[The entry for Haifa on Wednesday, 15 December (the last entry of Part 2, posted on 14 July), was the last one in my journal for this trip to Israel and Egypt. As I stated in my general introduction (see Part 1, 11 July), I don’t remember what interrupted me, but I have an inkling that it was a simple explanation: I got behind and, intending to catch up as soon as I could, I kept getting further and further backed up until it was too hard to pick up again.
[Why I didn’t just start anew when I got to Cairo, I can’t guess. I just didn’t, and now I have only the itineraries supplied by the tour leaders (one for each country). I did make small notations on the itinerary sheets, and I will try to reconstruct some of my memories of each stop.
[Fortunately, some of the sights on this trip were very memorable and still resonate in my mind: the Dead Sea, Masada, Jericho, the Western (aka: Wailing) Wall, the Cairo Sheraton Hotel, Giza (the Great Pyramids and the Sphynx), Abu Simbel, the Nile cruise (feluccas), and Luxor and Karnak.
[As readers can see, I’m changing the post’s font to distinguish what I write from here on from what I transcribed earlier from my journal, written 38½ years ago. (I will continue to put comments concerning facts that I wouldn’t have known in 1982, such as historical events that occurred after then, in brackets and italics.)]
Northern Israel – Wednesday, 15 December (contd.)
On that same tour of the Northern District of Israel (see Part 2), we stopped at Kibbutz Gonen, within the shelling range of the Syrian guns on the Golan before 1967. Started in 1951, Gonen is a farming kibbutz, with corn fields, citrus orchards, and an artificial fish pond.
(Most kibbutzim, a concept of socialized collective farming that predated the founding of the state, were originally food-producers. Later, particularly in the ’80s during the prime ministership of Menachem Begin [1913-92] and his Likud—Israel’s conservative party—administration [1977-83], some kibbutzim turned to manufacturing of various kinds. Gonen, for instance, tried to launch a wood-products factory, but it failed.)
To get the farm started, the first kibbutzniks at Gonen drained the malarial swamp of Lake Hula and pulled up the papyrus overgrowth to clear the land for crops. They also fought off Syrian attacks and defended the kibbutz from terrorist raids.
Jerusalem – Thursday, 16 December
We left Haifa for Jerusalem and visited Caesarea, the Roman-era port (formally called Caesarea Maritima) on the Mediterranean, about 26 miles south of Haifa and 35 miles north of Tel Aviv.
(About 1¼ miles north of the ruins of the ancient city is the modern town of Caesarea, or Kesariya in Hebrew, once an Arab town called Qaysaria. It was established in 1952 on the site of a 1884 village founded by Muslim immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was in turn conquered in 1948 by the Palmach, the elite fighting arm of the Haganah.)
[The Palmach unit that took Caesarea in ’48 was led by Yitzhak Rabin (1922-95), the future Israeli defense minister (1984-90; 1992-95) and prime minister (1992-95). He was assassinated in 1995 by a right-wing Jewish extremist who opposed the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (1993; 1995).]
The Caesarea ruins, which date back to the rein of King Herod I (ca. 72-4 or 1 BCE; reined 37/36-4/1 BCE), have been excavated in the 1950s and 1960s [and was incorporated into the Caesarea National Park in 2011]. It was Herod’s capital, named after the ruler of Rome at the time, Caesar Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE; reigned 27 BCE-14 CE).
(I made a notation on my Israel itinerary that we saw an “army camp” on this outing and the note was inserted right after “Caesarea,” but I don’t remember going to any kind of military base. [I tried to find a mention of one associated with Caesarea on the Internet, but got no hits. The closest I came was a photo of a Palyam base there in 1948. The Palyam was the seagoing arm of the Palmach. Both Palmach and Palyam, by the way, are syllabic acronyms (see Part 2), for Plugot Maḥatz (‘strike force’) and Plugat HaYam (‘sea company’), respectively.])
We continued on to Jerusalem to tour the New City, the western portion of the city, known as West Jerusalem. Though the City of David (the oldest part of the ancient city) is thousands of years old, with dwellings from as long ago as 3000 BCE, the modern city dates only to the late Ottoman period, the 19th century. It is officially Israel’s capital, though no other countries recognized it as such, nor did the United Nations.
[The U.S. congress declared in 1995 that the embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem within five years, but every president until Donald Trump delayed that action. In December 2017, Trump ordered the move and the new U.S. Embassy was opened in May 2018. All other embassies remain in Tel Aviv or the suburbs of Jerusalem.]
Nonetheless, all of Israel’s principal government buildings (save the defense ministry, which is in Tel Aviv) are in Jerusalem’s New City.
On our way into Jerusalem, we made a stop, however. The two children traveling with their parents (mentioned early in Part 1) were in Israel for a very specific and important purpose: the boy was going to celebrate his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall, possibly the holiest site in all Judaism, and his sister was having her bat mitzvah nearby.
The rest of the tour group, when we learned of this event and that we’d been invited to attend, decided we had to get the boy and his sister a token gift from all of us. I was delegated to be the gift-buyer, and we decided on a pair of mezuzah necklaces, and Simon knew a place with a large selection.
It was a huge market on the outskirts of Jerusalem with stalls for all kinds of tchotchkes including souvenirs, costume jewelry, and some nice pieces. It also offered good cover for my errand as the bus let everyone off for “souvenir shopping” while I took care of the bar and bat mitzvah presents. The b’nai mitzvah family didn’t need to know what I was up to! (B'nai mitzvah is the plural of bar mitzvah or for rites for mixed-gender groups.)
I’ll say more about these ceremonies in a bit, but I think a word or two about mezuzot (plural of mezuzah; the Hebrew word means ‘doorpost’) is pertinent here. A mezuzah is a small parchment scroll on which is written two biblical passages. The first is Deuteronomy 6:4-9, the Shema (“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One, , , .”); the second passage is Deuteronomy 11:13-21.
According to tradition (Deuteronomy 6:9 – “And thou shalt write [the words of God] upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates”), the mezuzah is mounted on the door frame at the entrance to a Jewish home as well as at the entrance to each of the interior rooms except for bathrooms, closets, storerooms, and laundry rooms (because they’re not living spaces).
(The biblical passage also says: “And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be frontlets between thine eyes.” This command pertains to the phylacteries worn by some Jews, mostly Orthodox and Heredim, when praying. These are small, leather boxes called tefillin containing Torah verses which are strapped to the arms and on the forehead.)
In a mezuzah, the tube-like case for the parchment can be made of just about anything—metal, wood, ceramic, clay—and in any style. Present-day Israel is what I’d described as hyper-modern (possibly in response to the ancientness of the inherited surroundings) in almost all its style applications such as architecture, art, and design, so many of the mezuzot made there are starkly contemporary—often very attractive little pieces of modern art.
The mezuzah is meant to protect the household. It is a spiritual representation and there are rules for their creation, mounting, display, and maintenance; properly-made mezuzot are dubbed “kosher” (yes, just like correctly-prepared food). The necklaces and pendants that some Jews wear are not kosher. They are, in a way, a symbol of a symbol, but without any real liturgical significance (though wearing one may provide comfort).
(We had to hope that neither b’nai mitzvah child on our tour already had a mezuzah necklace—we couldn’t very well ask and maintain the surprise. The fact that we didn’t see a mezuzah around the neck of either child was our sole evidence, but we apparently guessed right.)
Many Jews wear a mezuzah pendant, especially young Jews. It’s a common gift for a Jewish child from a parent or grandparent. I don’t know where or when the custom of wearing a mezuzah necklace started, but they seemed to have become popular in the United States after World War II.
It’s my understanding that the impetus for the practice was the visibility among assimilated Jewish children of the crosses their Christian schoolmates often wore. (Other similar adornments that appeared at about the same time are the Star of David and the chai, the Hebrew word that means ‘life,’ ‘alive,’ or ‘living.’)
The Star of David (Magen David; the six-pointed star or hexagram), which is the symbol of modern Israel much as the eagle or five-pointed star (pentagram) is the symbol of the United States, is a relatively new Jewish symbol. It dates no further back than the 17th century (though we saw the ruins of an ancient synagogue decorated with the figure where it was merely a geometric design).
The oldest symbol of Judaism is the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum that can be seen in many synagogues and was used in the Temple in Jerusalem. It is the modern symbol of the city of Jerusalem and there is a 14-foot bronze menorah sculpture, called the Knesset Menorah (1955), in front of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) building in the city. Inside the Knesset, the seats of Plenary Hall (the legislative chamber; the Knesset is a unicameral legislature) are arranged in the form of the menorah.
The more familiar eight- (or often nine-) branched lamp used at Hanukkah is properly called a Hanukkah menorah or a hanukkiah. I learned this in Israel, by the way. (The ninth candle holder, often separate from the eight celebratory lights, is for the shammes [‘attendant’ or ‘caretaker’], the candle used to light the other eight because the ritual prohibits igniting the [holy] Hanukkah lights directly from a match or other [profane] device.)
One more explanation. Jews will tell you that there is only one Temple—despite the names used for many Jewish congregations around the world. It was in Jerusalem. Actually, there were two buildings in the same spot, the Temple Mount (which was surrounded by the retaining wall, the remnants of which are now known as the Western or Wailing Wall).
The First Temple was built by King Solomon, completed in 957 BCE, and destroyed in the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II (ca. 642-562 BCE; reigned 605-562 BCE) of the Second Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Second Temple was called for by Cyrus II of Persia (ca. 600-530 BCE; reigned 559-530 BCE) and completed around 516 BCE; it stood until destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE during another siege of Jerusalem during the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE; see also the visit to Masada below).
(Throughout its history, Jerusalem has been besieged 23 times, from the Siege of Jebus under King David [ca. 1035-970 BCE; reigned ca. 1010-970 BCE] in 1010 BCE, mentioned in 2 Samuel 5 and 1 Chronicles 11, to the Battle for Jerusalem from 29 November 1947 to 18 July 1948 during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Capture of East Jerusalem by Israel on 7 June 1967 during the Six-Day War.)
All other Jewish houses of worship are, strictly speaking, synagogues. Israelis use the Hebrew term beit knesset (‘house of assembly,’ which is appropriate as the Greek-derived ‘synagogue’ means ‘assembly’—and yes, that’s the same word as the name of the Israeli parliament) and in the U.S., the mostly Ashkenazi Jews frequently use the Yiddish word shul—even those who don’t actually speak Yiddish—which means ‘school’ (because a synagogue is also a place to study Torah, especially among Orthodox and Haredi [extremely Orthodox] Jews).
After a quick drive through Jerusalem’s New City, we checked into the Migdal Eilon Hotel. It was a high-rise hotel, but the hotel wasn’t the only occupant of the building. In fact, this was the first hotel I’d ever been in whose lobby was above the street level; the lower floors were residences or offices—I never checked to see—and the Migdal Eilon (migdal means ‘tower’ in Hebrew) was above that.
When we got to the lobby to check in and get our room assignments and keys, I was also amused to find a TV on and tuned to the then-new show Fame, which had only started in January. Somehow it seemed incongruous.
As I said earlier, Israel is an adamantly modern country in terms of style. You might expect that in Tel Aviv, which, after all, was only a little over 70 years old in 1982. But even in ancient Jerusalem, the new buildings are starkly contemporary in architectural style.
The main difference seemed to be that the new structures in old Jerusalem (like the Migdal Eilon) were made of the same Jerusalem stone, a pale limestone, that has been used for construction since ancient times. So the style of the New City may have been different from the structures in the Old City, but they still blended in.
(In addition to being “adamantly modern,” as I characterize it, Israeli society is also resolutely casual in terms of demeanor. I’m sure that in official circumstances, Israelis, especially office-holders and dignitaries, comport themselves with a certain level of ceremony, but on the streets and in the shops and most daily situations, Israelis just don’t bother.
(Almost no one wears a tie and jacket or the female equivalent; the usual street dress, even for cops and soldiers, is an open-necked, short-sleeved shirt. After all, Israel is mostly a desert so it’s nearly always hot!
(This attitude extends to their homes—so far as I could tell. Hotel rooms and the residents’ accommodations at the aliya center conformed to this standard as well. I won’t call them “spartan” or “austere,” but they were all no larger than necessary—no ostentatious expanse of space—simply decorated and utilitarian.
(We saw
two of Ben-Gurion’s homes, his house in Tel Aviv when he was prime minister and
his retirement residence on a kibbutz, and they were each both modest and
without frills—despite Ben-Gurion’s status as prime minister and founding
father of the nation.)
[This is the halfway point for the Israeli portion of my journey. Part 4 of the journal/chronicle of the trip will be published on 20 July. As I said in Part 1, I’ll be posting sections of the account every three days.
[The last
installment for Israel will be Part 6, scheduled to be posted on 26 July. The first section for the Egyptian sojourn
should come out on 29 July. I hope all ROTters
will follow along with my recollections of this terrific voyage and keep up
with my progress. Depending on the
breadth of your own experience, there may be surprises along the way.]
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