Oh Danny Boy

Starting on Thursday, we traveled with our rugged guide, Danny.  His father's family came to this land in the 1870s, while his mother's family arrived in the 1930s.  He has lived in Israel his whole life (beside his travels) and has been a guide for the last 42 years.  He can talk on any subject that you bring up, from foods full of antioxidants to the transition of land between Israeli and neighboring governments.  He's the type of guy who can honestly recommend places and say "tell them Danny sent you", and they know who we are talking about.

As we pulled out of our hotel parking lot and left Tel Aviv behind, Israeli history swallowed us up through Danny's lessons and stories.  First stop: Caesaria, one of Herod the Great's many palaces.  

We found out that Israeli rock stars know they have made it when they play a concert in the ancient, reconstructed theater of Caesaria.  This amazing city, unearthed under the watchful eye of Israeli benefactor Baron Rothschild, is a tourist attraction and something of a resort town.  If it was good enough for the kings of ancient times, it's good enough for modern day vacationers.  The city must have been magnificent.  A giant pool house overlooking the water, a temple on the highest point dedicated to Caesar, a horse-racing stadium that could seat 10,000 butting up against the palace.  Other civilizations took over the city, including the Crusaders. Yet each time the city fell, leaving layer upon layer of ruins.  

It was here that I learned there were quite a few Herods back in the day.  And that Herod the Great, the one that I had always learned about, was a pretty shrewd guy even if he was also cruel.  Though it doesn't justify his actions, his cruelty was par for the course as kings went in that era. Killing your wife, sons, and mother-in-law wasn't as rare as you might hope.

Fun fact: to build the water break offshore, giant, hollow wooden structures were built, then filled with volcanic ash.  When these structures were placed in the sea water, the ash and water mixed to form a natural cement.  Brilliant.

Fun fact 2: Many words came from the roman theaters.  The word "scene" comes from the painted backdrops of these theaters, the scaena.

Fun fact 3: The outer room of the theater was called the vomitorium.  I had always heard this word in reference to the rooms where Romans went to vomit up food so that they could eat still more, but here it refers to the way that the building seemed to vomit people as the crowds exited.

Fun fact 4: The Roman aqueduct that brought water to Caesaria from the Carmel mountains (using only gravity) was built with a decline of less than one degree along its entire length of nine miles.

Next, we stopped at Atlit, a town best known for the Atlit Detainee Camp.  

The camp was built by the British Mandate for Palestine in the 1930s as a place for Jewish immigrants who attempt to enter illegally.  This was a particular issue during and immediately after the Second World War, when thousands and thousands of former concentration camp prisoners had no home to which they could return.  The Palmach (see yesterday's post) refitted old boats to carry these people, crammed in, on the 3-10 day voyage to what is now Israel.  Over 140 boats attempted to enter, but a British blockade enforced the immigration limits, and the people were sent to Atlit or later to Cyprus.  The Palmach was furious and broke into this camp, freeing over 200 prisoners in a single night.  Sadly, they also bombed ships meant to deport immigrants and once killed over 200 of them as they miscalculated their explosives and the Patria sank too quickly.  Other times, the immigrants died before reaching the British Mandate either in the skirmishes with the blockade or because the boats were simply too old, and sank.  The saddest part of this whole incident is the trauma to the prisoners, who had been torn from their homeland, put into concentration camps, then into refugee camps, then into a cramped boat, and then into a detainee camp with the same barbed wire and guards (albeit without forced labor, starvation, or gas chambers) as before.  

The creepy part?  They host a kids summer camp there.

That afternoon, we drove past the kibbutz of Ben Oren (where the Palmach-freed detainees fled) and through a Druze village, where women passed us in the traditional black robe and white head scarf.  An offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, the Druze are quite separate.  Interestingly, they believe that there is a fixed number of Druze souls.  I guess they will never be missionaries.

For our late lunch, we stopped for falafel.  Since Danny knew the owners and the day's rush was over, we got a huge spread and got to learn how to make falafel!  

As soon as I scooped the chickpeas up to mold them, I realized how much I have missed cooking these last few months.  It was fun to lend a hand.  As we molded the balls, Danny told us that falafel was actually an Egyptian invention, but they made them with Fava beans.  Since many Iraqis had trouble digesting the Fava beans, though, people eventually switched to chickpeas.

Continuing on our way, we stopped at a monastery on Mt. Carmel, thought to be the place where Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal.  As would become a trend, we forced Josh to do a dramatic reading of the appropriate Bible verse. 

From the peak - the highest in the region - we could see Nazareth, Armageddon, Mt. Tabor, Mt. Moret, Mt. Gilboa, and numerous other Biblical locales.

We ended the day in Haifa, stopping on our way into the city to admire the incredible Baha'i gardens.  The gardens are gorgeous, sloping down from practically the peak to Ben Gurion Avenue that leads through the German Quarter to the water.

Then, exhausted from the heat, we enjoyed dinner in the warmth of the evening at Fattoush, a restaurant that preaches Baha'i ideals of unity and equality.

Spotted: You can get kosher McDonalds in Israel!  Especially in Jerusalem.  Also in Jerusalem, most hotels (even the really nice ones!) charge for wifi, so get your kosher food fix along with your free wifi.