Ein Gedi

Los Angeles
Strange how imprecise memory can be. Or was it too think I'd remember accurately 20 years later?

What I recalled about Ein Gedi was that the verdant water fall was only a short hike in from the entrance area. I didn't remember that the oasis includes actually several water falls, each varying height, each falling into different pools with different depths. The river drops through 4 levels, and the pool I remembered, the one Vicki and I enjoyed the most when we visited on our honeymoon, was actually the top-most pool.

Saul and I never made it to the top pool. Saul's interest in the whole excursion could be described best as tolerant, as in, he was slumming to go along with me only because I insisted. When we made it to the next-to-the last falls I found what I was looking for. The falls descended into a somewhat wide pool clearly deep enough for a swim, and there were no other people around save two women who were preparing to leave. I immediately pulled off my shirt, shoes and socks and stepped into the water. It was more than cool -- icy. But the chill only beckoned me further. I dove in.

Instantly I felt the frigid water's delicious intensity. I popped my head up and headed across the pool towards the waterfall. I was going all the way -- intent on letting the stream cascade over me. I swam back towards Saul and the mini rock beach on which he sat. I had to go back for more -- one more paddle to the waterfall, a moment with it pouring over me, and then back to the rocks. Now I pulled myself out of the water and found a rock to sit on so I could dry off.

"This made the day for me, Saul. It completed it." I felt totally revived, energized. And then Saul could not resist. He rolled his pants above his ankles, pulled off his shoes and socks, and waded in. I found intense gratification in his 'monkey see, monkey do' response.

Our hike back to our rental car proved quicker than the hike up. As we drove away, I didn't know how to articulate to Saul what it meant for me to be able to dive in as I did. It had something to do with diving in to Israel, totally submersing myself in the beauty and wonders it has to offer. It probably has something to do with the many trips Vicki and I have made to Tassajara, and particularly the fondness we've developed for the swimming holes along the creek we always hike there. We return to Tassajara each year for the refreshment and relaxation we find in our favorite, isolated spots.

Maybe it has something to do with my rowing on the Yarkon, too. Ein Gedi demonstrated another way I could plug in to Israel my way. Whether in a single scull out of the Daniele Rowing Center or under a waterfall, I found on this trip different ways I can do what I love to do in Israel. This is what, most of all, will last in my memory.

Mark can't resist diving in at Ein Gedi

Saul Wades In!

Masada

Los Angeles
Just because I'm home now doesn't mean the ripples and reflections from the trip end. Our last days consisted of Shabbat in Hashmonean, Masada and Ein Gedi, and my visits and meetings at Yad Vashem.

Saul kicked my tush at Masada. Meaning, he took one look at the cable car, a tiny bucket dangling from two threads, and remembered that his friend Harel advised him to climb the snake path, and told me that's how he wanted to get to the top. Which generally is fine with me, because my self-flattery suggests I am in good shape and can handle any challenge. Hell, maybe we should even start jogging as the commando units do on the morning of their graduations...

Cut to 10 minutes later. "Gee Dad, you're really sweating. Breath through your nose more so the air doesn't dry out your throat."

Cut to 10 minutes later, maybe a bit more than 1/2 way up. "Saul (pant, pant), it's time for a 5 minute (pant, pant) rest."

I tried to argue that I was carrying the pack, and that made me hotter... I asked Saul to carry it for the last quarter of the route. We rested another few minutes when we got to the top, but the key is we made it. And I resolved to fix my rowing machine and get back into shape the minute we got home. (Which I am doing, but that is another story.)

At the top Saul and I opted out of the audio guide. Audio Tours always make me feel guilty. They provide far more information than I can ever recall. Yet if I don't get them I feel I am missing out on the opportunity to get the inside story. We self-toured. Not until I met with Yehudit Inbar, Yad Vashem Museum Director, did I have my guilt assuaged. But that is for another posting.

As it was at Beit Shean, the self-tour was a great experience. Again, Saul and I guided each other. I shared with him what I remembered from previous visits. He asked questions that forced us to investigate the site together. Questions such as, when we looked at the rough walls of the synagogue, 'Were the walls this rough when it was in use?'

Cut to the upper palace, where we could see the remains of tiled floors and plastered walls. Or the bath houses, where we could see the creature comforts installed into the rooms.

Perhaps the most interesting exhibit was the interactive model showing how Herod installed numerous systems to trap and save water. Saul took charge, pouring water over the leaden model and watching how it was trapped in gutters and channeled to cisterns.

We moved to the northern palace, Herod's summer home, built below and in the shade of the summit. A very boisterous Israeli group overwhelmed us, both with their numbers and their noise. It reminded Saul too much of the annoying kids on the bus ride from the Malcha mall. Time to descend.

I wasn't prepared for Saul's response: let's take the cable car. Which was fine by me. I was ready for the cardio challenge of the downward climb, but knew it would be even more punishing on my knees.

As we descended quickly (3 minutes from top to bottom), I watched the fortress city recede above me. I learned that residents there even grew crops; with proper water management, the community had significant levels of self-sufficiency. Interestingly, Masada's martyred ghosts did not call out to me at any point during our visit. I thought about them, recalling how I first learned of Masada through a feature film treatment a friend of my parents' once wrote. But I wasn't affected by the tremendous self-sacrifice that occurred.

I think Sderot and Operation Cast Lead ("OCL") had something to do with it. The mood in Israel was not one of sacrifice and victimization. Maybe I couldn't dwell on sacrifice as the ultimate Jewish resistance, because Israel freed us from that trap. I guarantee that conclusion was not on the audio guide.

What I Can Say About Sderot

Jerusalem
There are a few things I can say about Sderot. Let me begin with the flags. Several places along the streets are decked out in kahol v’lavan, plastic Israeli flags. Absolutely decked out. Flags on poles, flags on pedestrian barriers, flags on virtually anything that can hold the flags. I was not surprised to learn from Noam that mental health professionals were surprised to see a collective burst of optimism when the action began, rather than an increase in sadness that professionals expect to see when fighting commences. There is probably no single group of people more supportive of Israel’s Gaza operation. Not just for the obvious reasons, such as the possibility that the operation might end the rocket attacks. But for the slightly more significant reason, that Sderot’s government is finally taking action to protect its embattled citizens.

Which gets me back to the fact that for Hamas, it’s not personal. After seeing the facts on the ground first hand, Hamas’s real targets are the news leads of the cable stations and the front pages of the newspapers. As long as Hamas can continue to project an ability to terrorize Israel it gets the world to pay attention to it.
Images that stay with me after Sderot: the asphalt scars; the numerous shelters scattered throughout the city; in the center of a plaground park, the bomb shelter painted to look like a caterpillar to make it more kid-friendly; the damaged roofs on buildings that took a direct hit; the hundreds of recovered shells stored at the police station.

An experience that stays with me after Sderot: always asking myself, ‘if the Zevah Adom (Red Color warning) goes off now, where is the nearest shelter?’
Saul and I got a free pass when we visited Sderot. By that I mean, we visited during the week in which Hamas had said publicly it would not fire more rockets in order to give the Israeli army time to get out of Gaza. But as soon as that week is up, I have no reason to believe the people of Sderot will continue to enjoy the free pass. My hope, during the Operation Cast Lead as I read about it while sitting safely at my breakfast table in Los Angeles, is that Israel would not stop until the rockets stopped. But Hamas was still launching when Israel announced its unilateral cease fire. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at that time Israel could return to Gaza any time. But will it? If I were living in Sderot, in addition to the constant fear and post-traumatic stress all residents endure, I would struggle with the gnawing question of whether my initial optimism that my government was protecting me has now become disappointment.

The Most Important Thing to Say About Sderot

Before I say anything else about Sderot, let me admit that I have no idea what is really going on there. I can be toured around by Noam Bedein, Director of the Sderot Media Center. I can see the evidence of the multiple rocket strikes throughout the city. I can drive down the street that has the bad luck to be in the wheelhouse range of your average Qassam. I can see on that street house after house, pracitcally neighbor-to-neighbor, that suffered a direct hit. And I can study the strange half-circles carved into the asphalt by a rocket, images that look like a sketch of a sunrise if you didn’t know better.

But until I hear the alarm warning and know that I will have -- if I'm lucky – a maximum of 15 seconds to find a bomb shelter, I really can’t know what’s going on there.

Thus, though visiting Sderot was one of the highlights of my trip, I really have no idea what’s going on there.

[image of Qassam scar to be inserted here - check back soon]

There's Multimedia, and Then There's Multimedia

First off, I found out the hard way that when different people keep reminding me of the same thing I should probably take note. Saul wanted to visit Museum Machon Ayalon, a.k.a. the bullet factory. I couldn’t find information about it in our guide book (Frommer’s – not recommended), so I had to ask several people about it. Only the tour guide who took us through the Golan was able to connect us directly, but every other person I talked to made sure to point out it was in Rehovot. Stupidly, I assumed Rehovot was simply an adjunct of Tel Aviv. Kind of the way Santa Monica is a mere hop from West Lost Angeles. Well, I knew I was in trouble when I called to ask which bus line to take and the train was suggested. We ended up driving, though we missed the movie at the beginning of the tour.

But as a tour experience, MMA was phenomenal. MMA presents the story of the kibbutz that operated a bullet factory underground (literally and politically) at the actual site. So visitors descend into the factory, walk through it, and learn how the operation was both critical to the fight for independence and hidden successfully until the creation of the state. Being able to tell the story on the actual site, with the actual equipment, makes MMA’s impact memorable.

As we toured it, I thought MMA was multi-media. The guide was able to turn on a recording of sounds relating to the story of the hidden factory. He pushed a button and the kibbutz laundry machine shifted on the floor to reveal the entrance to the basement. Once we were downstairs, he ran the bullet-making machines for a moment, and even was able to demonstrate the flashing lights used to warn the illegal manufacturers of danger up above.

But I didn’t know what multimedia was until we motored from there back to Tel Aviv – MMA is in Rehovot, you know. We had a noon appointment for the HaPalmach Museum tour. That museum used virtually every technique imaginable to dramatize and retell the story of the HaPalmach, one of the largest illegal, pre-state militias. A video re-creation tracked the life of a single unit, about 12 young adults, from their initiation and training to the reunion of the surviving members 1 year after the death of one of their comrades. This re-creation was told through several chapters, with each room of the Museum unspooling another installment.

Each of the Museum’s rooms are themselves movie sets. Visitors stand before a re-creation of the Allenby Bridge for the retelling of the story of the HaPalmach’s attacks on 11 bridges. At the appropriate moment lights flashed, a bomb exploded, and the bridge collapsed before us. In another room we found ourselves in the hold of a ship running illegal immigrants to Palestine. That chapter included the ship’s captain in the form of a talking mannequin. In each room, rear-projection screens alternated between showing the next chapter of our Palmach re-creation and archival footage. The piece de resistance was the final room, where the full-fledged war unfolded on three screens. Visitors sat on imitation rocks. The re-creation and archival films interacted. And life-sized diorama pieces slid in and out of view behind a scrim. Actually, the visitors were the ones doing the sliding; the room actually rotated one way or the other to view different set pieces.

Interestingly, though the experiences were dramatically different, I had great compassion for the tour guides in both museums. At MMA, the tour guide had to work with a very boisterous group: 3 American families touring together, including several rambunctious young kids and crying babies in each family and a smug Dad or two. At the end of the tour he talked about the history of the bullet factory site. It is now operated by an organization committed to education, and his good-natured sufferance of our group suggested he meant what he said. At HaPalmach, the tour guide’s only job was to guide us from room to room. Each room was dark before we entered and the lights fell, automatically, after we left. So a safety escort was mandatory. Other than that, the electronic pyrotechnics did the work. Our escort was dressed in all black, seemingly to further help her disappear.

I often wonder how the tour guides at the L.A. Museum of the Holocaust sustain the energy to retell the same story many times over. But at least one remains involved with and committed to the visitors’ experiences on each tour, no matter how many times it is given. When so much hardware has been invested in telling a story, such as at the HaPalmach museum, it does not leave much room for innovation or revision.

I wondered how the museum brings in repeat visitors. But maybe there are enough visitors who only come through once, i.e., tourists such as me and Saul. A young unit of new Israeli recruits made up most of our tour; I presume visiting the HaPalmach Museum is part of their preparation. The HaPalmach Museum is probably one of the most intense museum experiences I ever had. I felt rung out at the end. Israel’s leaders for much of its first 60 years include those who were not only there at the founding but literally fought for it and built if with their bare hands.

This museum helped me understand how that historical knowledge impacted the decisions those political leaders have made over the years. For example, when I think about what it might be like to lead LAMH after the construction is over, I realize I will know literally where every nut and conduit is laid in the place. That intimacy will confer its own power and credibility. And if this applies to my experience of building a Museum, think of how it would apply moreso to the collective experience of building and leading a nation.