January 14, 2008
Today I took the bus from Jerusalem to Tiberias. It was a three-hour trip. We left
the hills around Jerusalem and descended toward Tel Aviv and the coastal plain.
Then we headed north until we had to turn inland again and ascend the hills that
form the mountainous spine running north and south in the middle of the country.
And finally we descended to the Sea of Galilee and the town of Tiberias. It was a
clear day so one could readily see to the other side of this beautiful fresh water lake.
The hills rise quickly from the shoreline on the other side and there isn’t much of a
plain on this side of the lake either, at least at Tiberias. The main part of the town is
at the level of the sea but then the town expands westward up the hillside. It is
much greener here than in Jerusalem and there are many more trees, most of them
planted by the Israelis since 1948. They are making a concerted effort to restore the
forests of this land. I saw a lot of farmland along the way, or a lot for a place like
this. I suspect that New Jersey for all of the loss of its farmland due to urban and
suburban sprawl has more tillable land than Israel.
Aliza Avshalom picked me up after I arrived. She is Rona Eagle’s (Janet’s boss)
cousin’s daughter. She brought me home for dinner. But first she dropped me along
the highway at the road to Cana. I walked the mile or so into the village to see the
churches there. Today it is mostly an Arab Muslim village – a dreary one at that.
There is both a Roman Church and a Greek Orthodox Church commemorating Jesus’
miracle of changing water into wine at the marriage feast. The churches stand
opposite each other across a narrow street. The Roman Church was opened so I
toured that. The Greek Church was not, save for its courtyard so I took a few
pictures of that. There was also a small church dedicated to the apostle Nathaniel
Bartholomew. I certainly took a picture of that since he is the patron of our church
back home.
After a few hours I walked back toward the highway and Aliza picked me up again
and brought me to her home. She and her husband and their four children live in a
relatively new community on the top of a hill near Cana. You can see the lights of
Nazareth from there that is several miles due south as well as the tower in what is
now the national park at Sephoris. The town is an Orthodox Jewish community
sponsored by the state. The state gives incentives, like cheaper land for building in
order to entice people into these “unsettled” areas. When the settlers first arrive
they live in trailers (camps they call them) until they can build their own homes. It
is gated, and guarded I’m sure, only I didn’t see the evidence of the guards. Once
within the compound it seems like a safe and secure world though it is within range
of the Hezbollah missiles in southern Lebanon. Aliza said one passed over their
compound last summer and traveled as far as Nazareth where it struck and killed a
Muslim boy playing in his backyard.
Dinner was fine – a little chaotic with the four kids and the younger ones vying for
attention. Aliza’s husband Jonathan showed me a family history that one of his
relatives put together. It was fascinating. There were many pages showing pictures
of parents and their children. It gave their birth date and death date. On some
pages one or more had the designation – d. Shoah (died in the Holocaust). On some
pages parents and their children all had the designation – d. Shoah. On some pages a
young couple would have the designation - d. Shoah – and beneath their picture
would be a blank for they had no children. On some pages there would be a picture
of a solitary young person – d. Shoah – and then blanks where the picture of a wife,
or husband, or children would have been. Jonathan’s family tree was severely
pruned by the Shoah and the branches that were cut off would never again bear
fruit. The tree survived but not in its full glory. There is no explanation for such an
impure act as the Holocaust other than spiritual in my view. What problems were
the Jews causing, or what threat did they pose to anyone? No, it had to be spiritual
pure and simple. Satan hates the Jews for through them and their Messiah his
ultimate destruction will come. And so he incites the nations against them. And that
Messiah, was he not born in Bethlehem and raised nearby in Nazareth?
Here are my reflections for the day. At dinner I talked with Aliza about several
subjects. One was about the tombs of the sages here in Tiberias. Rambam
(Maimonides), Akiva, and ben Zakai along with other noteworthy rabbis are buried
here. She said it was not our teaching to venerate sites of burial and for that reason
when Moses died God alone knew where he was buried. She viewed it as something
done by those who were more into folk religion and not the purer teaching. She
realized that Christians do venerate the burial sites of saints, though. (Well, yes
some do but not all.) But I wonder if there isn’t some difference though. Jews are
site specific with the Temple Mount. For instance, Jonathan, though he came to
Israel when he was six years old, said when I told him I had visited there said that he
has never been on the Temple Mount. That can only be because of the deference he
pays to its sanctity and his acknowledgment of his own ritual impurity (without the
ceremony of the red heifer being available today to purify from the contamination of
death). So the Jews focus on places. Christians focus on people – the sanctity of the
person in whom God by his Spirit manifests. The saints are such people. Indeed in
the New Testament all the believers are referred to as saints and only years later
was the term applied to a more limited category of Christians, first the martyrs, and
then confessors, and so on. Alan Segal had asked me about the Christian practice of
separating the bones of the dead and dispersing them in reliquaries to various sites
as was done with the saint’s bones. Perhaps that is the answer. If the locus of
sanctity is in the person, or upon death the person’s remains, then the bones could
be dispersed to make this sanctity more accessible to the church at large. In
contrast it would be a sacrilege for Jews to disperse the bones of the dead so the
Rabbis lay undisturbed here in their graves.
I also mentioned to Aliza the parable of the four rabbis who entered Paradise. She
corrected me by saying Pardes, the orchard. She said it refers to four level of
interpretation of the Torah based upon the four consonants of the word –PRDS. P is
the first level, the plain reading of the text at the face or literal level. R is a reading
with some understanding or interpretation. D is a reading with more exegesis. And
S is looking for the secret meaning, like the Kabbalists. I asked at which level does
she read the texts. She replied she hasn’t studied the Kabbalists’ interpretations.
She is Orthodox in practice but not like the ultra-Orthodox or Hassidim apparently.
No, obviously, or she would not have had me over for dinner.
On the way to her home she showed me the hill where Saladin finally defeated the
Crusaders and expelled them from the Holy Land. It is close by Nazareth and
Tiberias. The battle took place in the summer of 1187 C.E. and Saladin set the dry
fields on fire behind the Crusaders so that they could not retreat. They were already
exhausted from battle and thirst and so they were defeated. She said the hill, called
the Horns of Hittim, and the victory of Saladin serve as a rallying cry for the Arabs.
They say just as it took 100 years to drive out the Crusaders so in time we will drive
out the Jews.