Thursday 6/29/06 – The Yigal Allon Center, the tank, Bet Shean, tree planting, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem (Day 4)

First we took a tour of the kibbutz, which, in addition to having the hotel at which we stayed, is a working agricultural community.  They have a little museum called the Yigal Allon Center which houses a fishing boat that dates from the time of Jesus.  They found the boat in Lake Kinneret one year when the level of the lake dropped drastically.  They dug it out of the mud and enclosed it in foam (see picture below on right showing a model of what it looked like covered in foam) in order to protect it when they moved it. 

Since it dated from the time of Jesus, it was found in Lake Kinneret (the sea of Galillee,) it appears to be a fishing boat, and Jesus was a fisherman, they called it Jesus’ boat.  So the Pope called them up and told them they needed to give him the boat.  Needless to say, they didn’t agree (or give up the boat either!)

Next we set off for Jerusalem.  Early on, we stopped at a burned out tank and heard how the Syrians were sweeping down and might have taken over the entire Galilee, but one brave soldier went right up to a lead tank (the one we saw?) and threw a homemade Molotov cocktail into it.  The Syrians thought the Israelis had an antitank weapon, and they turned around and went back, so the Galilee stayed in Israeli hands.  We took pictures of the kids on the tank, and then Marc pushed it out of the way.

We stopped in Bet Shean – another Roman ruin like Caesarea. 

We saw ancient toilets (below left) and mosaic floors (below right.) The mosaic floors were faded, but one could imagine how gorgeous they were 2000 years ago.

We also saw bathhouses.  The picture below left is a bathhouse – the little short pillars you see actually held up the floor (which is missing) and allowed moist hot air to rise up from below into the bathhouse.  The picture on the right is Benjamin, Jonathan and Michael being statues in between some pillars.

It was very hot that day and we rested in the shade, enjoyed one of the ubiquitous orange slushies, and Jonathan took the first of what were to be over two hundred pictures of Israeli cats.  Then we went to the Jewish National Forest and planted trees.  Well, Benjamin and Jonathan and Marc planted trees and I took pictures.

We arrived in Jerusalem and went to Mt. Scopus so that we could look down on the whole city.  It was disappointing, because it was hazy and tempers were short from too much time in the sun that day. 

We got to the hotel and Marc and Don and Mom went to deal with the balagan which was our car rental for Saturday to go to see cousins Miri and Orly. (Israelis say “balagan” where we would say “snafu”.)  I dealt with the balagan which was our room situation.  The car rental balagan was that they cancelled our reservation.  The room balagan was that Michael, Samantha and Benjamin’s room was on floor 4 and Marc and I were on floor 6.  We weren’t the only family split.  The Schecters were on different floors too.  The hotel couldn’t move us down to floor 4, so they moved both the kids’ room and Don and Sue’s room up to the 6^th floor.  The fact that they couldn’t move my room actually proved fortuitous, because Marc was the only one of Mom, Don and Marc who knew their room number and the rental car agency wanted a room number.  Once both balagans were straightened out, we found that cousins Stuart and Marci and their kids were at the hotel, so we changed and went out to dinner with them.  We had dinner at Café Rimon.  It was very good – I had chicken livers, Marc had fish, Jonathan had a hamburger and Benjamin had teriyaki chicken salad – hold the salad.  After dinner, the kids got candy at a nearby store and then we walked around Jerusalem.  At one point some of us were waiting for other of us to come out of a shop and there were a bunch of rowdy American teenagers nearby.  Michael said to me, “There’s a bunch of my counselors in that group.” It was a USY group!  Shepherding 15 people through the streets of Jerusalem is rather like herding cats, so we didn’t go far.  Plus it was rather late – by the time we got back and put the boys to bed it was after 11.

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