Foto Friday – Robert Gorsoun sees Israel’s beauty
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Travel
Robert Gorsoun is a photographer who takes pictures for the love of it. Wherever he travels, he snaps pictures and Israel is beautiful through his lens…
…the Banias in Israel’s north…
…a rainbow, captured in mid-storm over the Herzliya beach…
…a field of flowers by the roadside, stretching on forever…
…a water lily…
…or flowering cacti at the Utopia Orchid Park…
…and on through to the crater at Mizpe Ramon.
More photos by Gorsoun — including some spectacular panoramas that don’t fit on an Israelity page but should be seen — are posted on Panoramio.
Getting out in August
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel
A family bikes it at the Agamon Lake.
But the trick, I’ve discovered finally, is to wait until later in August. My theory is families are already back home and getting the book lists ready and going clothes shopping by August 20th. So, those last 10 days of the month are primo for going just about anywhere (Eilat is an addendum to the theory which states ’stay away from Eilat in July and August in its entirety’.)
We just returned from four days in the Galilee, and wherever we went, there was space to park, hike, swim and enjoy the amazing variety of activities the area has to offer. Starting off in Gan Hashlosha (Sakhne), there were lots of folks there, but the spacious, refreshing pools were wide open, picnic benches were there for the taking, and there was plenty room to explore.
The next day started off at the Agamon Lake at the Hula, where you can rent bikes or golf carts and tool around the hour-long route, spying birds and water animals, or just enjoying the outdoors. Again the parking lot was mostly empty and service was immediate.
When I realized, a short way into the route, that a bee sting I had received on my ring finger at Gan Hashlosha was threatening to cut off blood to the finger due to swelling, a staff person picked me up on the route and brought me back to my car. (A quick drive into Kiryat Shmona to the Magen David Adom station solved the problem as they cut off my wedding band and pumped me with antihistamines to lessen the swelling – again no line – three doctors were sitting waiting for me).
The Kinneret is in a dismal state, and it was heartbreaking to see how long it took to walk to the water line, but it didn’t stop us from enjoying swimming time at Ginnossaur and at The Zemach Water Park (where there were virtually no lines for the water slides, meaning my 8-year-old set some kind of a Guiness Book record by sliding over 100 times).
And maybe the most refreshing activity we undertook was an hour-long water hike at Majrase, a nature reserve at the foot of the Golan. If you’ve never done it, it a blast, and great for families with young kids or older kids who aren’t the 5-hour climbing from ladders types.
Indeed, late August is the time to get out and enjoy Israel.
Watch out for that horse!
Filed under: General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel
Hey, we all know Israel is safe. There’s less likely a chance of anything happening to you here than in any big city anywhere in the world.
But evidently, when you get out of the cities, watch out. The news on Channel 2 last night aired this footage they obtained from a group of tourists on a leisurely drive on a country road in the Galilee.
The tourists began filming with their video camera when three horses came on the highway and began to canter alongside their car. Very cool occurrence, and one worth documenting. But things turned weird when an oncoming car approached the horses head on.
The first two horses weaved out of the car’s path, but the third took it head-on, smashing through its windshield with its hooves before leaping over it and continuing on its way.
Channel 2 reported that the driver suffered minor cuts from smashed glass and the horse was lightly injured.
When checking out the coverage of the incident, I was especially taken with the report by Horse and Hounds magazine (which I had until now thought was a ficticious creation of Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill). Their headline? ‘Horse survives after jumping onto oncoming car in Israel’.
Foto Friday – Yuval Nadel takes to the air
It’s Passover week. And that means the entire nation of Israel is sitting sweltering in traffic jams as the entire north of the country goes south and the entire south of the country heads north — all in the name of family fun. While they do that, let’s for a moment, take to the air with photographer Yuval Nadel.
Kinneret – Photo by Yuval Nadel
Wadi Ara – Photo by Yuval Nadel
Ramon Crater – Photo by Yuval Nadel
Hefer Valley – Photo by Yuval Nadel
Ramon Crater – Photo by Yuval Nadel
Dead Sea – Photo by Yuval Nadel
And so, we land…
Kilometer 101, Arava – Photo by Yuval Nadel
More photos are available at Yuval Nadel’s website.
Ikea in Rishon
The Ikea franchise in Israel has won a major or minor victory, depending on how you look at it. After three years of a heated legal battle between the Ikea franchise owners in Israel and more than 200 furniture purveyors in Rishon Lezion — Israel’s fourth-largest city — a second branch of the Swedish furniture chain will be built in the seaside city of Rishon, but without an adjacent shopping center, which was what the city’s storeowners had feared.
According to the Ha’aretz account of the settlement, the furniture store owners are less fearful of the Ikea branch itself, and more nervous about the planned 30,000-square-meter shopping center that was supposed to accompany the 323,000 square-meter Ikea. Personally, I’m surprised they’re not more nervous about Ikea; the Netanya store is one of the chain’s most successful ever, with more than 16 million visitors since it opened eight years ago.
Rishon, in case you didn’t know, has become something of a shopping destination. I was somewhat aware of this, but became more aware last week when my sister and I took an outing in order to shop at the city’s branch of Eden Teva Market, without having to schlep out to Netanya. Yes, I know, it may seem strange to head all the way to Rishon from Jerusalem (about a 45-minute drive, longer, if you don’t have good directions) for food shopping. But when the store in question is Israel’s answer to Whole Foods, some of us travel far and wide.
And now, it seems, we won’t have to head as far as Netanya any longer for our Billy bookshelves and Poang armchairs. As for those in northern Israel, it seems there are plans to open a third store in the Galilee within three years. So thanks to all the Rishon Lezion furniture store owners and to Ikea Israel for settling; now I’ll have an additional stop to make in Rishon when I head out there for sulphur-free dried fruits, spelt breads and other natural goodies.
Running the Circuit
It wasn’t the New York Marathon, but the 10K race I ran in last week was big enough to attract star runners from all over Israel – even though there were no cash prizes for the winners. It was the first marathon I ever ran (even though I’ve been seriously jogging and running for nearly 10 years), and a great introduction into Israel’s running culture.
This is the third time the race I ran, called the Benaya Marathon (named after Benaya Rhein, who was killed in battle in Lebanon), has been run, and this year it attracted over 250 runners from around the country. While the first one was an ad hoc affair, where anyone who wanted to could run, the last two have been handled by a professional marathon management company, which gave all runners an electronic chip that recorded everything there was to know about the race – time, route, speed, pace, etc. Results were listed by age group, and about 15 minutes after the last runner crossed the finish line, the list of who came in what place was displayed, followed by the presentation of trophies to top runners in each category. It’s professionally run, but it does cost 50 shekels to register.
Never having run a marathon before, I treated the whole experience as an extended workout, running the 10K instead of doing my usual circuit on the treadmill. So, for me, the marathon was more of a “personal best” thing, and I was happy to beat the time I predicted I would make for the route. But there were quite a few competitive runners there, who apparently follow the circuit of mini-marathons, preparing for the “big ones” – the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv half-marathons (the latter had over 7,000 participants this year!), and the uber-race, the Tiberias Marathon, which follows a 40+ kilometer route around the southern Kinneret. That’s where the big money is – $25,000 for last year’s winner, Kenya’s Leonard Mucheru Maina, plus an additional $15,000 because he broke the course record. The winner of our race was David Raskai, a policeman who is a serious runner, having come in first in a raft of races over the past year. And yours truly? I’d rather not say – It’s a personal best thing, remember?
Papal baggage
Filed under: History and Culture, Politics, Religion, coexistence
Only two popes have ever visited Israel. In 1964, which was a good 29 years prior to the Vatican’s eventual recognition of Israel as a sovereign state, Pope Paul VI set foot in the Holy Land.
And in 2000, when a pre-intifada Israel seemed poised to position herself as the venue for ushering in a new Millennium of peace and tolerance, Pope John Paul II went on an inspirational whirlwind tour of the land. He held a mass for tens of thousands on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, met with dignitaries and religious leaders from many sectors and even made appearances at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and the Western Wall (pictured).
The Polish-bred, relatively reconciliatory and dovish pontiff made quite an impression, and many felt that the visit represented a landmark in global healing. As John Paul II said in a statement in Jerusalem,
“We know that real peace in the Middle East will come only as a result of mutual understanding and respect between all the peoples of the region: Jews, Christians and Muslims. In this perspective, my pilgrimage is a journey of hope, the hope that the twenty-first century will lead to a new solidarity among the peoples of the world, in the conviction that development, justice and peace will not be attained unless they are attained for all.”
Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched a highly comprehensive mini-site aimed at commemorating the occasion, with resources including an extended streaming commemorative video (link towards the top of the main page).
Ha’aretz recently announced that it had discovered plans for the current pontiff, Benedict XVI, to come to Israel this coming May (just a few weeks prior to Bob Dylan’s expected arrival), thanks to an invitation issued by President Shimon Peres.
Apparently the Vatican has yet to confirm Ha’aretz’s announcement, prompting many to wonder what the full story here may be. It might just be a case of bureaucracy needing to work itself out, but the complex context and baggage surrounding the controversial Benedict and his relationship with the Jews and their homeland are undeniable. In the meantime, news site eFluxMedia has done an impressive job of enumerating some of these factors….
[There's] an ongoing controversy over Vatican moves to elevate to sainthood the World War II-era pontiff Pius, who many Jews accuse of failing to speak out against the Nazi mass-murder of Jews, the Holocaust.
The German-born Benedict defended Pius when commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death this year. However, he has put Pius’ beatification – an important step towards sainthood – on hold.
Late last year the Vatican turned down an invitation by Peres to visit the Holy Land in 2008, citing a stall in long-standing negotiations with Israel.
The talks focus on taxation of church property and visas for Catholic clergy – issues that have marred Israel’s relations with the Holy See for decades.
Image courtesy escapedtowisconsin from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Out With the Old, in With the New
Israel is full of villages – “k’farim,” in Hebrew. There’s Kfar Tabor, Kfar Vitkin, Kfar Shemaryahu, Kfar Habad – and my personal favorite, Kfar Saba. Most of these villages were established decades ago, usually as agricultural settlements.
And some of Israel’s many k’farim may still be largely involved in agriculture – probably the ones way up north or down south. But as the Tel Aviv-centered megalopolis expands ever outwards, and better highways and rail links bring the periphery closer to the center, many of the k’farim in the center of the country have found a new way to grow profits – with real estate, as developers buy up the old free-standing houses, many with large lots, and magically turn them into luxury apartment buildings, offices, malls, and all the other features of Israel’s increasingly urban/suburban landscape.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course; people gotta live, and as crowded as Israel is, there is still plenty of open space in the Galilee, and especially the Negev. While many farms and fields in the Sharon region, for example, have been turned into homes and stores, effective Israeli methods of land reclamation has turned large parts of the Negev into flourishing farmland, with everything from vegetables to fruit to grain growing nicely.
In Israel, as in much of Europe, the city centers are the most expensive places to live, and the further out you move, the cheaper the home. But when enough people move far enough out, that location gets an “upgrade,” and turns into a city, in and of itself. And that’s what’s been happening to almost all of the small towns, the k’farim, that once surrounded Tel Aviv. The villages are still there, in name – but now many of them are big cities.
Living as I do in a town not too far from Kfar Saba, I’ve seen the process unfold there over the past few years. First came the mall in the middle of town; then came the new luxury buildings and homes, with real estate shooting up in value by hundreds of percent within a couple of years. Then, they built the new park, a sure sign that Kfar Saba was no longer a “k’far,” which would have its own natural open spaces. Now, the developers have moved on to the edge of town; the funky industrial zone, which really was dedicated to industry (not shopping, like in a lot of other towns), is getting a huge 
combination office/mall space, which will take up about five big city blocks!
Thus the photos accompanying this piece: I may have come across some of the last “authentic” original agricultural-era homes in Kfar Saba. Someone still lives in the house with the sign in the top photo (there’s a satellite dish on the roof), but apparently they got an offer they couldn’t refuse, because it appears that a “luxury building” is going up on the site.
At least we’ll still have the shoemaker, (“sandlar”), whose little shack is seen in the bottom photo. This structure must have been built decades ago, but whoever owns it still has some principles, it seems – no “for sale” signs are up on this one, yet. Maybe the municipality should buy it out in order to preserve it – and let the next generation get a sample of “the way it was.”
Riding the Kinneret
For cyclists in Israel, it’s one of the biggest events of the year – every November thousands of them descend on the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee), to take part in the round-the-Kinneret ride.
We were planning to do it last year, but my husband – a mountain bike fanatic who likes to leap off large boulders and throw himself down steep hillsides – fell off his bike on a sedate family biking trip in Hiyarkon park and injured his knee.
This Saturday – barring any last minute falls – we’ll be setting off at 6.30am with the 10,000 or so cyclists expected to take part in this popular fall event.
I must admit, originally I was planning to take part in the 65 kilometer ride – right around the Kinneret, but I got cold feet when we drove there a week ago and I realized that the road, which always looked rather flat from the window of a car, was actually pretty hilly; and the other side of the Kinneret vanished threateningly into the haze, an alarmingly long distance away.
Still, I can’t make too much fuss, my 10-year-old is planning to do the long route with three of his friends, and a couple of parents more used to cycling long distances than I am (my idea of cycling these days mostly involves sitting on a spinning bike in an air-conditioned room for an hour with loud dance music and a teacher shouting encouragement.)
He’s either a great deal fitter than me, or he just can’t envision how hard it will be. I suspect the latter. I’ve warned him it will be hard. I’ve warned him he’ll be cycling for at least four hours. I’ve warned him that his butt will ache for days afterwards, and that the last 20km will be the hardest thing he’s ever done – but he won’t be swayed. Two of his friends did it last year and they’ve been boasting about it ever since. He may be 10, but it’s his manhood at stake.
We’re doing the 31 km ride, joined by my eight-year-old who is particularly interested in the medals they give out to all participants at the end (will it have a bicycle on mummy?), and my two and a half year old, who will travel in style in a pull-along buggy, milk, snacks and toys at an easily reachable distance.
It promises to be a beautiful day, and perhaps, after all the rain this week, the Kinneret will even be a little fuller. If any readers are taking part, do let me know – we can wave at one another as we go round.
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