel and told the group about my experience at our pre-dinner, mid-trip discussion. After dinner we went to the Tayelet, also called the Haas Promenade, which overlooks the Old City and the Temple mount. We joined a large crowd from an Israeli Masorti (Conservative) synagogue for the chanting of Aicha, the book of Lamentations, marking the start of Tisha B’Av. Here is Rabbi Barry Schelsinger, an American who moved to Israel some years ago, leading some of his congregants in prayers after the Aicha reading.

Tomorrow we’ll be visiting Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, and then meeting with an Ethiopian Jewish family, on our way to the desert town of Arad, where we’ll stay overnight. On Monday morning we’ll climb up to the ancient fortress at Masada.

From the Galilee to Jerusalem

Shalom! We began the day with prayers. The hotel management provided us with a Torah to use, even though they are Orthodox and we're liberal and egalitarian. I'm proud of them for not letting their own religious standards prevent us from worshipping as we see fit. I don't think this would be the case everywhere in the Orthodox world. Here we are reading the Torah:





Today we toured Kibbutz Lavi, a religious Zionist communal settlement established in 1949. We stayed in their modern hotel, one of the kibbutz businesses, for the past two nights. Although the kibbutz system is shrinking, Kibbutz Lavi is thriving. One explanation is that Kibbutz Lavi has diversified its enterprises, which were once purely agricultural. Today, in addition to growing fruits and vegetables, producing milk, raising beef cattle and operating the hotel, Kibbutz Lavi is one of the leading producers of synagogue furniture. In fact, I learned today that the sanctuary seating at Temple Beth Rishon, where I'm interning, was made in Kibbutz Lavi. Here's a photo, taken in the furniture factory, of a computer-controlled machine that is used to cut and drill curved wooden chair parts acccording to specific patterns:

Next we drove to the ruins of Tzippori, also in the Galilee, where scholars believe that the Mishnah was completed, around the year 200 CE, by Rabbi Judah ha Nasi and his disciples. This ancient town, famous for its intricate mosaics, showed evidence of both Egyptian and Roman influence. The synagogue's mosaics depict the Temple service, the symbols of the months and seasons -- reflecting Judaism's unique hybrid lunar and solar calendar -- and the Biblical story of the binding of Isaac, which we will be studying in Jerusalem, near the site where the event is said to have taken place. Here's an example of the synagogue mosaics

From Tzippori, we headed south on Israel's main national highway towards Jerusalem. On our way, we passed through part of the West Bank and saw some very good looking Arab towns. I wonder how many Arab countries have homes for average people of the quality that we saw today. We also saw part of the security fence which divides most of the West Bank from Israel. While many people complain about this barrier, I understand that it has reduced the number of suicide bombing attacks on Israeli citizens.

As we approached Jerusalem, we sang Shir ha Ma-alot (Psalm 126) which begins "When God restored the habitation of Zion, we were like dreamers...Those who sow with tears will reap in joy..." When we arrived at the top of Mt. Scopus, home of Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University, we got out of the bus and looked out at the Old City. We finished singing "Jerusalem of Gold", which we had started on the bus, and then sang the Shehecheyanu prayer, with which we bless God for keeping us alive and enabling us to reach the special moments in our lives.

Here's the view of Jerusalem's Old City, as we first saw it:

We shared a bottle of grape juice, recited the blessing and thought about tomorrow morning, when we will recite our morning prayers at the Kotel, the Western Wall, visit the ancient City of David and explore the inside of King Hezekiah's water tunnel.

From Mystic Tsefat to the Lebanese Front Line

Shalom from the Galilee! Today was an amazing day!

We began with AJR-style prayers in a circle. There are ten of us, including our guide, so we had our own minyan in one of our hotel's smaller conference rooms. After breakfast we traveled to the Gallilean city of Tsefat (Safed), the home of the renaissance masters of Kabbalah. This was an auspicious day to visit, the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Isaac Luria, possibly the greatest teacher of Kabbalah--Jewish mysticism. We saw the site where he began the tradition of welcoming the "Shabbat bride" on Friday evenings, with the service that we now call Kabbalat Shabbat. We visited the synagogue, named in his honor, that now stands adjacent to the site, pictured below.

After visiting a Kabbalistic artist and doing a bit of Judaica shopping, we drove northeast to the Golan Heights. We crossed the Jordan River, which separates the Galilee from the Golan and came within two miles of the Syrian border. At the museum in Katzrin, a town of 8,000, we saw archeological evidence of a long Jewish history in the area. For example, the stone pictured below has a carved Hebrew inscription saying that this was the entrace to the academy of Rabbi Elazar Kaftor, a sage quoted in Pirke Avot, in the Mishnah, which was published around 200 CE.

Below is another one of many ancient Jewish artifacts found in the same area. Our guide, Dr. Peter Abelow, wanted us to see this evidence because of the current debate over the status of the Golan Heights. While political concerns may determine the eventual outcome, I think that the existence of an ancient Jewish history in the Golan Heights makes this situation very different from Israel's 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip, which had no such history.

From Katzrin we crossed back into the Galilee and drove north into the "finger of Galilee", a narrow strip of land sandwiched between Lebanon and the Golan Heights. We passed Kiryat Shmona, a norther border town, and followed the Lebanese border to Malkiya, an agricultural kibbutz located where Israel's border with Lebanon turns from east-west to north-south.

At Malkiya, we left our bus and were guided by Eitan, the kibbutz security chief and a fruit tree expert. He took us in a rickety old van into the kibbutz orchards where he invited us to pick and eat apples and nectarines right from the trees. We were literally just across a narrow security road from Lebanon. The Israeli army "sweeps" the road at regular intervals, so that any attempts by Hezbollah to cross it will be revealed by tracks in the sand from the road's shoulders.

Eitan took us into an Israeli defenive position overlooking the border. He showed us a Russian-made Katyusha rocket, pictured below, which hit the kibbutz during Israel's recent war with Lebanon, not far from where he and another kibbutz member were picking fruit to keep it from spoiling on the trees. Fortunately, the rocket didn't explode. Eitan believes that the rocket was intended to hit some of Israel's top military officers, who were visiting the kibbutz that day.

Eitan showed us the contrast between Malkiya's thriving orchards and the brown fields on much of the Lebanese side of the border. As he pointed out, this gave new meaning to the term "green line", which has been used to indicate the border between Israel and Lebanon. Eitan told us that the only crops thriving on the Lebanese side of the border are opium poppies and hashish, which Hezbollah is making the farmers grow for export, instead of producing food. Eitan said that he used to work with the Lebanese, who had an agricultural institution in old French buildings near the border, to help them grow fruit trees. When Hezbollah "took over" in southern Lebanon, they put an end to such contacts and destroyed the buildings, whose remains are still visible.

The highlight of our day was a visit with Eitan to an Israeli Army forward outpost overlooking the Lebanese border. A mostly Jewish unit had just left and turned over the base to a mostly Druze unit. The Druze are Arabs who are neither Moslem nor Christian, and have been a loyal minority within Israel since at least the early 1970's. A young Druze officer-candidate took us to a strategic vantage point and spoke with us at length about the border situation. He spoke as loyally and as proudly about his country, Israel, as any Jewish soldier could have. He said that he was there, on the border, to defend his family and all Israeli families and all of us visitors.

(For security reasons, Eitan asked us not to post photos of the soldiers or the base.)

Eitan and the officer-candidate told us that the Hezbollah forces continue trying to dig tunnels under the border road, through which to enter Israel. They said that the UN peacekeepers are doing nothing about this, but don't like it when Israel blows up the tunnels from the Israeli end. They showed us passenger cars in and near the opium fields, which suggest, along with other signs, that Hezbollah is planning a new attack. Knowing that we're rabbinical and cantorial students, they asked us to go back and tell our congregations what is happening on the border.

We were all deeply moved by this experience. We thanked the soldiers for their efforts and the risk that they're taking and gave Eitan cash to buy pizza in town and bring it back for them. We recited the Hebrew prayer for the Israeli Defense Forces just before leaving the base.

We ended our day with dinner in the town of Ilyona, near the ancient city of Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. We are in a restaurant which once served as the original secret headquarters, in the 1930's, of Ha Shomer, the defensive forces which became the Haganah, the Israeli army. We saw photos of David Ben Gurion and some of the other famous people whom he used to meet in the security bunker underneath this larger former farm house. Here's how it looks today:



Tomorrow morning, we'll tour Lavi, the religious Zionist kibbutz where we've been staying, and then go to Tzippori, where the Mishnah was completed. From Tzippori, we'll head to Jerusalem. Assuming no traffic problems, we should be able to make our first visit to the Western Wall.