Another trip to Gamla National Park

Today was another nice sunny day, so we decided to take another trip to Gamla National Park, over in the Golan. We invited our friend, Cynthia, to go with us, and all three of us had a great time.

Gamla National Park gets its name from a town from Second Temple times that was located there. The name comes from the word גמל gamal, which means "camel". In this first picture, you can see why -- the town was located on a hill whose shape greatly resembles the hump of a camel. In the lower left of the picture, you can see some of the town that has been excavated by archeologists. We had actually hoped to take a vehicle tour down to this spot, but it was too muddy today.

This second picture shows the lower Gamla waterfall. Not at all surprisingly, there is PLENTY of water here, since we had steady rain for about 4 or 5 days this last week.

Here's a zoomed view of the waterfall, using the maximum optical zoom on my camera.

Finally, here's a picture of a beautiful flower with an interesting orange bug sitting on it:

A beautiful Shabbat in Nahariya and M'tzuba

Today (Shabbat) has been another lovely, warm day. So we decided to take a trip to the northwest. We traveled the northern road, a nice route at any time but especially on a beautiful day.

When we got to Kibbutz M'tzuba, no one was there at Golan's World of Reptiles. When I called Golan, he didn't answer, either. So we called our dear friend, Cynthia, in Nahariya. When we got her, it turned out that she had been about to pick up the phone to call us!

So, we proceeded down to Nahariya, picked up Cynthia, and head up to the beach just south of Rosh HaNikra (the extreme northwest corner of Israel). After some time there enjoying watching the waves crashing against the rocks, we headed back to Nahariya and had a light lunch outdoors at a restaurant just across the walkway from the beach. It was a perfect day for outdoor dining and conversation by the Mediterranean Sea!

After dropping Cynthia off back at her apartment, we called Golan, and this time we got through. So, we headed back up to M'tzuba. Golan has the last of the snakes that he had, and he showed us several of them, as well as some other interesting snakes that he has. Also, visitors were holding a couple of snakes that we recognized as our former "babies". I was particularly happy to see that the two surviving "fire opals" (snakes that are both corn snake lavender AND Emory rat snake amelanistic) are doing well. As far as I know, these are the only such snakes in the entire world! I held both of them in my hands again today, the results of our breeding project that we started 6 years ago in San Bernardino! They are both gorgeous. The female is essentially a solid pinkish white snake with slight hints of yellow now. The male has a faint saddle pattern and is slightly less pinkish. He's also a year younger than the female. He has always looked as though something compressed him lengthwise -- his saddles are narrower than usual, and he's shorter and fatter than usual.

A nice trip back on the northern road completed this enjoyable journey. I didn't take my camera, so I don't have any pictures. But Spring is right around the corner. The shkediot (wild almond trees) all around here near Tsfat at now in nearly full bloom, about a month earlier than usual. Before long, there will be millions and millions of beautiful wild flowers, and I won't be able to resist photographing them. So, stay tuned!

A trip to Tel Dan on a beautiful day

Today was a beautiful, warm day in January, so we decided to take another trip to Tel Dan National Park. Here are some pictures that I took.

First, a view of the trail:

As you could see in the first picture, there were still Fall colors. The next several pictures show some close-up views of the stunning yellow leaves:




Nevertheless, Spring has also arrived. There were green plants everywhere. Here are a couple of especially choice views of the fresh green leaves:


Finally, a nice picture of David:

Vignettes from a Friday night at Emet V'Shalom

The blessings of an evening at our congregation are numerous, colorful, and diverse.

Let's start with the music:

- the spirited singing and playing by Israel Horowitz, our beloved rabbi, a trained cantor from Argentina

- a melody for "L'cha Dodi", recently introduced to us, written by another Argentinean cantor, a friend of Rabbi Horowitz -- a touch of the flare, passion, and even melancholy of that country in the Southern Hemisphere

- a Moroccan tune for "Adon Olam", with obvious stylistic connections to Arab music, the kind you can easily pick up from many local radio stations

Let's talk more about the people:

- Alice Nauman, an American of Polish descent, who delivered a very spiritual and impassioned drasha ("sermon") in fluent Hebrew. Afterwords, at the kiddush, I hear her conversing easily in Russian with some of the congregants; next week, she leaves to spend a couple of weeks in Austria, speaking in German about Israel

- Shimshon, a tall, strong, sturdy man who must be at least in his 80s (if not 90s), almost certainly from Germany, he probably arrived here before the Shoah (Holocaust) -- when he's present he reads the middle paragraphs of the "Shma":

והיה אם שמע תשמעו אל מצותי...

V'haya im shamo'a tishma'u el mitzvotai... ("And if you really listen to my instructions...") -- really, he doesn't merely read them, he declaims them, elegantly, in עברית נכונה Ivrit n'khona ("correct Hebrew", an important thing for his generation especially) -- the jarring jumping back and forth between 2nd person singular and 2nd person plural, a distinction lost 3 or 4 centuries ago in English:

ולימדתם אותם את בניכם לדבר בם, בשבתך בביתך, ובלכתך בדרך, ובשכבך ובקומך, וכתבתם על מזוזות ביתך ובשעריך.

v'limadtem otam et b'nekhem l'daber bam, b'shivt'kha b'vetekha, uv'lekht'kha vaderekh, uv'shakhv'kha uvkumekha. ukhtavtam al m'zuzot betekha uvisha'rekha. ("And you(pl.) will teach them your(pl,) children to speak of them, when you(sing.) sit in your(sing.) house, and when you(sing.) go on the road, and when you(sing.) lie down and when you(sing.) get up. And you(sing.) will write them on the doorposts of your(sing.) house and on your(sing.) gates.") -- words written and surely also later edited, in this very land (or not far away), at least two and half millenia ago, and yet easily understandable, in their original language, to any average Israeli -- and now to me, as well!

- the bar mitzvah boy, very typically Israeli, but his parents' names are .... Igor and Olga, a clue about where they are from originally!

- the multitude (probably a majority) of congregants from South America, most of them a decade or so older than we are -- some speak Hebrew, but many do not

- a gentleman from Moscow who attends virtually every week, who was formerly involved with the Soviet missile program (as I was formerly in the U.S. missile program -- what an irony!) -- now he teaches Russians in Israeli about Judaism, something they were forbidden to study during the dark Soviet years