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Tuesday
We had planned to take a jeep ride through the Golan on Wednesday; on our way to K'far Giladi Monday night, our guide (consulting with my rabbi) decided to move that to Tuesday to dodge heavy rains that were supposed to start Tuesday afternoon and continue on Wednesday, (Aside: several people have thanked us for bringing the rain. Of course they can't seriously think that, but it points out just how important rain is here. And it's ironic that we might see snow here, while we hadn't seen it in Pittsburgh before leaving. (I mean snow that survives impact with the ground, not flurries.))
This didn't work, however. We woke Tuesday to sometimes-heavy rains, so they hastily made other plans. Some people were feeling worn down from the pace of the trip, so we delayed departure another hour and then had a somewhat-lighter day.
Our first stop was the Na'ot factory, which is on a kibbutz. (We later learned that while the kibbutzim do still do agriculture, they've all had to find supplementary income. That kind of socialism doesn't work any more, at least here.) There were several other buses there when we arrived; apparently this is everyone's rainy-day stop. We couldn't tour the factory, but we visited the store and that made people happy. :-) (Yes, their shoes are less expensive here than in the US.)
We then continued south past Kiryat Shemona and through the Hulah Valley. Somewhere in there we passed what I'm pretty sure they said was Tel Megido; is that a "tel tale"? :-) Then, on to Ts'fat, which has more transliterations than I think I've seen for any one Hebrew word before (S'fat, Safed, Zefat...).
Ts'fat, like Jerusalem, is up in the mountains, about 3000 feet above sea level. It was cold, rainy, and foggy when we were there. The road up is narrow and the streets there are very narrow; our bus driver got several well-deserved rounds of applause. (Personally, I think one car deserved to get squished for parking there...) The town was founded in the 1500s by Jews who'd been expelled from Spain and Portugal, and it's where Jewish mysticism really developed.
Cars don't fit in the inner city, and even if they did the many flights of stairs would be a problem. The streets are all stone (which can be slick in the rain) and the gutter (about a foot and a half wide) runs down the center. When it's raining, as it was today, people sometimes jump from side to side over -- or sometimes through -- the gutter to dodge other pedestrians. The town is also very hilly, so there wasn't much standing water in the gutters. There are many steps; when we came out at the end we walked up three or four flights to get to a road big enough for our bus.
Our first stop was the Abuhav synagogue, which was built in the 1500s and rebuilt to the original design after a 19th-century earthquake. It's beautiful and full of symbolism. Because it's Sefardi the bimah is in the center of the room, and elevated by seven steps. (Or maybe it was eight; both numbers are significant in different ways. All numbers in this place are significant.) There was a lot of blue, in the synagogue and generally in Ts'fat; the color is considered mystically significant, the color of heaven.
I bought a packet of postcards and noticed that two were photos from the torah scroll that the founding rabbi wrote. I assume they chose passages that don't include the name of God; I didn't see any occurrences on a quick scan. I was curious whether I could read either; on one I've failed (so far) but the first several lines of the other were very clear to me. Too clear, and I figured out why: I chanted that passage on Rosh Hashana three months ago. :-)
After that we had some time to shop in the artists' quarter. Wow, the people who told me that small merchants here are pushy were right! If you pause to look at something in a window, they pounce and try to pull you into the shop. Everything there is haggling, and they're pretty aggressive. I'm guessing that their opening gambits are about double what an experienced shopper ends up paying. I didn't get the opportunity to observe a pro.
My rabbi had mentioned a candle shop he always visits, but for some reason (now forgotten) I didn't follow him there immediately. Later I decided to find it on my own; he said it was nearby and this can't be that hard, right? After wandering around a little I decided to ask someone for directions, and I had my first real Hebrew failure. I figured I know directions, numbers, "street"; I should be able to do this, right? But I don't know "steps" and some other words she used, and after I asked her to say it more slowly and I still didn't get it, she asked me (in English) if I speak English. Oh well. I didn't mean to be a burden. I'm told that people appreciate it when Americans at least try to operate in the local languages -- makes us seem less arrogant. On the other hand, it's probably a hassle for them.
I've noticed that sometimes conversations here meander from Hebrew to English and back again -- a sentence or just a fragment or sometimes just a word. I haven't been able to derive a pattern for it; it doesn't seem to be that harder concepts always get expressed in the speaker's first language, though that certainly is part of it.
We ate lunch at a small food court in the city -- the options were pizza, falafel, Chinese, and schnitzl. I'm not sure if I've ever had schnitzl and everything was kosher, so I did that. Mmm. I could eat more of that. :-)
Then we headed to Carmi'el, which is Pittsburgh's sister city. (I'm not sure who hands out sister cities or how.) Our first stop was the children's village, which is essentially foster care but on a community rather than just an individual basis. They create families, with half a dozen (or more) foster kids and a set of parents and their own kids. We visited briefly with a family of eleven kids -- three their own and eight foster. The village has a supplementary school, library, some sports areas, a couple internet-connected computers, and maybe some other stuff. The families have small houses, considering -- an 8x10 bedroom has two kids and the living/dining area isn't that big. On the other hand, they have boys' and girls' bathrooms and the one we looked into had four sinks and several showedr stalls. The kids all have (rotating) chores in their families, partly because it would be crazy for the parents otherwise and partly to teach them life skills. When kids turn 16 they move into the "teenager houses", without parents, so they can learn to live on their own in a supportive environment. A few kids, after doing their army service, still have no place to go and they come back to special quarters in the village. (There are, I think, six such people currently, and about 275 kids.) The village is an interesting concept, and apparently they do fairly well at producing well-adjusted kids. (I didn't hear any actual statistics.)
We then visited the absorption center for new immigrants. This particular one has special support for Ethiopians, Russians, and the B'nei Manesheh from one part of India. The center seems to focus on children (of all ages), though they said they also serve adults. Some of the students performed songs and dances for us; I wonder how often they're called on to do these shows. Maybe they enjoy it; I just couldn't shake the "on display" vibe.
We had dinner in the Misgav, which is a group of villages in the suburbs of Carmi'el. This one was called, I think, Derech haTanach b'teva, the path of bible and nature. They had some suitable crafts activities planned for us, and we were going to help plant a tree, but the rain interfered with that. Insteead (or maybe this was planned all along), after dinner one of their residents taught us the basics of playing the doumbek. (Except he didn't call it a doumbek; I forget the word he used.) They had cushions and drums set out for people and he started by just playing; I tried to watch him to see what he was doing and his hands were moving fast enough to blur. But after he'd gotten our attention he stopped that and taught us what he was doing. I had a lot of fun.
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I don't remember you mentioning Beit Shearim?
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Woman in parking lot with stereotypical American midwest beehive hairdo and stereotypical American midwest accent, standing with her husband, calling past us to another American tourist couple coming down from the tel: "Is it worth it?"
Response: "Nah, it's just a bunch of old rocks."
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Second reaction: on the other hand, maybe it's better to keep as many of those sorts of people away from these sites, to avoid disrupting the people who actually get it...
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We didn't go to Beit Shearim (unless it has another name?).
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