Hello friends of the computer screen. Thank you for coming to check in on my cyber me. It is good to see you. Or at least it is good to be seen. I apologize that I haven’t updated in a while. It’s been a busy road the last month with research papers and exams. But there’s been some fun stuff too (not that research and study isn’t fun), which I am about to share….

Israel is a country full of hiking trails. The Jewish people are very outdoors oriented, picnicking and hiking and camping often. You can’t drive 20 minutes down the road without passing a national park of some type, and the result is a country that, although highly developed, has retained and continues to enrich a natural beauty which is very special. Although it is a small country, the geographical diversity here is astounding, with everything from moonscape desert to resort friendly beaches to green mountain valleys. In many ways I feel that Israel is the topography of the soul, for we also have many aspects to our personality and spirit – quirks and nuances and dark places that most people don’t get to see, yet are very there. Not many people make it deep into the Negev desert, but it comprises 50% of the land space of Israel. Not many people make it to the remote places of Galilee or into the Golan, where green fields and freshwater springs paint the hills. But it is there. And it takes work to get there.



So like I said, there are trails here, and a couple weeks ago me and two of my buddies, Bryan and Jordan, decided to take a bus north to the Galilee and spend a few days away from the city. There is a path called the Jesus Trail which runs from Nazareth to Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, which is about 30 miles. The terrain is split between farmland, forests, stiff hill country, and pastureland. We decided to give this path a try, and were glad we did. We were out three days total, making it 10 miles on the first day, 15 on the second, and then an easy 5 on the third. On our second night we camped in a place called the Arbel Pass. It is a canyon that drives its way between two high hills, and in the side of those hills are dozens of large caves. The area, and the caves in particular, have at several times in history been the place where Jewish rebels hid from imperial armies, using the secluded hill country as a staging point for guerilla warfare. In the time of Herod the Great there were Jewish rebels in these caves, and Herod and his Roman legions were unable to drive them out because of the steepness of the cliffs. Josephus tells us that Herod built large wooden arms to protrude out over the side of the cliffs, and from which soldiers could then be dropped in crates with a pulley system. This system worked well, and Herod’s soldiers stormed the caves and hurled the rebels and their families down the side of the cliff to their deaths.

On this second night we decided that it would be cool to try and camp in one of the rebel caves. We were down at the bottom of the cliffs enjoying chocolate ice cream cones at a roadside shack, looking up at the setting sun and the cliffs of Arbel above us. We gave it a go, and thirty sweaty minutes later were setting up our tent inside a cave high in the cliff. The view was incredible. We got there just as the sun dropped into the sea, and we each took some time to write some thoughts. Actually, this was one of the highlights of the weekend, because Bryan, Jordan, and myself are all poets. We have been meeting once a week for poetry night, and last week our friend Rabbi Moshe, who is a professor at our school and an ordained rabbi, joined in on the good times. For the last couple sessions we have taken to assigning a topic to write about, and then sharing with each other the different ways we approach it through our poetry.



When we met with Rabbi Moshe our assigned topic was “Success,” and it was a privilege that I will always remember to hear the musings of a 60-year old Rabbi whom I greatly respect on what it means to live a successful life. Outside of the classroom it is not professor and student, but friends. I really wish you had a chance to meet this guy, because he is one of the most alive people I know. His specialty is Jewish liturgy, and he simply glows with music. We had a long talk after class one day about music and spirituality, and he said a couple things that I have been thinking about a good deal lately: “Religion at its best is metaphor dealing with mystery” and “Questions lead to music. Music lets you reach places that you can’t with your mind.”



So anyways we did a lot of writing on our hiking trip, assigning a couple topics for poems, and also just freewriting. It is wonderful to be able to have friends with whom you can be you in the most natural and enriching way, and for all three of us this way is poetry.

Okay, that’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope your life is good. Shalom from Jtown.