I’m going to attempt to relate the past five days to you as accurately as possible but I’m afraid my command for words is not really adequate enough to really convey just how incredibly amazing my Spring Break has been so far. So here goes nothing. (Also, we did so much and met so many ridiculous people that this is just going to be a sweeping overview, and you can ask for the ridiculous stories at a later date)
I, with two darling friends Dana and Cody, left Jerusalem early Thursday morning, cruising happily in our rented baby blue Hyundai aptly named Santiago. Despite having to wait a while at the rental place and having our vehicle checked at the checkpoint leaving the West Bank (we had to drive through it to get to our first destination), we arrived at our first stop close to on schedule. (We were actually somewhat happy that we had some glitches early on because that got the inevitable “hiccup in the plan” that must happen on every trip out of the way).
Our first stop was Bet She’an National Park, the most amazingly preserved ruins of a Roman town that I have ever seen. I remarked during our time there that the place was like an ancient playground. You can run through, stand amongst, climb on, nap on, and really in any way you desire interact with the crumbled walls, discarded stones, and fallen columns that lie all over the place. I never imagined being able to get so up close and personal with history anywhere, so I was just giddy with excitement the entire time. I was worried that since Bet She’an was just so cool everything else on the trip was going to be a disappointment. Not true.
From Beth She’an we continued north towards the Sea of Galilee. On the way we stopped at Belvoir Fortress, the ruins of a hilltop castle overlooking the Jordan Valley. Since it was a National Park we would have had to pay to get in and since we were only coming for a drive by we decided to skip the park itself and just go to a look out point. Here we caught our first glimpse of the Sea itself!! We could see for miles and miles in all directions and view of the Jordan Valley was absolutely stunning. This exclamation about beautiful views will be a recurring theme in this blog post.
We came upon the Galilee from the south and caught the road that goes completely around the entire sea, which we followed clockwise, stopping at strategic points along the way. Our first stop was Yardenit, a baptismal site on the Jordan River and supposedly where Jesus was baptized. Aside from the powerful religious significance the place is just absolutely stunning. The “mighty river Jordan” flows so peacefully though lush vegetation and they’ve turned this place into a beautiful little alcove. We saw tons of people getting baptized and even saw some wildlife (lots of fish and a pair of beavers). Probably the highlight though was the biblical passage from Mark translated into many languages. One was Hawaiian Pidgen, which, frankly, seemed unbelievably offensive. I’ll let you judge it for yourself though.
Stop #2 was Kibbutz Ginnosaur, the site of the Jesus Boat! During a time of really low water level in the Galilee in the 80s, two Kibbutzniks stumbled upon the remains of an old wooden boat. Through a lot of scientific testing and sophisticated technology in regards to transportation and preservation, the boat was moved to a museum and determined to be from the first century, essentially the time Jesus and his disciples were living in the area. There’s lots of speculation about who actually used the boat, but nonetheless, looking at a 2,000 year old wooden boat was pretty neat.
One of the cool things about this trip was that since we had our own car we could be spontaneous. If we saw a brown sign pointing to a site that sounded interesting we could check it out because we were very much on our own schedule. I’m so glad we did because I don’t think I ever would have stopped at the magical land that was the Greek Orthodox church on the northern shore of the Galilee. The first thing we saw when we walked into this church was a gigantic and gorgeous peacock, sitting in a tree! I, as Cody said, “Nearly laid an egg on the path” when I saw it, because let’s be real, who expects to see a peacock sitting in a tree in the middle of Israel? I certainly didn’t. There were actually 5 or 6 of these beautiful birds around the grounds of the church, as well as olive trees, lemon trees, hibiscus plants, and other beautiful shrubbery. Whoever did the landscape design for this place is amazing. There were even frogs in the little pond, sitting on lilypads. SO perfect. The church itself was, as all Greek Orthodox churches are, incredibly ornately decorated as well. We were also able to go down to the shore of the lake and get our first feel of the sea. I’m so glad we stumbled upon this church because it was such a hidden gem.
Unfortunately the rest of the sites around the Sea were closed by the time we finished with the Jesus Boat and Greek Orthodox church, so the rest of the day was spent just driving, finishing the Galilee loop. Yet this drive may have been one of the most breathtaking I’ve experienced. At one point we had to stop the car on the side of the road because Cody had a spazz attack saying “It’s just so beautiful we have to take a picture”. Dana could not stop saying “I just feel so lucky” and I must have uttered the most terrible cliches over and over again because of my loss for words. " Honestly we were all just so taken aback by the beauty of the lake, the surrounding hills, the sunset, the greenery—everything was amazing. We stopped at several lookout points to take pictures and enjoy the beauty, which my camera really inadequately captured. To finish off our first day, we explored a little bit of Tiberias, a pretty happening town on the western shore of the sea that treated us quite nicely.
On our way out of Tiberias the next morning we paid our respect to two big names of Judaism, visiting the tombs of Rabbi Akiva and Maimonides (aka the Rambam). My Orthodox Judaism professor will be proud. Moving from Judaism to Christianity we next drove through Migdal, the town where Mary Magdalene was from. There wasn’t really anything to see there but it was a beautiful little town so it was nice to drive through. Next was Capernaum (Kfar Nachum, in Hebrew), the town mentioned a few times in Matthew as the place Jesus settled and “called his own” during the portion of his life in the Galilee. This is also where Simon Peter was from, so there was the remains of an old church that was built on the site of another church, which was built on the remains of another church, which was built where Simon Peter’s house was. There was a modern church built on the same grounds. Next to the churches was the ruins of the town of Capernaum from the 4th century and really impressively preserved remains of a synagogue from around the same time. Again, the grounds of this place were really beautiful and well kept, with a gorgeous beach and view of the sea. I feel like I must have said 8,000 times “This is unbelievable” or something along those lines referring to how spectacular the region is.
The church of the Primacy of Peter (above) and the church of the Multiplication were two other stops nearby Capernaum. The Church of the Multiplication commemorates the place where the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 was supposed to have taken place. Our last church of the day was definitely my favorite: the Church of the Beatitudes atop the Mount of Beatitudes, overlooking the sea. I wont try to describe the church, I’ll just let you look at the pictures, because it’s just dazzling. I read the first part of the Sermon on the Mount out loud on the balcony of the church while Dana and Cody pretended to be disciples. It was pretty awesome.
Leaving the Galilee region to the north we next drove up to Tsfat, the birthplace of Kabbalah (the mystical form of Judaism). Tsfat is really high elevation-wise, so the views from the city are really beautiful. There are trees everywhere and it’s definitely greener than anywhere I’ve been in Israel. We spent most of our time in Tsfat in the artists colony, perusing galleries with amazing paintings, prints, jewelry, and other types of art. It reminded me a lot of Jaffa, where we went earlier in the semester. I even bought a little print (the only thing I could afford—oh how I wish I’ll one day have the disposable income to spend on art).
I'm going to leave it at that for now, and write Part 2 soon. As always, check out facebook for many more pictures, since this is just a sampling. Thanks for reading and I'll be back soon with more!! Chag Sameach to everyone :)
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