Aliyah Diary 26 Dead Sea Beer and Ice Cream

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Aliyah Diary

Arrival
01. Aug 19, 2024: Preparation In America
02. Aug 25, 2024: First Few Days
03. Aug 29, 2024: Moving In

Cultural Adjustment
04. Sept 4, 2024: First Day of School
05. Sept 8, 2024: Two Weeks In . . .
06. Sept 16, 2024: Getting Comfortable
07. Sept 22, 2024: Ready for Yom Tov
09. Sept 30, 2024: Nasrallahed on the Floor
15. Nov 10, 2024: Safety Fourth
18. Nov 24, 2024: Language – l’at, ‘lat

The Roads
24. Jan 5, 2025: Supermarkets & Highways
25. Jan 12, 2025: Not Cutting Me Off

Government and Bureaucracy
10. Oct 8, 2024: Driver’s License
11. Oct 13, 2024: Packages. (חבילות.)
13. Oct 30, 2024: Bureaucracies and Stories
19. Nov 28, 2024: Taxation for Americans
22. Dec 23, 2024: Doctors & “Choleh Chadash”

Politics & Thought
12. Oct 25, 2024: October Sun and the Jew
16. Nov 17, 2024: Where People Look Like Me
17. Nov 19, 2024: Jewish Identity and Outlook
21. Dec 11, 2024: Let Freedom Ring

Travel and Trips
08. Sept 25, 2024: Jerusalem Concert
14. Nov 2, 2024: The Kindness of Strangers
20. Dec 5, 2024: Tel Aviv Art Museum
23. Dec 29, 2024: The West Bank. (Shomron)
26. Jan 18, 2025: Dead Sea Beer and Ice Cream

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Taking Thursday and Friday Off

At around diary entry 20 I thought it was time to wrap things up – things were getting more commonplace over here. A little over a month later and I have too much material and not enough time to write. This is good because a) readers couldn’t keep up and b) I can be more selective making the words more interesting. With this number of entries, I’ve also reorganized the table of contents by subtopic.

The reason for the above new reality? I’ve been “out and about” more having fun in my new land – discovering a new / old culture of modern Jews finding our way in biblical narratives which are like when you in America you can say, “George Washington forced-bought teeth from his slaves”. Here you can say, “That’s where the future King David hid from King Shaul!” I have a whole thing to write up about a visit from my Hebrew-fluent son in America and internet filtering for kids here … I’m going last-in-first-out for now.

On Wednesday my daughter says, “On Thursday night, can we go to the crater?” She means, what I like to call, the “pomegranate crater” to annoy my son who is fluent in Hebrew. (It’s “Ramon” crater – not “Rimon”.) Anyway, I haven’t been there yet and it was difficult for us to figure it all out while I was working my “full-time” job for money. So, instead, we landed on Ein Gedi which abuts the Dead Sea and is about an 1 hr 50 min from us … and, working American hours while ensuring my kids miss as little school as possible, I took off from work Thursday and Friday. In fact, every Friday I have to take off of work because it’s Shabbos. This is rough. When I don’t remember to turn the ringer off and the office phone rings during dinner … rough. If I want to go out on Thursday night which is the “weekend” around here, it means missing Thursday of work too. I worked all day Thursday though . . .

Working at the Beach

. . . on Thursday night, lit only by stars and distant street lights, I found myself (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, quoting the Lubavitcher Rebbe would say we don’t find ourselves anywhere – we make ourselves there). Starting over: at one point, I made myself stand halfway between a guard rail to a road and a high salinity lake, standing on a small hill of sand with varying bars of rocks, hard pack sand, wet sand, and crevices. The ground had been getting more smooshy … sinking in a bit more here and there … I know there’s a reason why they say not to do this … go on unmarked paths to the dead sea.

My phone rang and there I am, in a 1990s AT&T commercial about how said company will allow you to send faxes from the beach as if that’s something positive. To be fair, if not for technology and Covid moving everything online, I don’t see how I’d of made aliyah. So working from . . . an undescribed point on a map: I’m talking to this homey, shall we say, who wants a better price on a trademark response – he wants me to match some person’s price when the government fee alone costs more than what he’s claiming someone offered him and he’s not as sly as he thinks he is. Round and round … not getting anywhere … it’s not sinking in to him that I’m trying to get off the phone … oh, shoot, that was it! Sink holes!

Me: “Kids, come back!”
No answer.
Me: “Marco!”
Kids: “Polo!”
Me: “Don’t you see my flashlight?” (They had repeatedly asked me to turn it on while I was on the phone with the potential client)
Kids: “Oh, we thought that was a streetlight, it’s so far away.”
Me: “Okay, so come back!”
Kids: “Why?”
Me: “I think there are sink holes! That’s why we’re not supposed to do this!”
Kids: “What’s a sink hole?”
Me: “You know the rules – 1) don’t get hurt, 2) don’t psychoanalyze your parents, 3) don’t leave stuff in the middle, 4) don’t keep Daddy waiting?”
Kids: “Yes!” (they say with glee – these rules are a source of family pride – concise and everyone knows what is expected of them)
Me “Well, if I let you continue the sink hole might violate rule 1 on you and if you ask more questions you might be violating rule 2. Plus, well, we’re in the middle of nowhere, so rule 3 isn’t really a problem, though rule 4 . . . “
Kids: “It’s safe, don’t worry! We’re almost to the sea!”
Me: “You said that about a 1/2 mile ago! We could see the sea the whole time, yet it keeps getting further away.”
Kids: “Ugh, fine.”

Seriously, the sea is a mirage. Israel seems so small yet when you start traveling everything is further than it seems. Everything. Israelis can live in small apartments and have small cars because they’re all actually bigger here, somehow. Hard to explain.

Ein Gedi Campground

Ein Gedi is one of those places I always wanted to visit and never did. I’ve seen pictures and plenty of times I drove by with my head turning towards it as the vehicle continued. There are two hikes you should do in the Dead Sea region: Masada and Ein Gedi. Whomever tells you to do a different one first, tell them one day you’ll have a blog and vent your frustration over that decision to hike elsewhere.

Seeing the land “as an Israeli” rather than as a “Jewish tourist” are two different things. There isn’t the same time crunch, for one. For two, your travel options are a bit more open . . . would I sleep on Palmach beach as a tourist? Nah. Would I rent a tent at a campsite with the family? Nah. I’ll try to convince the rest of the family though.

Ein Gedi Campground is so Israeli: a) it’s friendly, b) it’s real, c) it’s safe, d) it’s hard to find. Go up a nicely paved curved road into the Ein Gedi Kibbutz . . . drive around . . . drive around again . . . ask someone . . . tell them you want them to speak Hebrew . . . have them tell you you’re going the wrong way when you see them again . . . and then back to the entrance of the kibbutz, turn down not the first unmarked dirt break in the curb which goes to nowhere . . . turn down the second . . . and there is a rock filled parking lot filled to the brim. “Who designed this parking lot?” I asked . . . and then answered myself, “Oh right, no one.” Yet this lot is full – we’re in a war, though you wouldn’t know it … no tourists, so I thought. Also, no room in the parking lot. We must have found the right place.

After finding a spot in my yuppie-mobile hoping I haven’t popped a tire, we went up to the receptionist whom is also the bartender. On the way are tent camping sites for cheap – pitch your own tent. The sites are on cement under lighting which I don’t get. Up the hill are these little van-looking things which sleep two . . . and are the only fake thing on the entire property. Up the hill from that are a row of tents you can rent.

Why this Campsite is So Israeli

1. The bar plays American music.
2. The music being played is good American music.
3. The music is not too loud.
4. You can bring your kids to the bar. It’s family friendly and safe.
5. They provide food games to play with your kids. We played Rummikub and ate ice cream while I drank beer.
6. You feel safe talking to your neighbors in the next tent despite having no lock.
7. You do not worry about drunk people, broken glass, noise after bed time, and so on.
8. The tents are right on top of each other – they share walls.
9. The tents have air conditioning and the amenities are more than you were expecting.
10. You are in a unique place.

At an American camping site, if there’s someone else half a football field away from you, you’re checking them out to make sure they’re okay. If their hispanic, culturally, they are, as a Peurto Rican Jew once told me, “sharing” their music because it’s selfish not to share. Israelis just talk in gruff low sounding voices preventing me from upping the bass in my car because then news reports rattle the frame. Their voices also don’t travel well between tent walls so there are pros and cons.

If Europe calls it “VAT” instead of “sales tax” it seems not to sound not as bad. I reserved as an American where we call it outrageous and avoided an additional 18%. Public campsites are probably a lot cheaper, though the website is unusable.

The tent the Ein Gedi place provides (when not bringing your own) is a nice size high ceiling square with five mattresses laid at the sides with pillows. Bring your own sheets and blankets. Still, given just how poorly I slept on Palmach beach last time, I opted for their tent. The walls are thick vinyl, there’s electricity, and nearby there are refrigerators, sinks, and cooktops. Bathrooms are a bit further away and . . . get this . . . they’re clean! There’s soap in the dispensers! This is luxury.

Side note: My oldest son, when he was about 8, stated that after a hike filled with bugs he’d rather have been in a glass cage rolling along on a nice paved road and I suggested we were already doing that at 65 MPH on the highway, is also the type to use “miles” for hotels. I’m not quite sure how to convert a unit of distance into a purpose-built structure, though I’d take this experience over a hotel.

There’s just nothing pretentious about it and everything is uniquely nice. That’s literally figuratively Israel. Waking up, you unzip your room and look out over the Dead Sea – that is unique. Perhaps you can do it on the Jordanian side for 1/3 the price, though never mind. It’s unique. Perhaps you can do it looking through glass windows . . . yeah, though you’d have to deal with bell hops and vacuums and all the things they had on the Titanic and we see how that went. No one sinks in a tent . . . on land.

Then you hear this: “Daddy, look! We were trying to go that way in the dark to the Dead Sea … if we started off over there, just a little to the left, the sea is much closer!” Not falling for that sinker again. We’re finding a proper beach this time.

Finding Ein Gedi

After getting out in the morning – and not having to pack up a tent (which takes 80% of the fun out of camping), we set out for Ein Gedi saving our next trek to the Dead Sea for when it is hotter. It’s January, and despite loving snow as a kid and playing in the snow, in the past many years it’s just been frigidly cold without the fun of enough snow so I’m enjoying where the temperature in the old country, measured in Fahrenheit, matches the same number here in Celsius … 19 degrees all around that morning in January.

Google Maps will invariably send you to the wrong place in Israel. Here, even Waze, which was invented in Israel, sent me to the wrong place. I’ve never been here so maybe the hiking trail begins at the bottom of the community center where the nice ladies are sitting with open doors doing their yoga sitting on mat thing? I ran up to them, waved my arms and flailed, “Hey! Ladies! Wake up! Is this the way to the trail?!”

I didn’t.

A nice lady (going to the pool, not yoga) explained to me that I was at the kibbutz and the trail was a different exit though I was welcome to look around. Why do I bring this up? Not just to make the yoga joke – In upstate New York a website led me to a hidden water fall that emptied into a lake. I went there … couldn’t quite find it … asked directions and the said something stupid like, “the internet said it’s right here…” and the lady did a large-marge-sent-you big bug eyes and retorted through my passenger side window, “the internet lies!” It’s just … lady, I don’t need that. Pulled over, and it was right there. You don’t own the river, lady. Ask directions in Israel and the answer may not get you there, though at least it will be polite.

Ein Gedi

I’ve been on many hikes in Israel and there’s a reason this one is famous. There is a reason man shows his mastery over nature by placing ticket booths at the bottom of only some natural wonders. The parking lot is spacious, the gift shop is quite nice, and once inside the gate you’re greeting with a very Israeli sign. They don’t have a lot of rules … however, here it seems that felt the need to have some rules. As if, to pre-empt every Jew saying, “Why? That makes no sense” they provide the answers for each rule. Literally, Moshe hears G_d at a burning bush, G_d tells him do something and Moshe keeps saying how he doesn’t want to follow the rules. “Do it so your people will be freed…” “Could you ask my brother maybe?” “Moshe! Get out there and get going!”

Why not leave garbage? It killed an Ibex once. Why not leave the trail? Some lady fell on an Ibex and killed it. She was American and so she sued. Why not light forest fires? It’s a desert and you’ll look stupid.

The trail has signs explaining what kind of trees and whatnot you are looking at, and then up the hill are the long trails which go … up hills. There are actually various trails, and in true Israeli fashion, there are no maps along the way (at least here they give you one when you come in), they’re not color coded, and things are labeled which … weren’t on the map. I only made it so far because of protesting kids, which, is not actually fair because I got peer pressured into taking this trip, peer pressured into walking to the Dead Sea in the dark of night, and now they’re too tired to go further.

We made it to two different pools and a waterfall and wow, it’s beautiful. There’s some light climbing on the “wet path” which is a walk through the river and up some boulders using metal handles and a whole bunch of really hard hikes for people who aren’t me.

Ancient Synagogue

I can imagine being here in a 100 degree desert and bathing over here and I can see why there was a Jewish community here up until, they think, about the 7th century.

For the same price of admission, you can also visit the excavation of an ancient Jewish settlement with the main attraction being a mosaic synagogue floor in Roman style art. If you’re going to leave something for someone to find in 2000 years, a) make it out of stone, b) write something on it so they know what it is. The inscription is in Hebrew, readable by all today but for the authors bad hand-writing and is translated here.

In another, “only in Israel” experience, I could not find my receipt showing that I paid entry to Ein Gedi which gets you access to the synagogue too. I showed the man that my socks and sandals were wet, having also recently learned the word “ratov” (wet) in Hebrew, and the charge showing in my online banking. He said he trusted me. It just feels more personal here … less formalities, more connection between people. Could I have road signs to campsites? Not so much though there are far, far, far less signs on the road making the whole experience more pleasant.

Hike to the Dead Sea

Okay, we’re on our way to swim in the sea. No kids, we don’t need to go over the guard rail and hike a mile, that you think is only about 500 feet, to the sea. The map shows Ein Gedi beach is right there … we drive there … we turn around … we drive there again … we turn around … you know … maybe it’s hre though there is not a single road to get there.

Typical.

Fine, I remember there’s Kalia beach on the way back . . . on the way there are places to pull off the road to “sight sea” (get it – that was a typo gone right). Hmm… there’s a few cars at this one … hmm… another …. let’s stop and see what there is to sea. Hmm… “do not enter / travel at your own risk.” Hmm … a normal Israel sign says: “DANGER OF DEATH”. This sign is more like, “no lifeguard on duty” from an Israeli perspective.

We make the trek. About halfway down the mountain, over varying sizes rocks, plowed pathways, and hills, I’m committed. My kids are way ahead of me.

I’m this far from the car . . .

My kids are up there . . .

It was worth it.

Interesting facts about the Dead Sea:

1. Everyone knows you can float on your back in the Dead Sea. Floating while keeping your head forward for a long time is somewhat of a substitute for missing ab-day at the gym.
   
2. Females find it painful to stay in the Dead Sea. Men don’t.