Our Pesach Travels

We spent the Seder and the first day of Pesach in Jerusalem. We were joined by three friends who are living in Cairo and made their own "exodus" from Egypt to Israel for the holiday - our friend Lindsay, and her friends Liz and Derek. The five of us spent the following week travelling throughout the north of Israel. Here are some pictures from our journey:


Derek and I engaging in a bit of interfaith Torah study on the second night of Pesach, before we started travelling


Katy, Liz, and Lindsay at Megiddo ("Armageddon"), our first stop as we drove north from Jerusalem towards Haifa.

In Haifa we were graciously hosted for the evening by our friend Yehuda and his family. They provided us with a great tour of the city, fantastic food, and lots of interesting conversation about the relationship between education and democracy and the role of spirituality and a vision of the good life in schools (the topics that Yehuda's father, a philosopher of education, gets to think about professionally).

Myself, Yehuda, Lindsay, Derek and Liz in Haifa, high up on Mount Carmel looking down on the port below

Katy, Lindsay, Liz, Yehuda, and Derek in Haifa with the Bahai Gardens ascending up Mount Carmel in the background

Katy, Lindsay, and Derek at the Bahai Gardens the following morning

Katy and I near the site on believed by Catholics to be the site of Elijah's Cave

We hiked down Mount Carmel to the site accepted by Jewish and Muslim tradition to be Elijah's Cave, and, after a lunch by the shore, took these cable cars back up to our rental car.

We travelled north from Haifa to the city of Akko. The picture here is by the city's crusader-era walls.

Katy and Lindsay in the underground crusader city at Akko

We also stopped by Peki'in, a Druze village and the alleged site of the cave in which Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (2nd century C.E.) and his son lived for a period of thirteen years in an attempt to escape from the world, an experience from which they eventually learned the profound lesson that a Jew is obligated to bring holiness into the material world rather than retreat from it.

We spent the next few nights in Tsefat, and used it as a base for exploring the Galilee and Golan Heights regions. In this picture we're enjoying breakfast at Cafe Baghdad in Tsefat, where we enjoyed multiple good kosher-for-Passover meals.

Our five-person travelling group at our hotel in Tsefat

Overlooking the Jordan River, at Gadot, an area best known for being the area that was constantly shelled by Syrian forces before Israel's capture of the Golan Heights in 1967

We briefly stopped by the "Mei Eden" (Waters of Eden) spring-water-production plant in Katzrin

We spent much longer at the Golan Winery in Katzrin ("the city of water and wine"), which was possibly the educational highlight of our trip. We learned a tremendous amount about the process of harvesting grapes and producing wines of all sorts. The Golan area is well-suited for wine production because of its high altitude, volcanic soil, and the range of climates within a small region that allow for the production of a wide variety of wines. In addition to learning about the modern facilities for wine production, we spent some time focusing on the history of wine production in Israel, the art of treading grapes in pre-modern wine production (done barefoot, so as not to crush the seeds and impart a bitter taste to the wine), and the seasonal cycle of wine production in the land of Israel (with the grape harvest traditionally beginning in the late summer on Tu B'Av and ending around the time of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur).

Also at Katzrin, we visited the reconstructed site of a Jewish village from Mishnaic times. Here Katy and I are doing our best to look like Jews from the third century C.E.

Katy inside one of the reconstructed houses at Katzrin. Being at this site was also a highly educational experience, as we were able to get some insights into the realia of the texts that we're reading all the time. We also had the pleasure of seeing a short play and a fascinating movie there about the relationship between Rabbi Meir, one of the principal transmitters of Jewish oral tradition, and his excommunicated teacher Elisha Ben Abuya; the film highlighted the fact that Meir continued to learn from his teacher even after Elisha had rejected Jewish observance altogether, and held up this example as a source of hope that Haredi ("ultra-Orthodox) Jews could begin to respect and learn from the secular majority of the State of Israel.

The ruins of the ancient synagogue at Chorazin, built of black basalt like the rest of the structures in the town. This was one of the many ancient synagogues that we visited on our trip.

By the Sea of Galilee (on the road to Tiberias)

In Tiberias, looking down towards the tomb of Rabbi Hiyya and his sons. Beyond that is the city center and the Sea of Galilee.
The two of by the waterfall at Banyas, in the northern Golan The spring at Banyas

At the Temple of Pan at Banyas (also called "Pan-yas," originally named after Pan). This site was originally dedicated to Pan by the Greeks who came to the land of Israel in the third century B.C.E. Evidence of sacrifices to Zeus, Asclepius, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Artemis, Dionysus, and other gods were also found here. It eventually became part of a larger Roman sanctuary that continued to exist into the Byzantine era.

Nearby Kiryat Shemoneh; the snow-capped Mount Hermon, on Israel's northern border, is in the background

Katy at Tzippori, one of the centers of Jewish life throughout the early centuries of the common era. We spent our time there exploring the archaeological site, which includes a large number of well-preserved mosaics such as a villa floor focusing on the cult of Dionysus and a very interesting synagogue floor featuring Biblical scenes and a zodiac. In the background of the picture above you can see the areas to the northwest of Tzippori including Resh Lakish Forest on the left (presumably where the rabbi Resh Lakish spent his time as a bandit before repenting and becoming one of the most important rabbis of the 3rd century C.E.), and, in the distance, Mount Carmel and Haifa.

At the Mount of the Beatitudes ("Har Ha-Osher" in Hebrew). In this picture you can see two of Israel's seven species -- date palms and olive trees -- growing on the mountain.