6 wonderful crazy strenuous weeks
I've just spent 6 weeks walking over 500 kilometres from Kibbutz Saad by Aza up to Kibbutz Dan on the border with Lebanon. Unfortunately neither Daniel or I found much time to keep diaries. somehow, washing nappies, buying food, mending equipment, planning our next steps and playing with Hadas took up all our breaks.
I learnt a lot. About the layout of the land of Israel, her trees, her borders, her anmals and birds, the clouds, the people who live in the land and the people who hike here. I'd like to draw a lot of the memories but right now I have Hadas sleeping on my left arm and... let's not get complicated. - Even tho I did read within Janush Kajaqs book today where he quotes "he who cannot draw is illiterate" It's true, how i wish i could capture my memories in a few simple drawings rather than writing all these clumsy words.
water
To start with the most recent, circling around the top of the Galil where you look down the length of the Hula Valley and see layn out in front of you the Land of Israel. I saw clearly how the waters run down from the Hermon thru the rivers Snir, Dan, Banias and Iyon (we passed all but the Banias) and meet in the Hula Valley in the Jordan. Do you have any idea how huge the Hula Valley is, how when they say it used to be a swamp, they mean it used to have water in it, a lot of it. We stayed with a man from Kiryat Shmona who's father worked to dry up the swamp, he changed the landscape of Israel. Talking of water, we walked along the river Zivon and Dishon, these rivers only a few decades ago flowed with water all year round - in the summer too. The River Dishon is 35 km long. we saw one puddle about 10 feet long in the entire river and several notices apologetically explaining that because of pumping, these rivers no longer flow. How incredibly sad, within 100 years we've built a wonderful state but stopped the rivers flowing.
Incidentally, the hike alongside River Tzivon was one of the nicest bits of the entire trail, we recommend it for future hikes, it's even shady and cool.
Poppy as a "chalutz member" in Kfar Giladi, looking over the Hula Valley and Ramot Naftali
trees
One day as we strolled along towards Modiin, we saw some KKL workers picking up pine cones, examining them and tossing some into the back of their tender. what we asked, was their story? turned out they were collecting good pine cones for planting more pine trees in the land. but we had heard that KKL had made a big mistake planting the Pine and Australian Eucalyptus 60 years ago, that it was making the land too acidic and nothing els could grow around it. Turns out this is partially true - the pine needles are acidic, not the Eucalyptus tree, but that this is their intention. the idea is to give the Israeli people nice clear ground free of kotzim (prickly thistly bushes) with good shade to walk under and picnic within. I like their intentions and after several weeks of picking these trees to camp under I can be grateful to them. yet i couldn't help but feel disgruntled as we passed forest after forest of the same puny eucalyptus and pine trees with little to break their monotonous shade but a plaque every kilometre or so dedicating these puny trees and this grafitteed picnic table to "Abraham and Sarah Bloom from the childrem Izaak and Rivka, Queens, NY" . Until, we reached the Yarkon, there, I saw the original vision KKL members had clearly hoped for, huge beautiful, shady, Eucalyptus trees line that swallow up delicious amounts of CO2 from cvish 6 and wash it down with only semi polluted water from the Yarkon. Truly a wonderful surprise.
food
what did we eat? mainly tchina, wonderful raw ground seseme juice. when this is the basic ngredient of your diet for so many weeks for lunch and supper (we skipped breakfast in order to walk while it was still cool), you tend to get a little creative. Here's one of my favourite memories which had an interesting follow up.
one morning after a particularly hot tiring walk from kibbutz shaalavim to mitzpe modiin, we sat down, took out our food bags and bagan to organise the meal. Our usual method here was to take out everything we had that coud be considered edible and play. and so i found myself mixing chopped garlic into a mixture of date spread and tchina. I was just about to offer this interesting mixture on some bread to daniel when suddenly we hear "haauto shalanu gadol vyarok..." (our van is big and green), Tnuva, the country's leading diary's song! Now, you have to realise, I normally finish a pint of milk every 2 days and supplement this with cheeses and yoghurts. The least convinient food to buy when hiking is a pint of milk and a kilo of granola - I was craving a bowl of cereal and was convinced this truck had come round to supply me with just that. I ran round the corner to discover... an ice cream truck. slightly dissapointed I came back to report to Daniel. we decided that it wasn't every day an ice cream came all the way to the trail to meet us - we would support him, especially since he gave us a nice discount for being "shvilistim - people who hike the length of Israel". a few minutes later we sat back, each holding a melting ice cream (chocolate and strawberry) and a little pot of tchina-date mix flavoured with garlic which the flies were beginning to buzz towards with interest.
Dilemma! if we ate the ice cream first we'd lose the mix, is we ate the mix on bread first, the ice creams would melt away. there was only one option, we dipped the icecreams into the tchina-date-garlic mix and discovered a gourmet meal - mmm! actually the strawberry didn't go but the chocolate dipped in was just right.
People
just as we were wiping up this tasty mixture, two Beduoin girls came over offering cold Sprite and wanting hugs from Poppy. we sat with them awhile and exchanged stories. they and their extended family worked for KKL cleaning KKL picnic sites from Modiin to the mercaz. As a family they would arrive to the site, the mother would enter the little kitchen and cook up a huge meal (meat, 2 veg, potatoes, rice and more), the father, duaghter, son & his wife and a few more spread out to clean up after the weekend picnikers. at lunchtime they relaxed, the guys sitting on the floor spread around one of those huge Bedouin trays, the girls sitting under a seperate tree and the mother sitting watching until the end and only then partaking.
we asked the girls where they were from, Kfar Kassam said one, Beit Shemesh said the other. "we live in Rahat" said they. In confusion we looked from one to the other. One was typically dark skinned and slim. the other looked .. Ashkenazi - fair, pale skinned, plump. "Hitaslamti" said she. "Yofi " said I who typically replies in this fasion when strangers tell me their life stories and I not understanding, don't want to appear rude.
Then I caught up, she'd converted to Islam (it's not a word I hear every day), "oh, you did? how come?" turns out she was born in Russia and came to Israel at a young age. Born to a Jewish father and a Christian mother and brought up in a secular home, she felt no connection to any religion at all. At age 7 she was placed in a religious Jewish school in Beit Shemesh. Thouroughly confused she felt the need to connect to a religion somewhere. age 9 they were told to do projects by themselves, she ended up doing one on Islam and found it to be a "gentler religion than that portrayed by the world". At 17 she met her now husband thru a friend and they began to date, she told him she was interested in converting, she did so and they married. since then she's slowly bcome more reigious. her parents, in particular her father were a little upset but they've since made peace and frequently visit Rahat. In her area of Rahat there are 3 Jewish (half Jewish/half Christian) girls. without any questioning from me, she said she knows that there are Jewish - Arab mixed marriages which go bad, where the Jewish girl is beaten, but within her marriage and her 2 neighbours, this is not the case at all, they have good marriages.
the last Jew in Pekiin.
Pekiin is a town in the upper Galilee where they are proud to say they have Israel's four main religions living there. This is only just true. It is by the way the place you see in the 100 Nis bill. It's allegedly the place Rashbi lived in a cave for 12 years before going to die in Meron. It has mostly Druzim (60%, 30% christian, a bunch of Muslim families and one Jewess.) Margalit Zenati is 80 +, she's never been married, has no kids, and lives there by herself. why? becuase her family always have, from what we could work out, since the destruction of the second beit hamikdash. Her family are Cohenim - priests. The priests lived in Jerusalem doing Temple work until its destruction by the Romans when all the Jews were exiled from Jeruslem. Her family must have run away to the Galil in the north of Israel. There, they became farmers in the village of Pekiin. At some point Pekiin became a large dwelling place where Druzim and Jews lived peacefully side by side, Mishpachat Zenati amongst them. For 2000 years they continued to live there. In the 1940s there was a pogrom against the Jews of Pekiin, most of them fled. only two familes didn't. Mr Zenati sold a goat to a Druzi neighbour in exchange for protection. the Arabs prepared to burn him at stake but the Arab protectors intervened and he was freed on condition that he and his family leave Pekiin. They did so but returned only two years later, took up residence in their old house (which we went in) and continued their lives as farmers. We saw a letter written in 1948 by Margalit's family to "the New Israeli Defence Forces" asking for protection for the two families who had protected them, should the army decide to enter Pekiin.
60 years later Margalit is still there. There were other Jews living there but in 2007, the local Arabs burnt the Jews' houses. Margalit is visuted by many many tourists who come to see her and the ancient synagogue and family home. She gives blessings (she is a bat cohen) and sometimes she and this other guy do a autobiographical performance about her family's history. We sat with them and ate a delicious lunch se had cooked - usually she goes to the nearby old age centre but we were lucky, that day she'd stayed home and been up at 6 to cook 'a little extra in case guests turn up' - we were the unexpected guests.
Her best friend is a Druzi woman - yet she wont eat this woman's food because she's scared she'll be poisoined. however at the woman's request she will sit and read her tehillim. she also prays for various arab neighbours at their request since she's known to be a pious woman.
unsurpisingly she does't have any deeds to the house, she's currently working with friends and lawyers to get them. Her nephew has agreed to come to the house every day in the future and continue the Jewish/ Zenati presence of Pekiin.
these are of course only a few of the many many stories to be told. it's already 4 am, i'm gonna be horrible to my poor family tomorrow, i must sleep. please comment, i'll try to write more soon as well as put all the pictures up