Yom HaZikaron in the Jordan River gorge

Today is יום הזיכרון Yom HaZikaron ("Day of Memory") here in Israel. Although the name of the day is similar to Memorial Day in the U.S. in May, the day itself is VERY different here.

First, it's not actually a holiday here at all. Because it's always the day before יום העצמאות Yom HaAtzma'ut ("Independence Day"), it is an ערב חג Erev Khag ("Eve of a Holiday"), that is, the day before a holiday. Therefore, it's treated much like any Friday -- businesses are open in the morning but close by early to mid afternoon.

Second, despite businesses being open, the day is very solemn here in Israel. It starts at sunset the evening before and includes 2 long, nationwide siren blasts. The first comes in the evening at 8:00 p.m., and the second is the following morning (today) at 11:00 a.m. These are quite remarkable events. Everyone in the entire country, including all traffic on the highways, comes to a complete halt for about 2 minutes. People actually pull over to the side and get out of their cars. The reason for this great solemnity is quite simple: nearly any family that has been in Israel for some time has lost at least one person in a war or a terrorist attack. This is the one day a year when all these people are officially and publicly remembered as a whole.

David had a dental appointment today in Tel Aviv, one of the long series of procedures that he is undergoing. We have tried to schedule them all for Sundays, but sometimes it's not possible because a particular dentist that needs to work on him isn't there on Sundays (which we only found out AFTER signing up for the work and being assured it could all be done on Sundays!). So, today I had arranged weeks in advance with Berlitz to take a vacation day in order to take David to this appointment.

We started out from home this morning at about 9:00 a.m. and had gotten as far as the gas station at Kadarim (near the start of highway 65) when I got a call from the dental office saying that the dentist would NOT be in today, and, therefore, the appointment was canceled! At least I was glad that we had only been on the road for about half an hour. We're NOT pleased, though, that this probably means that I'll have to use up yet ANOTHER Berlitz vacation day to get this work done. I didn't quite pick up enough of the Hebrew to understand WHY the dentist wasn't in today, but he had better have a GOOD reason!

Anyway, suddenly we had a free, unplanned vacation day. We decided to take a dirt road that we had only been on once before. In fact, we had only been part of the way on it. It starts near כפר הנשיא Kfar HaNasi ("President's Village"), which is next to Tuba-Zangariyye, the bedouin city I wrote about recently, and heads down towards the Jordan River. It connects to another road that we had been on before.

This road (also a dirt road) goes along the Jordan River, from the highway 91 bridge over the river, to the access road to Carcom, a kibbutz in the hills above the northern end of the Kinneret ("The Sea of Galilee"). This is the stretch of the Jordan River where it flows from the Hula Valley through an increasing deep and narrow gorge to the Kinneret. This road starts in the north near the river but doesn't descend nearly as much so that, at its southern end, it's not near the river at all and it's much higher up.

The road we drove down on meets the river road when it's still not too far from the river, and, in the same area, there is another dirt road that goes right down to the river. In fact, there was once a bridge over the river there called the Kfar HaNasi Bridge. The remains of most of it are still there, but the west end is no longer connected to the bank. When the river is low, it's possible to walk across it, but no vehicle could make it. Right now, however, some of the water is flowing OVER the bridge, so it's completely impassible, and anyone trying to walk across would be swept down the river!

Here's a picture I took from the road before it got all the way down to the river:

Here's a picture from the open flat area near the west end where the bridge was once connected:

Finally, here's a picture of the cascade going over and under the bridge, as seen from a rock slightly out in the river below the bridge:

Our vehicle couldn't make it quite all the way down to the river, so I had to walk the last bit while David waited patiently in the car.

After I got back to the car, we continued south on the river road towards Carcom. The 11:00 siren sounded as we were driving along this road, so we stopped, got out of the car, and stood and waited in silence until the sirens had stopped. It seemed an appropriate place to mark this solemn moment. I should note in closing that we saw not a single other person or vehicle during our whole drive today on these dirt roads! We DID see quite a few cows (including some that had to be coaxed to move out of our way!) and a lot of beehives.