On Sunday December 29, 1996 we visited the grave of Yitzhak Rabin on Mt. Herzl. Debbie, Mark, Gail and Marshall had been in Israel at the time of his assassination. Somewhere I have a photo of the grave at that time.
On Monday the 30th of December we started out on our trip to Eilat. The first stop was at the Mount of Olives where we enjoyed this beautiful view:
From Jerusalem we traveled down to Qumran at the Dead Sea and then to Ein Gedi. We parked the bus near the entrance, got bottles of water and hiked up the path. We didn't have to walk long before we saw water gushing at our feet. Our path followed the canyon and passed many caper plants along the way, and in about 15 minutes we got to the falls. Notice how we're dressed on December 30th!
From Ein Gedi, it's just a short hop, skip and a jump to Masada. Gail Rob and Danny climbed the Snake Path. When we got to the top via cable car Shel and Natalie stayed at the Casemate wall. Here we are at the top of the three levels of Herod's palace on The Rock (the original one, not the one in the San Francisco Bay).
We thought it would be fun to go to the Israeli-built hotel in Taba, Egypt for New Year's Eve. Little did we imagine that it would be more of an international bureaucratic obstacle course. Here we are celebrating peaceful relations at the first Egyptian checkpoint with the Israeli and Egyptian flags flying above us.
We started out early the next morning, January 1, 1997, and headed north again. The Reform movement has established a number of institutions in Israel. There is a Mitzpe community in the Galilee, many congregations around the county, the Leo Baeck School in Haifa and two kibbutzim in the Arava. We visited Kibbutz Yahel a number of years ago. This time we made a point of going to Kibbutz Lotan, younger and further south.
Ganon Gil, Temple Adat Shalom's Preschool has "adopted" a calf on Lotan. We chose this one:
From Lotan we travelled north through the Negev desert. After stopping for a quick simple lunch at Mitzpe Ramon and a chance for some climbing we explored the ancient Nabatean city of Avdat. The inhabitants were able to do enough farming with local water (in the middle of the desert) to support quite a nice sized city here. While Israel has specialized in drip agriculture, the Nabateans probably invented it.
If you want to join our group the next time we take a trip to Israel (Summer 1999), please drop us a note.
We owe special thanks to Nisus Software Inc. of Solana Beach, CA for making a PowerBook 520 available and Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego, CA for making an Olympus D-300L digital camera available.
Special thanks also to Joe and Dave of Computergeeks for space on their server.
Many thanks also to Lila Abrams of Abrams Travel, Inc. (1-800-338-7075) and her tireless efforts to make this trip a success.
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© MemHeh Productions Last updated: June 2, 1999.