Tel Aviv Rooftop

The bright, dry winter weather we've been having seemed perfect for another trip to the Galil . On the way to our destination (thanks M&J !) we stopped off at Megiddo , known to our Christian Evangelist friends as Armageddon , site of the prophesied big battle between the forces of Good and Evil that is supposed to finish us off for good and lead to the End of Days. A sense of antiquity permeates the site, not surprising in view of its 5,000 year history. We were the only non-tourists there. The prices in the cafeteria were listed in dollars! Climbing down the impressive shaft that King Ahab (or maybe Solomon but who's quibbling?) dug to allow water from an outside spring to be collected inside the city during a siege . In nearby Park Ramat Menashe someone had thoughtfully left some public conveniences on display. Next we stopped off at two villages settled by the German Templer Christian sect in the 19 th century - Alonei Abba (Waldheim) and Bethlehem Ha- Glilit . ...

Throwing good sense to the wind and spurning my own advice to stay close to the rooftop during the Pessah holiday, we set out on Friday with the rest of am yisrael to the Galil . The roads were full but what can you do? You go hiking when you have a holiday - right? At the height of spring and on the cusp of summer the Galil is ablaze with life and colour. The flowering clil ha- choresh tree stands out everywhere. The plan was to start with a hike down our beloved Nahal Amud (the wadi) which we had explored so often when we lived in Tzfat the 80s. But, pushed for time, instead of taking the route below Tzfat we chose the official entrance at Kfar Shamai where we encountered a ticket office, a very full car park and hordes of tired looking families. The wadi, once our symbol of natural freedom, had been bureacratised ! Gritting our teeth, we turned down repeated offers to join the Park Authority's membership club and sullenly promised to be back within two hours (so that ...

Good friends invited us to the wedding of their daughter who lives on a goat farm near Yodfat in a beautiful corner of the western Galil . The groom's family comes from Yodfat whose residents worked en masse for days to turn the simple farm into the set for one of the more unconventional Jewish weddings I've been to. We missed the entry of the groom on a camel but arrived in time to catch this line of local Bedouin neighbours doing a wedding debka . There were lots of musicians down on the farm, many of them wielding instruments picked up in India. Here a tabla player and a local Arab flute player accompany the dancers. Many of the young people were of the shanti shanti type , i.e. 21st century hippies deeply influenced by India. Here's the girls' debka circle with the beautiful bride in white. About 500 people showed up for this wedding which turned into a celebration for the whole village, l ike a wedding in an Arab village or on kibbutz for that matter. As the...

It takes a too rare trip to the Galil to remind me that my Tel Aviv rooftop is not the only perch in the country. This was taken today at Agmon Hahula a reflooded section of the drained Hula marsh. Snowpeaked Mount Hermon (only 7% of which is controlled by Israel said our guide) is in the distance. We saw thousands of cranes gobbling peanuts especially grown for them in a nearby field but the birds on the lake are mallards.