20 July 2010
I was once told that bravery is not the absence of fear, but rather the mustering of courage to overcome that fear and complete the task at hand. I was very nervous about driving in Israel; I know that my nervousness was irrational, but it was very real at the time and I needed to overcome it. I picked up the car the evening before prior to my meeting with Dr. Levine. My first task was to fill it up with gas. In the U.S., that is a task akin to getting dressed or brushing one’s teeth – performed with little thought and often repeated…but try to do it when everything on the pumps are written in Hebrew and the attendant speaks mostly Arabic and only a little English. The Palestinian kid was very helpful and quite accommodating. On the way back, I had to fill up the car again and carried out the same procedure again, this time in a mixture of Hebrew and English.
I left the Albright at around 5;30 that morning and only getting lost once on the way out of Jerusalem, I made my way east towards the coast and then North into Galilee. Once I got out of the city, the roads were somewhat deserted and the landscape was rocky and sparse. Gradually I began to see dry and almost dead vegetation, which became progressively greener as I made my way further north, culminating in tree-lined hills nearer to my destination.
About an hour south of Tiberius I came to what looked like a tollbooth. (It was still early, probably around 7:30 a.m.) Two attendants were standing outside in vests and they greeted me in Hebrew. When I responded in English and they instantly switched to that language. They asked where I was coming from and where I was headed and then asked for my passport. They were unarmed (or appeared to be so) and it was only at this point that I realized that I was at a military checkpoint. They opened the gate and instructed me to pull into a small parking area to the side. I did so and was approached by several other people, these were carrying machine guns. They were really just teenagers, gun-toting teenagers. Their demeanor was cheery and they were friendly; all in all, I cannot complain of my treatment in the least, but I was a little freaked out by the principle of the whole thing. I was instructed to open my hood and trunk and all four car doors and exit the vehicle, bringing with me any bags I might be carrying. I sat on a small bench as they put my belongings through a metal detector. Outside, they walked around my car with a German Shepherd and manually searched under the seat, in the glovebox, etc. I kept thinking, “Oh no! I bet I crossed over some border or something…” When I inquired, a female soldier pointed into the distance and told me that there was a Palestinian village in that direction.
I got lost in Tiberius and as I wound further into the hills of a residential area, I finally stopped when I saw an older gentleman by the side of the road. After the requisite “Atah medaber anglit?” (“Do you speak English?”), he responded in a clipped accent, “Some.” He asked where I wanted to end up and I told him I needed to go toward Tsfat (I had to change highways there). He told me, “You are going the wrong way. Turn around and follow me and I will direct you out.” He was an immense help and I realized that I need to be nicer to those pesky tourists that converge on Williamsburg!
I got lost again in northern Galilee and this time, there was no one around the signs were only in Hebrew and Arabic (once I left the main road). I called my contact in Jerusalem, Dr. Sy Gitin and read him the Hebrew letters and he translated for me.
Finally I found Kfar Bar’am National Park. I paid the entrance fee and climbed the steps towards the ancient ruins and there it was right in front of me! After looking at so many pictures, it was surreal to actually be gazing at the real thing! I’ve included some of the pictures I took that day of Kfar Bar’am and I’ll tell you about the second site I visited in my next entry…
