Aliyah Diary 35: Mitzpe Ramon & Ein Avdat

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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
29. Jan 31, 2025: My Son Still in America
31. Feb 3, 2025: Internet Filtering for Kids
34. Feb 17, 2025: Finding Obscure Things

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”
27. Jan 23, 2025: Healthcare in Israel
32. Feb 5, 2025: How To Hire the Wrong Person
33. Feb 10, 2025: Quest to Pay My Taxes

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
28. Jan 26, 2025: Yarkon River Judaism, Tel Aviv
30. Jan 31, 2025: My Son Visits and we Travel
35. Feb 20, 2025: Mitzpe Ramon Stars, Ein Avdat

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No School Wednesday

The Bible says “six days a week you shall work” so Israel’s only full workday off is Saturday. America has two full days off, while in true Israeli fashion, the consistency for a ‘second day off’ is different for different people.

America has two days in a row because Jews and Jew hating Henry Ford pushed for a five day work week. Ford wouldn’t even make his company public for fear that Jewish investment bankers would give him money. If I were an antisemite, I’d take my money. Guess I’m too Jewish to understand.

Teachers automatically have off one day a week – often making a 4 day work week for them and lack of continuity for kids because … it’s Israel. There are a whole lot of trips – school run and run by an outside organization called B’Nai Akiva. It’s nice that there’s budget for all of this – Israel loves its children and most of kids hate school functions. I cut “pep rallies” in school so who am I to disagree.

Everything in the United States Compacted into Israel

So … we went to the Pomegranate Crater (machtesh rimon). It’s Israel’s version of the Grand Canyon and the great thing about Israel is that within a six hour drive you have Vermont, Florida, Oregon, Alabama, Arizona, Virginia, Iowa, New York, and Utah … or any caterer serving soup:

• Vermont –> Mt. Hermon / Golan Heights
• Florida –> Coastal area beaches
• Oregon –> Galil, rolling mountains, and water
• Alabama –> Bedouin shanti-towns around the South
• Arizona –> Ramon crater like the Grand Canyon
• Virginia –> Northern coastal region
• Iowa –> Northern Sinai desert which has been irrigated into a blanket of farms
• New York –> Tel Aviv business district
• Utah –> Great Salt Lake … less salt than the Dead Sea which is more like a caterer’s soup.

Ramon or Rimon

From our house the Pomegranate Crater it’s about 2 hrs 10 minutes. That’s like … New York to Philadelphia without traffic. Not far at all when you consider the Grand Canyon requires flying into Las Vegas or Phoenix and a 4 to 6 hour car ride.

Also, I know that the Hebrew word for pomegranate is Rimon and that Ramon crater is not a pomegranate. I just find it funnier this way. Used to annoy my Hebrew-speaking son and despite that he doesn’t react anymore, riddle me this – why does the gift shop sell this:

The word Ramon might come from the word Roman and the word Rimon comes from … the Torah. Seems to be a coincidence. What is also a coincidence is that Ilan Ramon was an Israeli air force pilot who flew on the American Columbia space shuttle . . . and didn’t make it back. In some sort of poetic fashion, the museum at Machtesh Rimon is largely dedicated to Ilan Ramon – no relation.

Staying in a Tent in The Desert

After our foray into a tent at the Dead Sea which was more like a solid square room with air conditioning and mattresses on a wood floor along with bar and restaurant, I was getting into this idea. It’s a lot more fun than a hotel room so … while only saving about $30, we did it again. This time – so much fun though not for everyone. I loved it.

This place was called “Silent Arrow”. “Silent” for the quiet and “arrow” for … a row of tents? There is no electricity hookup and driving there in the dark, it was hard to tell where the dirt road ended and the cliff started so I parked a bit away and we walked the rest. Out of some sort of desert version of a horror movie like Beauty and the Beast (let’s be real here) I walked up to the thatched door and knocked three times on the large knocker expecting nobody to be “home”. Someone answered and we went into a nearly dark place with little battery powered lights in various places. Being a Wednesday night in February, we were the only ones staying there along with his helper who I have expected to have a big hump on his back.

The tent was nice and holding heat nicely while it was about 55 degrees out and a client in America who thinks I’m still there in 20 degree weather hoped I was staying warm. There was a double bed and four single mattresses on the floor along with a battery powered light in the middle which promptly died.

Seeing the Stars in the Negev Desert

We went out and about, walking over rocks and packed earth – basically, more rock – with phone flashlights. We came to see the stars and found some sort of crop circle where the rocks were cleared to lie down and look up. Funny anecdote: the next day my daughter’s back was covered in dirt and I said nothing, chuckling a bit in my head … until she said something to me about my back being dirty.

I’d never done this before and never realized what an experience this is. With the “Stellarium” app, you point your phone in a direction in the sky and it shows you exactly what you’re looking at. The app was first introduced in the tent where my kids moved the phone around and looked on with wonder. I suggested we take it outside and see actual stars instead of acting like teenagers addicted to their phones. They agreed. 🙂

Outside we spotted Mars and Jupiter, Orion and Rigel, something that looked like a dipper and wasn’t, as well as Virgo. Then I sighed because the app got through the internet filter and when a picture of Virgo was superimposed over the stars for us to see, it was porn hiding in the app.

As our eyes adjusted to the darkness and science lessons ensued, more and more stars came into view. Then more stars. Then we noticed that Jupiter and Mars were ever so slowly moving across the ski – it was like a planetarium (pronounced, “planet – arium” – inside joke) in real-time. After a while it seriously looked like a planetarium to me due to some distant light in the horizon making it appear as if the stars were being projected on a domed ceiling.

When we finally rose, I could see everything, and we walked back in the darkness without flashlights. We walked into town (about 3/4 of a mile) and then through the town – in my previous mind, the town of Mitzpe Ramon was probably a rest stop. Turns out it’s a large city-like place with a tower in the shape of a funnel which we’re still not sure for what its purpose is, open restaurants, and kids playing basketball and soccer. The soccer field sadly reminded me of Migdal Shams, a Bedouin Arab city in the Golan Heights where a terrorist from Lebanon lobbed a missile and killed about a dozen children playing soccer.

After a restful night interrupted once by cackling animals and dogs/foxes on different sides trying to communicate across a large distance despite speaking different languages, the next morning, we woke up and the outside was painfully bright. I found the hot shower and prayed in the larger common area tent with kitchen and some, shall we say, less than fresh food probably left by a previous guest.

On to the Crater

Pulling out from the tent encampment quickly to beat a truck on the dirt road, I did the unthinkable and pretended it was 2005 driving without even GPS navigation and followed my sense of direction and road signs to the crater visitor center which has timed entry to various movies and information about Ilan Ramon and the Ramon Crater and history. The stalactite cave in Beit Shemesh had a video which did not mention age of the cave – this is a religious area of the country. The Ramon Crater visitor center had no such issues … and also honors a secular hero. Not exactly the type of place they took us in yeshiva.

I paid $28 in parking … they call it a “parking ticket” … I call it, “the risk of not paying using the app every time I park” which is starting to seem like a bad idea, and we walked up to the crater (before the museum). Based on descriptions I heard, the crater was a flat multi-mile circle in the ground where you could still make out the edges which were maybe a foot or two higher.

Waler Percy’s essay, “The loss of the Creature” about experiencing/discovering places authentically versus through preconceived notions and packaged experiences came to mind. This was a discovery for me. Wow.

Where is the crater, exactly? Starting walking around outside the museum just sort of puttering around and … wow. There’s a huge drop-off and a dip in the ground, perhaps 100 feet deep, extending for miles in every direction. Pictures do not capture the first time you stumble upon such an experience.

We stood and looked out, noticing patches of smaller black hills perhaps from the meteor and dots of large groups of people hiking through the crater and singing. On the other side of us was a school and block of apartments right up against the crater. Israel loves its children.

My kids wanted to hike down the crater and I said go ahead – walking down steep hills with slipping rocks in improper footwear wasn’t my cup of Joe. I don’t drink coffee. Slides aren’t proper footwear either and my kids may or may not learn that for next time.

Hiking at 80 MPH through the crater

Instead of hiking, route 40, named for being half the average speed of the road, cuts through the crater, the descent crisscrossing back and forth in the shape of a multi-humped capital letter M. Before and after the M, the single-lane road moves fast. I had the experience of driving 85 MPH at one point and being passed by a driver crossing the line to the other side to pass.

On of my sons, when about 8 years old, was quite unhappy with a hike in New Jersey filled with mosquitoes and suggested we do so in a closed glass structure with wheels and maybe a motor. Yes, we were hiking right now down route 80 in the car. (Route 80: also named for the average speed of the road – though 3 lanes instead of the one late route 40 in Israel.) Southern Israel has no such mosquito problem.

We turned off at an unmarked road because I do things like that. There was a campsite at the end, and somewhere in the middle another place where you can rent tents and have barbeques. This place had a bar and small store. Only two workers were there and one asked me why I was there. He was a Bedouin Arab (friendly to Jews) and spoke no English so I explained in Hebrew … then used his bathroom and left.

On the way back there was literally a place called a Youth Shanti – another family reference thanks to what happens to your towns when you neglect them in the Linux clone of SimCity.

Ein Avdot Hiking

On the way back we stopped for Pizza at Pizza Hut in Mitzpe Ramon – kosher in Israel. Using the machine with sunlight across the screen I attempted to order two personal plain pizzas and instead ordered one large pizza with mushrooms and pineapple for over $20. Mushrooms are not a good idea. Pineapple is my new pizza topping of choice.

About a half hour later we arrived an Ein Avdot, a beautiful hiking trail cut by a trickle of a river through mountains creating a curious straight wall in one cliff and segmented layers of rock in the rest as well as some domed caves and something that looks like the Delaware Water Gap through the beige colored cliffs. They say don’t touch the water, and for good reason – algae has overtaken much of it and masses of spores can’t be too healthy for you.

Once you reach the “end of the line” there’s a pool of water filled from a trickle of waterfall from above. When it rains, I assume the trickle is a torrent and you can download the latest movies if only you had an internet connection.

From there, you backtrack a bit and go up narrow stairs carved into a cliff – wet and slippery and of the type which would be called “Warning – hazard – closed for repairs indefinitely by order of the Parks Department and Federal Safety Commission” would this be in the United States. Not sure what happens if people are going both directions and there were quite some crowds of mostly middle school aged students there. At the top of the falls, you can continue on to what looks like a very short path to the top of the park only it’s a zig zag back and forth, carved into an even higher cliff forming yet another multi-humped M-shaped path, as was also the road driving to the bottom. Both are single lane yet only this second two walking paths is one-way.

We turned back so we’d reach our car and avoid the loud cackling dressed in black ants, as they looked to us, probably actually being high school students, taking the one-way path to the top and returned home, stopping at a gas station that maxes out at 200 shekels (about $60) when using my American credit card.

What a wonderful trip.