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".