This motzai Shabbat, and Sunday until sundown, is the hilulah of both Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira, the grandfather of the famed Baba Sali, and the Rambam (Maimonides). A hilulah is the Sephardi way of saying yartziet, the marking of the date of one’s passing from this world. So, 132 years ago (in 1880), Rabbi Yaacov Abuhatzeira, also known as the Abir Yaacov, passed away. To this date, congregations the world over celebrate his life and hold feasts in honour of his name. And yes, the bet knesset (synagogue) next to my house held a feast as well, but on Thursday night for convenience sake.

The set tables

Bet knesset Eli Cohen, the synagogue next to my house, was built in the late 60s by the Moroccan immigrants who founded Ma’alot in the 1950s. The name Eli Cohen is a famous one in Israel as he was a spy legend. Eli Cohen worked his way into the upper echelons of the Syrian government and military and gave them bad advice to provide an edge for the Israeli soldiers during wartime. One of the notable tricks he played on the Syrians was convincing them to plant trees next to every bunker they had in the Golan area and in Syria itself. By planting trees under the ruse of provide shade for the Syrian soldiers, Eli Cohen had marked the Syrian defence for every Israeli soldier. He ended up getting caught, quite accidently by the KGB, and was hanged by the Syrian government in 1965. More can be read here: http://www.saveisrael.com/martyred/elicohen.htm

Eli Cohen

So it was in the large room that was added on to the original building that was the location of the feast. Photos and drawings of Rabbis from both the “old country” and of Israel itself line the walls and the mood is set for a glimpse back to the past. I had left the house, along with my little brother Nissim, thinking I was late, but I wasn’t. I stopped along the way to help my neighbor Guy bring speakers to the bet knesset and when we got there the event hadn’t even started. But when it did start, and the people – many of them new friends of mine – gathered in from the torrential rain outside to eat large triangles of lechem beit (“house bread” made at local bakeries and pizzerias) with salads from roasted eggplant to matboucha, this is what it looked like:

My table

Some of the other tables

It would be wrong to leave out two of the Moroccan staples that adorn every feast of festivity, the Moroccan fish and the bottle of arak. When the Moroccan fish was brought out I was eager to take a picture of it but, alas, mine wasn’t so aestetically pleasing so I snapped a shot of Yehuda Uzan’s fish across from me:

Moroccan fish

And of course, the numerous bottles of arak – an anise-flavoured liquor famous in the Middle East but virtually unknown to many Americans. I actually snatched this bottle of arak from a neighbouring table as our bottle’s label had gotten ripped:

Arak - the preferred drink of the Moroccan

And of course, no feast in honour or in memory of someone can be held without some words being said. At this particular event, HaRav Meir Sayag and Rav Gil Ben Shoshan, an previous neighbor of ours, graced our meal with stories about Rabbi Yaacov Abuhatzeira. After the speeches we continued the meal with rice, potatoes, meat, chicken and schnitzel, sipping down arak, beer, soda, water and cheap whiskey. As we ate, members of the bet knesset auctioned off various Judaica objects “in the merit of” the Baba Sali, Rabbi Yaacov Abuhatzeira and the Rambam. When that was finished, Shimon Cohen, one of the backbones of the bet knesset, handed out candles to all, for us to light in our own houses in merit of Rabbi Yaacov Abuhatzeira and the Rambam.

Rabbi Yaacov Abuhatzeira

While we listened to the mixture of ethnic Israeli music and Moroccan Arabic songs about the Baba Sali and hilulahs in general I felt saddened that sharing this experience will be sans audio so I switched my camera over to video mode and took a little 180 degree spin, capturing a fraction more of the event. And here it is, hosted by YouTube, for all to see and to be a part of:

Next year I look forward to attending this hilulah again, maybe in Nahariya where the Abir Yaacov’s illustrious descendants carry on the family heritage, but, until then, I have a candle to light this Motzai Shabbat.

Continuing with Chanukah…

On Sunday night one of the local kollels was hosting an event at the Heichal HaOsher and I attended, along with my father (and we nabbed reserved seats). The celebration was being thrown to honour the several members of the kollel who recently took a huge test of Halacha (Jewish law) to become Rabbis. The test was administered by the Rav of Ma’alot, HaRav Yitzhak Vaknin shlita and I believe the son of the Rishon Lizion HaRav Ovadia Yosef shlita was involved as well. Local dignitaries were present and seated at the dias. The event was opened with the lighting of the chanukiah (menorah):

Getting ready to light the menorah on the dias

A short video was shown of the kollel and the various activities within including the work with the local youth and the local synagogues. After the video several speakers had their turn with the mic; the mayor, the rav of the Ma’alot Rabanut, a local synagogue rabbi who also serves as a judge on the Rabbinic Court in Haifa, and others.

HaRav Meir Sayag, head of the Maalot Rabanut

HaRav HaDayan Yagoda getting ready to speak

City official Arkady Pomeranets speaking

Of course, as with all events at the Heichal HaOsher, there was live music. This time a local singer by the last name of Peretz sang for us. I have seen and heard him before in an Andulusian concert also held in Ma’alot sometime in 2010.

A local singer

After the speeches the diplomas were given out. Many of those who bought the honour of delivering the diploma were family members of the particular avreich (young married man in kollel), as seen here, the Rosh Kollel, the avreich, his father and the Rav of the Ma’alot Rabanut:

A kollel member receiving his diploma from a sponsor

After the due honour was doled out and the hugs and handshakes were completed there was a bit of a fundraiser. Just a bit. I did not take many pictures of the fundraising and actually left early but here is a shot I took of the seated crowd, well, part of the crowd:

Partial view of the men's section

And that sums up Sunday.

Tuesday, the 7th day of Chanukah, we went to explore the vineyards of the Naftali area on the border of Lebanon. There we found a place called Adir Winery and Dairy. A clean-cut white building alongside several factory installments beckoned to us. Naturally, we went inside.

The winery side

There we found some wine. Lots of bottles of award-winning wine. A man behind the counter by the name of Yossi Rosenberg, who happens to be the managing director, explained to us what we needed and wanted to know. In the earlier years of Israel Yossi’s family from Europe and the Ashekenazi family from Turkey settled in Kerem Ben Zimra and raised their families there. In the 1980s and 1990s the families built up the Adir vineyards, a joint project. They also decided to raise goats and thereby led them to creating the Adir Dairy.

The dairy side

Here is Yossi Rosenberg talking to us about his and his family’s history with the vineyards and the various wines they produce:

Talking with Yossi Rosenberg

As with many visitor centres, this one had a short film about the production and founding of the winery and dairy. We went into the room that divides the winery and dairy sides and sat down, ready to watch the English version. This particular video, voiced over in English by Paul Gluck, is available on YouTube so that you can watch it as well in the comfort of your own home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uj9SJXWUjY

Getting ready to watch a short film about the wine and dairy productions

After the film we snuck over to the dairy side and sampled from the several goat cheeses on the counter.

Snacking on the goat cheeses

And here was my particular favourite, the Tzefatit cheese, the style originating from Tzfat (Safed) just a few miles away.

Tzefatit cheese

Even though I liked the Tzefatit cheese the most, we didn’t buy it. We got two hard cheeses and a feta. From the freezer of the dairy we selected two pints of goat milk ice cream, one chocolate and one cherry. The chocolate one was better but there was a goaty taste to the ice cream despite the chocolate additive. Before we left we bought a bottle of port, which we have yet to open.

While in the area we explored both the small village of Kerem Ben Zimra and the nearby historical areas. Here we drove by an old watchtower looking over the hill to Lebanon:

Old watch tower

Also found throughout the Galilee are graves, ancient tombs erected for important historical figures. Prophets from the Bible and Rabbis from the Roman times can be found buried side-by-side on the side of the road, in some village or perhaps in small caves, always distinguishable by bright blue “kabbalistic” paint. On this particular Tuesday we found 3 kevers (graves) in one small patch of land. Here is the grave of Rabbi Elazar ben Arach who lived in this area nearly 2,000 years ago:

The grave of R' Elazar ben Arach

And here, the grave of Rabbi Yossi HaKohen:

The grave of R' Yossi HaKohen

And the third of the trio, the grave of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria, who in his days was rather wealthy. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria may sound familiar because he is, in fact, mentioned in the Pesach Hagada. He was sitting with Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon in Bnei Brak…:

The grave of R' Elazar ben Azaria

Of course, while in the area with my camera I could not help but take yet another panoramic picture. Here it is, the rolling hills of Northern Israel (click to enlarge):

Panoramic shot of the rolling hills

There it is, the eight days of Chanukah told in a tale of words and pictures. Next Chanukah is just 12 months away!

Today we drove out to the Industrial Area of Ma’alot in search for what we believed was a cookie bakery. What we found was a cookie factory. A factory with an impromptu tour that sparked a few hours of factory tours and historical exploration.

Cookie factory

First, the man who let us in put us in the hands of Gili, who turned out to be the wife of the owner. She took us on our tour, after we had donned our sanitary hair-nets, showing us the process of making cookies. The cookies being made were small sugar cookies with a jam filling. Here they are finished and ready for baking:

Pretty little cookies all ready for baking

Here are some of the notable, interesting stages of the process that is the making of the petite, decorative cookie. A worker rolls the cookie dough over circle cutters:

Cookie cutting the industrial way

And here the cookies are being constructed, a solid disk being prepped with a dallop of fruit-flavoured jelly to then be finished off with a cookie “ring” on top:

The construction of the cookie

Once the cookies are baked they are taken to another room where they cool off and wait to be packaged. Here one of the packaging workers puts the cookies in plastic containers with a doilie to separate the layers:

Packaging the cooled cookies

After we had seen the numerous stages and the 15-20 workers furiously cranking out cookies (1,000+ packages per day), we took some more pictures. Here I am, hair-net on and hands secure and out of the cookies:

Posing in the cookie factory

When we had seen enough, and enough pictures were taken we bid farewell to Gili and attempted to leave. She called us back and told us not to forget about the hairnets, telling us we might look silly walking around with them on. I risked it and poked my sanitary head into several other factories located in the vicinity. Nobody seemed to mind. But I minded that we hadn’t gotten any baked goods yet (we didn’t really wanna buy a package of cookies because we have eaten those cookies so many times before). I suggested that we seek out another bakery, a kosher Lebanese bakery in the nearby village of Mi’ilya (population 3,000). We drove to the Christian village and found the bakery, which turned out to be a factory as well:

Door sign for the Lebanese Bakery

Inside the pita factory we shuffled around in the flour-covered room and had some brief dialogue with a man there who seemed agreeable to our desire to explore the place. A man named John, the professed owner of the factory, allowed us to poke our noses nearly everywhere we wanted to. Here one of the men working there operates the dough mixer:

Manning the mixer

After the dough is mixed, it is then placed on a large table in the centre of the open area for rising:

Rising dough

As per the next stage, the first man we talked to showed us a machine that makes small balls of dough to expedite the process. Here the machine, which was imported special from Lebanon, is hard at work pumping out dough balls:

The Lebanese dough-ball-making machine

Once the dough balls are on their way, they get flattened and gradually turned into large flat disks. Here the disks are still in the flattening process as they travel around the room:

Small pita disks

Once the disks have been flattened near paper-thin they are moved on the conveyor belt back and forth allowing them to slightly rise before the baking. After the dough disks have sufficiently risen they are passed through the tremendous furnace which made the entire room almost unbearably hot. John didn’t like people getting close to the oven but he allowed me to photograph it up close with his supervision. Here it is, the disks blown up into balloons of hot air bouncing out of the furnace:

Pita balloons escaping the flames

After the dramatic baking, the pitas are again on a long track of conveyor belts as they cool and deflate, now boasting a handy pocket that can be filled with all sorts of foods. This part of the process I found to be very cool as the air was all floury and the sun was sneaking in.

Pitas deflating high up on conveyor belts

And here the cooled pitas come bounching down for bagging. The bagging women specifically asked me not to photograph them so the end of the process will forever be a mystery for you, o’ reader.

Cooled pitas coming down for bagging

Oh, and John handed us a free bag of fresh pitas “for the road”!

While we were in Mi’ilya we also stumbled upon ancient tombs hollowed out of solid chalk bedrock on the side of the road. The sign stated that the graves were from the Byzantine era (330-634 CE) and have been slightly damaged by water piping. Here is the most visible cave, clearly seen from the road:

The burial cave on the side of the road

Not only are there ancient burial caves in Mi’ilya, there is also a Crusader castle called King’s Castle when Mi’ilya was known as Castellum Regis. The castle was built sometime around 1160 CE when King Baldwin III of Jerusalem gave the Galilee region to a crusader in Haifa. It was only a matter of years before the castle was conquered by Saladin. King’s Castle and Monfort Castle nearby were then both acquired by the Teutonic Knights of modern-day Germany but by that time the bigger and more impressive Monfort Castle made King’s Castle less important. Here, local residents built their house using the ruined castle’s walls as well:

King's Castle from the north

Once we had parked next to the house as far up as we could, we got out and climbed into the remains of the once noble Crusader castle. Today the site is neglected and grown over but the classic arches and windows live on:

Arches within the ruins of King's Castle

Windows and doors

We had to abandon our explorations prematurely due to school letting out but one day we should come back… with a metal detector! Who knows, maybe a knight in rusted armour is buried beneath the rubble…

Due to the popular Israeli DocAviv, a documentary film festival, and its special Galilean branch, DocAviv Galil, several concerts have been offered to the people and they were all free! This blog post is about the two concerts of this week, Lahakat Droz on Wednesday night and Dudu Tassa on Thursday night. Both held in Ma’alot’s beautiful new Heichal Tarbut (Performing Arts Centre):

Ma’alot’s beautiful Heichal Tarbut

Concert 1: The performance of Lahakat Droz (Hebrew for Band of Droz – Droz meaning “stairs” in Moroccan Arabic) was called for 8:00 PM Wednesday evening with several short documentaries shot/produced in the Ma’alot area to be shown before it. I arrived fashionably late, found a seat in the lower section and settled in for some documentary works of film. The short film that was playing when I came in and the subsequent one were of little interest to me but the third one was wonderful. It was about an old man living in Kibbutz Kabri who made aliyah when he was in his teens or twenties from Iran. Throughout his life he had a fascination for filming and had dozens, if not hundreds, of film reels from back in Iran and the early kibbutz life in Kabri. A woman began investigating his work and they set out to watch the reels and to relive the days of old. Throughout the documentary, snippets of the old man’s film reels were shown, including the establishment of the banana farms outside of Nahariya. It was a wonderful film. Then, before the concert itself, a short film of Lahakat Droz was shown. We learned all about the founding of the band and the various members and methods involved, including the various things that inspired them in their music making. Once the band’s movie was finished a short break was announced to allow the band to set up. I headed outside after taking a botched-up panoramic picture of the auditorium. There, in the lobby of the building, next to the cafe, I found the woman from the documentary about the old man from Kibbutz Kabri. I told her that I loved her show and she thanked me and was pulled away by the official people of the DocAviv Galil to either receive or watch someone receive some award or something. After a few more minutes of milling about, finding some friends and saying “hi”, we all headed back into the auditorium for the concert.

Lahakat Droz

Lahakat Droz is a local band founded in Ma’alot with most of its members living in the Ma’alot area. The lead singer, Itzhik Alul, and his brother on the acoustic guitar began playing at least 20 years ago, spending their time in bomb shelters strumming away the days, fine-tuning their skills. I found it fascinating that the bomb shelters they played and practiced in are located just a few minutes from my house.

Lahakat Droz 2 (note the crisp spotlights)

The music that they played was music from the heart, lyrics and musical notes lovingly released into the smoky air and throbbing the tiny bones in the audience’s ears with a wholesome, ethnic-rock feel. I loved every minute of it and I’m sure the several hundred people in attendance with me felt similar as I saw them all singing along. The violinist, a Druze from Bet Jaan named Marzuq Harb, played fabulous Middle Eastern solos.

Marzuq Harb, the violinist of Lahakat Droz

The concert was over too soon, but when it was over everybody agreed that the concert was a smashing success. I shook the hand of the lead singer’s brother, thanked him and then looked around outside in the lobby for CDs to buy. I didn’t find any. But there is a YouTube link to one of their songs being performed elsewhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zagwNdPeO7c

Concert 2: Dudu Tassa’s concert was Thursday evening prefaced with a personal documentary titled Iraqinroll (i.e. Iraq-n-roll) a play on words between his rock music and his grandfather’s musical history in Iraq, the successful Daoud Al-Kuwaiti. Unfortunately, the documentary had a fee and since we came late we did not enter until it was over. In the half hour or so that we had to wait I bumped into the guitarist from the previous night’s band, Kfir Ohayon of Lahakat Droz. We spoke for about 15 minutes where we discussed his band, our mutual friends and other chatty topics. Then the doors were opened to all and we went our separate ways into the auditorium. We found seats in the third row from the stage, surprisingly, and the mayor got up to say a few words.

Mayor of Ma’alot Shlomo Buchbut giving an opening word to Dudu Tassa’s concert

The mayor stepped down and the musicians stepped in. The very first song that he sang was the one I have grown to like after finding it on YouTube several days before the concert, and here it is, for you to like too. Presenting “Eize Yom” by Dudu Tassa featuring Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead: 

The music that followed was all new to me and the people loved it. There were at least 400 people in attendance, at least 70% of them 25 and younger. It was loud and fun.

Dudu Tassa and band

Dudu rocked on his guitar and crooned out his songs in both Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic, the heavy drum pounding behind him and the enthusiastic bass player to his right kept us in sync. The lad to his left was on a Qanun-like instrument, plucking at the taut wires with fingers capped in metal. It was quite an authentic touch to the Israeli rock music that he was belting out.

Dudu Tassa on stage

Towards the end of the concert his music picked up pace and people left their seats to crowd around the stage. It was fun. When the concert was over I did not get the opportunity to thank the performers and headed out to leave. I am looking forward to next year’s DocAviv Galil and the slew of free concerts that will no doubt be available. Time to keep my eyes peeled on the posters around town!

This blog post is a continuation of this one – the actual harvesting of the olives: https://israelsgoodname.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/the-olive-harvest-part-1/

Yesterday evening we went to the Druze olive press – bet baad in Hebrew – in the ancient village of Pekiin. I had called ahead to check to make sure they were open and crushing olives – they were. When we got there, just a short drive from Ma’alot, there were Druze abound with hundreds of kilos of olives in large sacks. I had brought along the small box of olives I had picked from the trees in our backyard and set my stock down on a small stool.

Druzi men unloading huge sacks of olives

As we watched the numerous Druzi men unloading the sacks of olives into the hopper on the floor we were deafened by the din of the harvest in full-swing. The olives piled high waiting for the first machine to be turned on. Once on, the olives are lifted up on a conveyor belt and are cleaned in the washing machine. Nice and clean, the olives are then taken into the crusher where they are churned within a great rectangular machine. The olive pulp is separated for other uses and the watery oil is transferred into the next machine where the pure olive oil is skimmed off. The water goes one way and the oil goes to the next stage – filtration. The pure, golden-green olive oil is then dispensed through large vats into the waiting oil canisters and jerry-cans. The full containers are then put on a scale for weighing and are then carted off – ten percent of olive oil going to the bet baad’s owner.

The process in pictures:

The olives going up the conveyor belt and into the washer

The washed olives going into the crushing machine

The huge pressing machine

Olive oil to the left and the murky water to the right...

Pure olive oil coming out of the spout and going into the jerry-can

Here is a panoramic picture of most of the warehouse – from the olive unloading at the far right, the washing between the pillar and the fireplace, the crushing between the fireplace and the faux leather armchair, the filtering behind the yellow oil containers and the bottling all the way in the distant corner on the far left. (Click on it to see it enlarged)

Panoramic picture of the olive press

My small crop was not processed right away – I had to trade my 16 kilos of olives for 50 shekels of oil bottled the previous day. Our business was first opened with small cups of tea poured by the owner:

Amir the owner pouring tea for me

Here is my crop and the oily result… well, in lieu of the actual result:

My 16 kilograms of mostly Souri olives

Bottle of olive oil I accepted for my olives

The small store set up within the warehouse had special tasting for the oils freshly pressed and of course, bottled oils of all varieties and qualities – all local stock.

The store and the taste testing

Before we left, another huge load of olives came – a long night of olive pressing for those guys!

Another van stuffed with olives!

Yesterday we took a trip to the Hula Valley – a large, flat, marsh-like area between the Naftali Mountains which borders Lebanon to the west and the mountains of the Golan which borders Syria to the east. Every year an astonishing number of 500 million birds migrate through the valley, an equally astonishing 390 different species. The migration has turned the Hula Valley into a bit of an international event, especially among avid bird-watchers. Tourists come and pay nearly $2,000 to attend a week long event including bird-watching, night-time bird-watching, scientific conferences and bird ringing. For the locals there is just a 3 shekel entrance fee.

Welcome to Agamon Hula!

We walked towards the Agmon Lake at first, crossing the Jordan River which has been reconstructed as of late. In the 1930s the Hula Valley was a malaria-ridden patch of land filled with birds and water buffalo. Eventually the land was drained and canals were dug to contain and control the waters, especially the abundance of melted snow that runs down Mount Hermon in the spring. Today the land is nice and fertile with water reservoirs and several small lakes which are more than enough for the migrating birds and to support the agriculture of the Hula Valley.

Jordan River

Tourists...

The chief migrating bird is the common or Eurasian crane. 100,000 cranes fly every year from Russia headed down to Africa to spend the winter. However, a quarter of these cranes winter in the Hula Valley and are thus a threat to the crops so food is supplied to them costing about 2 million shekels per year. The 3 shekels paid at the park’s entrance helps lighten the burden of the feeding costs. These cranes are both huge and noisy and fill the air with loud honks and hoots.

Common Crane

Cranes in flight

Lots of cranes in flight

Other bird species include herons, ibises, raptors such as eagles, kestrels and harriers, ducks, pelicans, storks and hundreds of other waterfowl. But it is not only the birds that populate the valley. There are nutrias and water buffalo and both live in and around the marsh. The nutrias were introduced from South America in attempts to raise a pelt business but the furs were not so needed in Israel due to the mild Mediterranean climate. They were let loose and now live in the rivers and canals of Northern Israel. The water buffalo were native to the land and were often domesticated for farm work. In the time of the British Mandate water buffalo lived freely in the Hula Valley marshes, today they have become slightly domesticated and live in the marsh but in designated areas.

A nutria running away from me

Water buffalo and an eagle perched on the tree

As I took pictures of the wildlife and the beautiful area in which they found their food and rest I couldn’t help but take panoramic pictures as well. Here are two panoramic photographs of the area taken outside the Crane Observatory:

Panorama looking South-West

Panorama looking North

On the way home we drove up the Naftali Mountains. Midway up my father stopped the car and I snapped this photo of the Hula Valley from the open car window. The collection of buildings on the front left are some belonging to the Hula Lake/Agmon Lake nature preserve. The long white road is what we mainly walked on as we crossed the reserve. The dark strip and most of the green and brown just beyond the buildings belongs to the migrating cranes and of course, the lakes are Hula and Agmon. Beyond the lakes is the continuation of the Hula Valley proper and the mountains that form the lovely background are those of the Golan plateau.

Hula Valley from the road in the Naftali Mountains

With all that we’ve seen and done in the Hula Valley, we have only just touched upon the full experience. One day I hope to go back and stay for a night tour to watch the jungle cats and the owls hunt. One day… maybe next year.

This time of year, the crisp autumn with the chilled nights and the cool yet sun-baked days, is an important time of year for anyone in the olive oil business. Last year I harvested a percentage of olives from the olive trees in our backyard. We had taken the olives to Peki’in, a nearby Druze village, and handed in our box of picked olives in return for some “homemade” olive oil pressed and bottled right there in the warehouse. This year I thought I’d step it up a bit and get even more olives. Here is the story.

Olives... From the backyard!

In our backyard there are two olive trees of different varieties. One is of few leaves and has large olives easy to collect and after a bit of internet research I think it is the Barnea olive cultivar or the Souri olive cultivar. The other has tons of leaves and has tiny olives that host all sorts of insects and spiders, the exact cultivar I have not found online. The classic way to harvest olives, and the way the Arabs do here, is by spreading a sheet or tarp out under the tree and then beating the branches with sticks, knocking the olives to the ground. Once the olives are on the ground the sheet is gathered up and the olives are bagged or put into some sort of container. I tried the beating method last year and was not pleased. Having to sort through all the leaves, twigs, nasty wrinkled olives and the hundreds of spiders to gather the crop of olives was not a happy experience so this year I went really hands-on. Choosing primarily the tree with the large olives I browsed through the branches hand-picking the juicy olives. It is an enjoyable task and one devoid of spider bites… Usually.

Picking some olives

As soon as I have relieved the chosen tree of its fruit, hopefully in a few days, I shall take them down to Peki’in’s Druze olive press to get them pressed and made into olive oil. That will be Part 2 of The Olive Harvest.  Until then the olives high up on the treetop continue to bake in the sun even as I stand on the porch roof reaching out to pluck them and drop them into my bucket.

Olives baking in the Mediterranean sun

Time to head outside and continue picking!

Today, the first real day to vacation on Chol HaMoed, we went to Keshet Cave, a unique shallow cave offset by a huge stone arch on the border with Lebanon. There were a surprising number of vacationing people there, teeming all over the rocks, jostling for space with the random herd of goats that meandered through, grazing leisurely. But, when we finally made it to the famous arch, this is what we saw:

The arch and the cave below it looking out over the low hills of the Western Galilee

An Israeli guy came about the same time as we did and began setting up to go rappelling off the arch. That was quite exciting until a tour group called “Extreme Israel” (or something like that) came and set up an even cooler rappelling site. The guide helped the eager teens into the web of ropes and carabiners and instructed them on the descent. As the small crowd watched the “daredevils” drop into the abyss, several spectators asked how much it would cost for them to participate in the rappelling. The price for a free-fall drop on the side of a mountain is 70 NIS, something I may have considered doing with friends.

Rappelling off the arch and into the cave

Once we’d seen enough of the xtreme sports we left the cliff edge and found a memorial for the kidnapped and slain soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser who were captured by Hezbollah back in 2006 in the general area of the Keshet Cave. I have been to the kever (grave) of Ehud Goldwasser in Nahariya when going for the Yom HaZikaron tekes (ceremony) so now I have covered two of the bases of the history behind the tragedy.

The memorial of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser in the park

Hopefully Gilad Shalit will be returning soon.

This post is one that differs slightly from the norm. But, I hope everyone enjoys it nonetheless.

This past week and weekend contained the two days of Rosh HaShana (New Year) on Thursday and Friday and the subsequent Shabbat. During this stretch of holy days I prayed mostly at the Hesder Yeshiva of Ma’alot along with family and friends. The beauty of praying at the Yeshiva lie in the choices of so-called ethnic forms of prayer. Within the walls of the Yeshiva there were three choices; Ashkenazi (European with heavy German influences), Sephardi (Middle Eastern and North African) and Temani (Yemenite). I stuck to the Sephardi one but ventured into the room of the Yemenites to both bask in the ancient traditions brought straight from Yemen and to say “hi” to my Yemenite friends.

Yeshivat Hesder Ma'alot

What makes the Yemenite prayers so special is the unique pronunciation of the words as well as the traditional form of prayer which has been chanted out for thousands of years. To give a taste of how Yemenite pronunciation of the Hebrew words differs from the pronunciations of the Ashkenazi and Sephardi worlds here is a video that I found on YouTube of a 6 year old boy living in Israel who has learnt from his parents and teachers the traditional method of reading Hebrew: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUz_7vvs4Ew

The sounds of the Yemenite pronunciation is only made better when the one reading it is a hardcore Yemenite. There was one member of the congregation who was dressed in clothing of yesteryear, remarkably similar to the dress of this Yemenite Jew from the late 1800s, mini-turban and all.

Yemenite Jew from the late 1800s

The most vocal of all the members has already been mentioned in my blog in the “An Israeli Wedding” post. He is the soldier in fatigues dancing “The Special Yemenite Dance” (as can be seen here: https://israelsgoodname.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/an-israeli-wedding/ ). Just recently he also moved into the house next to ours making us neighbours as well.

Here are some more YouTube videos of the unique Yemenite tongue:

Religious school in Yemen:

Yemenite chazan (cantor) reading prayers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fPoA-vQLbs

Now, not only was my holiday made special by the Yemenites whom I fraternised with I was also fortunate to stumble upon a local Ma’alot tradition of doing tashlich by the fountain across from the Iriya (City Hall). Tashlich is, for lack of better words, a symbolic approach to ridding oneself of sins by casting them into the water. Usually, or preferably, done on Rosh HaShana itself the residents of Ma’alot who live within walking distance sojourn together to meet in a large crowd to cast sins into the cascading waters. In the two years I have lived here I had not known of this event and just happened to go there while walking and talking with friends. Hidden gems, I say.

The fountain by the Iriya

On a side note, the dolphins in the centre of the fountain are none other than results of the Ma’alot Stone in the Galilee Symposium which I have wrote about before (see https://israelsgoodname.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/maalots-stone-in-the-galilee-symposium-archive/ and from TouristIsrael who published a slightly edited version of my blog post http://www.touristisrael.com/stone-in-the-galilee-at-lake-montfort-maalot/2422/)