This is “Golan Heights I” (one) because I trust that there will be more blog entries about the Golan. Thank you, Syria, lover of all minorities, for generously giving us back this beautiful land with Jewish history past and present.

Took a trip up there primarily to go to Yehudiya. The Syrians called it “Arabia” so when Israel received it back, it was renamed to “Yehudiya.” Along the way we stayed in Katzrin and took side trips to Gamla and Tzvat.

Yehudiya Introduction

Having four waterfalls that I know of, the hikes go in mainly two directions from the parking lot. Getting a yearly pass to Israeli parks Is highly recommended – saves entry time, more likely to visit more sites since each additional one is “free”, and you feel like a VIP.

As with most Israeli parks, there’s a concession stand with necessities like suntan lotion, hats, drinks, and snacks along with friendly guides at the entrance who tell you what to do and what not to do.

To do: bring 3 liters of water per person.
To not do: come back after 5pm. If you do, we pull our special forces out of Syria and send them with a helicopter to find you.

That’s about it. Bring water. Come back on time.

Starting from the parking lot / information booth / concession stand place with a “water fountain” that they call a “cooler” and think that’s a Hebrew-originated word, walk past some ancient ruins of houses with excellent brick work. The houses date from about 300 to 500 CE and you can really see the size of them, and often rock fences around them showing their ‘property size’. Roofs seemingly were not stone as they don’t exist anymore.

How did they get water up to the houses when the river is quite a way below? I guess they made a lot of trips down there to do laundry and had a little girl named Cosette (real name: Euphrasie).

Yehudiya Hiking

The really amazing hikes are on the left with three waterfalls – right now, you have to go to the right side to get to a single waterfall.

On one side of the highway a long trail takes you to three waterfalls in a row with swimming or hang-along-the-edge of rock walls to get from one to the other. Or – go up and down steep climbs from one to the next. Unfortunately, while Syria graciously decided to give us the land in ’67, in ’25 their brothers in Lebanon thought it was a good idea fire gun powder in that direction until they checked their beepers. At the time of this writing, you can’t go down the steep paths to the waterfalls and can only look from above.

You can, however, go “the other way”, under the road and then directly to a single waterfall (a mafal) or a longer route through the riverbed until reaching the waterfall where you must climb back up the hill and then down again to the other side of the falls.

Thinking I was going along the rock walls, I bought fingerless gloves from a misnamed “outdoor” sporting store that was actually in a mall. In America, no way I’d have purchased such

gloves anywhere but Costco or Amazon. In Israel, while there is less of selection, the selection you do have is usually of a high quality. With one type of glove to choose from in one color for my size – I bought those. These gloves nicely protected my dainty hands and long skinny fingers which are better adapted for typing than being scratched by jutting out rocks baking in the sun.

Taking the river path, after 700 meters of walking through rocks of unknown sizes, shapes, depths, and placement between fish and thorns (there’s no way they’d have this in America) it’s time to climb up the hill out of there and back down to the waterfall on the other side.

The waterfall empties into a cool and refreshing pool that deserves a panoramic photograph – these will have to do as I didn’t bring my phone into the water, though I did have an airtight pouch for my phone. Highly recommended so you can take pictures. Bought it off Amazon years ago.

All in all, with a swim, preparation, walking back, and so on, the hike was about four hours. You can skip the river and go directly to the falls to be quicker, or be like other people who brought hammocks and stoves while leaving their Sterno candles in the narrow walking path near steep rocks with no railings and all sorts of other stuff you’d never see in coddle-me America, the land of lawyers and whiny people. Israelis are certainly not whiny – it’s the Peltzman Effect in action … when people feel safer, they take greater risks and are more likely to get hurt. It’s surprising how little people get hurt on hikes in Israel … and how much more fun they are because you feel you could get hurt.

Katzrin – ‘capital’ of the Golan

Kazrin is the second largest city in the Golan with a population of under 10,000 though it seems far larger. While it’s understandable to me that many Israelis wouldn’t want to migrate to a far periphery of the country (Israel’s ‘outback’ or version of ‘Sussex County’ New Jersey), it makes for quite a chill place. Being a modern city (well, modern in that it was re-founded in 1977 after the Jewish town was destroyed by an earthquake in 749 CE), the layout is nicely thought out.

The central area of the city is a chill hangout for the younger-than-average population as well as the location of city buildings, restaurants, shops, offices, and what have you. Certainly, seems like a city bigger than the population is as it supports about six falafel places, three pizza places, and a Thai restaurant because … sure, why not? Every eatery I saw was “kosher Mehadrin” by the local Rabbinate. Almost everyone spoke English. Everyone was friendly.

The central ‘square’ which is very large with restaurants and shops around
A bridge from the central area to the residential area
Playground
Little mall
Residential path – the apartment buildings are around the outside with parking outside of that
Near the main everything area

The shuls are not far away in the residential areas (basically, across the street) where people live – they vary from “which woman wants to hold the Torah this week?” to “Torani – here’s our large beis medrash outside the shul to fit everyone”. The residential design is also quite nice … apartment buildings face inwards towards inner parks where dogs walk their owners without leashes and parking lots are around the periphery.

Having gotten out of my system staying in various shaped tents (including yurts), we decided it was time for a good night’s sleep. Booked the cheapest room around because, hey, only one night and I don’t need fancy. Just need a bed. The bed was really comfortable though for the price the amenities include only some working light bulbs and one mostly empty hand soap (no soap in shower). He fixed a leaking pipe he noticed when we entered – so there’s that.

The guy in the next room blasted good music which was okay until it was … well into the hours where the clock switches back to single digits. This was followed by blasting television both of which were shorter than the before, during, and after, smoking of cigarettes. Not naming the name of the place because of loshon hora though I will say the hotel manager was extremely nice and friendly … there’s just no room service at 4am to complain and the guy in the next room was seemingly, in addition to being a chain smoker, deaf to the music, TV, and my knocking.

Katzrin Archeological Museum and Gamla

Near everything else in Katzrin is a museum with artifacts from the region. It’s small. The highlight for me was the movie about Gamla – which is Aramaic for Camel. Situated on a hilltop between two rivers overlooking the Kineret lake, a Jewish town on a camel-hump mountain thrived until the Roman conquest in roughly 68 CE. I’d seen Gamla before and it’s kind of like, “hey, there’s a mountain.” See the movie first and then you know what you’re looking at.

Gamla: the Kinneret is in the background

Josephus describes how this very tower was destroyed and what’s left of it

Gamla is about a 20 minute drive away from the movie/museum (perhaps having a movie at a national park would mess with the fung shway (I can spell that how I want) of Israel’s natural sites). After the destruction, the city remained untouched for 1900 years! Nothing was built over it and Josephus’s descriptions appear to be 100% accurate down to where a tower was and how it was destroyed from beneath in the middle of the night. The bottom still remains along with stones fallen around it. The walls, the ammunition used … all there, matching the description. There’s a replica catapult on the next hill showing you exactly from where they shot.

Catapult replica placed where it was, according to Josephus

Highly recommended to see the movie before the site – you can take a short trail that overlooks the Gamla or longer trails down closer to the mountain.

The Right Shoes

We were planning to visit בריכת המשושים, Breichat HaMeshushim – hexagon pools – and got side-tracked by Gamla and the sides of my feet were hurting from the right shoes which are now the wrong shoes.

My old, sturdy, trusty, Teva sandals that I’ve had for years decided to give up being comfortable and stick jagged protrusions in the sides of my little toes. Guess once you’re rubber cementing the sole back on, it’s time to replace them in the throw away economy because things “aren’t made like they used to be”.

Find shoes that are good for climbing, swimming, and walking in water … and when you do, let me know what they are. Bonus if they’re also good for walking on cobblestone streets of the old city of Tzvat.

The Tzvat Religious Hippy

In my experience, these are the people you meet in Tzvat (mainly):
1) Chassidim who are etched into the stones of the city,
2) Sefardim who say they’re descended from kabbalists,
3) American hippies.

There’s some crossover between #1 and #3. In short, I have trouble imagining anyone I see in Tzvat living anywhere else in the world.

It isn’t the materially richest city in the country – you go there for the spiritual stuff including lots of hundreds of years old ornate synagogues and the place where he Shulchan Aruch (code of Jewish law) and Kaballas Shabbos (welcoming the Sabbath) were written.

The artist colony, my destination, requires going up and up and up and around and around a mountain as well as leftovers of a crusader castle taking up a large portion of the top of the city with roads. The artist colony is a cobblestone street, mostly closed in above, with unique and high-quality art of all kinds – hand woven textiles, paintings from local artists, jewelry, Judaica, wood carvings, metal work … and a distillery because, why not?

American Jews, most (or more) of whom didn’t grow up as religious hippies (or, at least as hippies) have found this section of Tzvat their home with their meditation sessions and spiritual gratification. The artsy ones have quite the crafts they’ve developed, alongside the “I’m a grandson of a Sefardi kaballist” craftsman. The female ‘dress code’ is a long flowing dress, usually with some sort of small flower print or the like (in a modest color, of course) with high cloth head covering. I saw one wig the entire time – on a Chassidish woman, her head mostly covered with a hat making her the most secular and out of place looking of the crowd.

Changing Tastes in Art and Dress Since Aliyah

I’ve had the same yarmulke type, kiddush cup, and challah cover for a multitude of decades. My wife did pick up a nice challah board a few years ago as the selection in the United States started getting a bit better, however, it’s mostly too expensive for the too much machine-crafted Judaica in America actually probably made in China and, in my opinion, lacking in … something more.

Like a soup that tastes better because grandma stood over it and tasted it while it was cooking, instead of the same exact soup from a store … I can’t quite place it. It’s … like much of America … kind of sterile, lacking true individuality, and trying too hard to look fancy instead of having true depth. Can a craftsman really cultivate and focus on his craft in the U.S., in a world of distractions, high costs, and low margins?

Not so much by conscious design, rather, just by finding things I like, I’ve started replacing my Jewish stuff in Israel – my new kiddush cup with one I found in a Judaica store here while looking for something else – it has a heavy base, no stem, the inside is polished metal and the outside is glass with the names of the rivers from Gan Eden (Garden of Eden) written there-around. It’s together like one piece, the glass curving with the cup as one.

My challah cover is no longer made in a factory – the new one (above) is a hand sewn, embroidered (partially machine) piece of beautiful finery and I’m starting to take an interest in more. The only piece of art that cost more than $20 which I ever purchased was a painting from Tzvat years ago that has now made its way back to Israel with me – this is an inset:

My new yarmulke was hand crocheted by my daughter – she put it on my head for the fun of it and then I realized how much I like the thick, tightly knit yarn that form fit my head after wetting and for which I no longer have to put my hand up there to keep it from falling off in the wind. (My daughters’ fashion senses have also drastically changed.) As for the rest of my fashion, being in Israel is like an extended vacation with nice weather. Who wears a button-down shirt every day on vacation?

[side note: As a write this, those with a style of yarmulke like mine for the past 20 years in America – which doesn’t have same meaning here – are blocking major roads for hours. It doesn’t exactly make me think, hey, you shouldn’t have to be in the army. Makes me think how disconnected the street-blockers are to the needs of others. – There are voting booths for this sort of thing.]

Things are clean around here – cleaner than America (save for my hotel room) … though they are hardly sterile. There is more individuality, more expressiveness, and more of – no one cares what you do. I don’t miss people in public places feeling insecure around a Jew with a yarmulke. (The best is when people want to patent X-rated devices and shift uncomfortably when they want to talk about it with someone who looks religious. Wrong religion, guy. I’m a Jew – just give me my money and I’ll do the work. … and there are usually kosher uses for these things.)

The Art of The Artist Colony

Here’s a small selection of some of the art – keep in mind that many store owners do not want you taking pictures to avoid having their work knocked off. Which … shows the individuality that comes out in their art.