Trip to Galilee
Sunday we went on a tiyul of our Hebrew Ulpan with our dynamic teacher Tzipi Kaufman along the Galilee coast, stopping at several places. Our first stop was a hill very close to Kibbutz Galed, where Naomi lived as a child. The hill is famous for being covered by beautiful pink cyclamen flowers, in Hebrew kalaniot. It is a well known beauty spot, and I was surprised that the hill is not open but quite thickly forested. I wondered how our lives would have turned out if Naomi's parents had decided to stay in the kibbutz rather than leave for a town near Haifa and then back to England when her father was ill. Such are the chances that determine our lives.
From there we drove to Acco (Acre) where we visited a Tunisian synagogue that is completely covered inside, floor, walls and ceilings by mosaics, showing the history of the Bible, of Israel and everything Jewish. It is quite remarkable and one wonders why. It is a small building down a narrow side street, otherwise quite unremarkable.
North of Acco is the kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, the Ghetto Fighter's kibbutz, where we visited the museum. As well as the ususal museum exhibits showing the history of the Holocaust (Shoah) and the Warsaw Ghetto, they have some modern exhibits, including one that displays letters (in Hebrew and Roman script) on a wall that randomly form the names of Jewish communities that were destroyed by the Germans during the Shoah. Another is a separate wing about the one and a half million Jewish children who were deliberately murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators throughout Europe during the Shoah. Words fail me.
Finally we drove to the northermost point along the coast at Rosh Hanikra, at the border with Lebanon, where we had a Purim sing-song and a snack and then drove back home.
It was a pleasant trip, and we had been in most of those places at one time or another in the past, but it is something that Israelis like to do, go out and see our Land. We are the lucky generation to have redeemed our precious Land and we want to go about in it as well as inhabit it.
From there we drove to Acco (Acre) where we visited a Tunisian synagogue that is completely covered inside, floor, walls and ceilings by mosaics, showing the history of the Bible, of Israel and everything Jewish. It is quite remarkable and one wonders why. It is a small building down a narrow side street, otherwise quite unremarkable.
North of Acco is the kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, the Ghetto Fighter's kibbutz, where we visited the museum. As well as the ususal museum exhibits showing the history of the Holocaust (Shoah) and the Warsaw Ghetto, they have some modern exhibits, including one that displays letters (in Hebrew and Roman script) on a wall that randomly form the names of Jewish communities that were destroyed by the Germans during the Shoah. Another is a separate wing about the one and a half million Jewish children who were deliberately murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators throughout Europe during the Shoah. Words fail me.
Finally we drove to the northermost point along the coast at Rosh Hanikra, at the border with Lebanon, where we had a Purim sing-song and a snack and then drove back home.
It was a pleasant trip, and we had been in most of those places at one time or another in the past, but it is something that Israelis like to do, go out and see our Land. We are the lucky generation to have redeemed our precious Land and we want to go about in it as well as inhabit it.
posted by Jack Cohen at 6:40 PM
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