Somehow I found the right route out of Jerusalem to the east, though I admit to feeling just a mite nervous that I might turn down the wrong West Bank road in a car bearing Israeli plates. The main highway is regarded as safe to travel however, and we wove through steep, bare Judean hills into the rift valley of the Dead Sea. The air thickened as we descended to 400 meters beneath sea level—the lowest dry spot on the planet.. This, now, felt like a truly foreign landscape. On a surface level, it might have been like the dry side of the Sierras, or parts of Nevada, but Nevada doesn’t have camels by the roadside or boys riding burros on the ridgeline. The hills were a rich brown color, and were more arid than in the West. The American West also lacks military checkpoints, where soldiers waved us back into Israel proper.
At the Ein Gedi Resort Kibbutz, I counted just two yalmulkes among the 50 or so people. One was a black yalmuke, the other knit. Having left Jerusalem, we had left behind the world of ubiquitous religious observance. We were in secular Israel now.
Ein Gedi sits among bird-filled trees, none of which I can identify (neither the birds nor the trees), and dozens of cats, some of whom will actually show some affection (Jerusalem cats uniformly fled when approached). One we named Mooch for its willingness to beg for treats and sit on our lap as our reward for feeding it.
Today we visited Masada, the mountain fortress held by the Sicarii and other Jewish rebels against a Roman siege in 73 CE. Rather than be enslaved, the 600 defenders took their own lives. The fortress was a functioning Roman city for centuries previously, and the ruins are extensive. Even though Masada figures prominently in the Jewish consciousness, I didn’t get a big vibe from walking the grounds. What happened here happened a long time ago. The one spot I did want to linger in turned out to have been a Byzantine chapel in the 6th century.
We keep running into Birthright Israel groups, American Jewish kids taken on tour to inculcate a feeling of connection to Israel. They invaded our Jerusalem hotel last week (and kept us awake), they poured through the gates of Masada this morning, they fell upon the buffet line at our restaurant afterwards. It appears they are staying at our resort too, and dinners have a summer camp feel early in the evening. I got them to sing "Happy Birthday" for Robin’s 50th last night. If they follow us to Haifa, though, I’ll start to wonder.
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