Reaching the Golan Heights

Over the years, I’d heard so much in the news about the Golan Heights. The land was part of Syria until Israel conquered the territory in the 1967 war. Now I was actually on my way to the hotly contested area. The drive east from Haifa first took us through the rolling green hills of the Jordan River Valley. The fertile agricultural land enjoys a long growing season. Orchards of peach and apricot trees lined the road. And looking ahead, in the distance, were the mountains: the Golan Heights. 

Our first stop of the day was the Gamla Nature Reserve, part of Israel’s extensive system of national parks. The nature reserve is home to a wide variety of plants and animals. It is a sanctuary for raptors, including the endangered Griffon vulture. We took a short hike on the Vulture Trail, on the lookout for these impressive creatures, whose wingspan can reach 1-2 meters in length. I’m not sure we saw any Griffon vultures, but we noticed several large raptors flying over the cliffs.  

The park also contains the remains of the city of Gamla, which dates back to pre-Roman times. For defensive reasons, it was built on the slope of a steep hill surrounded by cliffs. Gamla was destroyed by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago. At the time, the local population was suffering under Roman rule of the Holy Land. The economy was bad and a prolonged drought worsened the situation. Fewer and fewer people were paying more and more taxes. Adding to the tension was the great mixture of different peoples and cultures in the region. Some people were so desperate that they sold themselves into slavery. Others turned to spirituality and started following leaders such as Jesus and John the Baptist. 

And then there were the Zealots, a group of Jews who turned to military resistance to cast off Roman rule. Three Roman legions were sent to put down the rebellion. After several years of fighting, in 70 CE, Roman soldiers breached Gamla’s walls and overwhelmed the city’s defenders. According to the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, the 9000 Jews inside the city lost their lives. 

The ancient city of Gamla was located on this steep hillside.

From Gamla, we traveled north towards a plateau on the Syrian border known as the Valley of Tears. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a major battle between Israeli and Syrian tanks took place here. Although the Israeli defenses were significantly outnumbered, they managed to hold off the Syrian advance. Two tanks, one Israeli and one Syrian, still face each other, a reminder of the critically important battle. 

An Israeli tank faces a Syrian tank at the site commemorating the battle. 

Our guide, Alon, giving us information about the battle

Alon called our attention to signs warning us to stay out of certain areas because of active Syrian land mines. Looking across the border fence into Syria, we could see the low-rise compound used by the United Nations peacekeeping force. Later in the day, at a nearby kibbutz that was heavily shelled during the 1973 war, we viewed a documentary that described the four-day battle in detail. 

Looking out at the battle site and into Syria  

The area looked somewhat desolate, with little vegetation. However, Alon assured us that the land was good for agriculture (apples and grapes are major crops) and that we’d see more vegetation once the rainy season began. Following the 1967 war, many kibbutzim (communal farms) were established here. Still, the Golan Heights remains a sparsely populated area.

One group that has made its home in the Golan Heights for many years is the Druze community. Several Druze towns and villages, formerly in Syria, are now within the borders of Israel and a large part of the Druze population remained in the area after the 1967 war. We visited a prosperous Druze town, Majdal Shams, in the far north of the Golan Heights, and enjoyed an informative home-hosted lunch with Oxana, a young Druze woman. 

Oxana, a member of the Druze community

In many respects, Majdal Shams resembled a typical Arab town. There was one important exception, however. The distinctive Druze flag flew from many of its residential and commercial buildings. The five colored stripes stand for the five holy men of the Druze religion.

The mid-day meal, served in a spacious house built in 1870s, was a virtual feast. The long table was covered with an appetizing array of dishes, including salads, dips, bread, lentil soup, three rice dishes, freekeh (a grain), kibbeh with beef, turnovers (some vegetarian), pizza, and sticky-sweet desserts. Everything I tried was delicious. By this time, I knew that when people in this part of the world invite you into their home, they serve way too much food as a show of hospitality. You’re not necessarily expected to eat it all. 

At home in the Druze village of Majdal Shams

Our feast at the home-hosted lunch

Everyone in our group was very curious about the Druze faith, but we quickly learned about the strict secrecy that surrounds its beliefs and practices. As far as its history, the religion developed from Shia Islam in the 11^thcentury, but the Druze definitely are not Muslim. They are monotheistic without accepting the divinity of Jesus or Mohamed. 

The rules of the religion are contained in six books that only religious Druze may read. At lunch, we learned from Oxana that children are exposed to a little about the religion and have to make a decision at age 15 whether or not to become religious. It’s an “all or nothing” proposition. Once a person becomes religious, he or she must follow all the rules while secular Druze don’t follow any of the rules. It’s also possible for a secular Druze person to become religious later in life. In fact, it’s not at all unusual. 

In answer to our questions, Oxana, who is secular, told us that religious Druze can choose their own marriage partners as long as they marry other religious Druze. A religious Druze who married someone who wasn’t also religious would not be welcome into the community. Divorce is permitted, but if a religious couple divorces, they are not allowed to see each other anymore. 

The religious men are recognizable by their baggy black pants, white beanies, and mustaches. Religious women wear baggy black pants, long-sleeved tops, and white scarves on their heads. Earrings or tattoos aren’t permitted.  

According to Oxana, the Druze consider themselves a people but not a nation. The1.2 million Arabic-speaking Druze live in communities in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, mostly up in the mountains. Druze who live in the Golan Heights have the option of becoming Israeli citizens. Many Israeli Druze serve in the army although they are not required to do so (because their religion prohibits killing). 

Whether religious or secular, Druze society is quite traditional. Oxana, who is very open-minded, eloquently expressed her desire to continue her education outside of the area where she was raised. We wished her well as we departed for our next destination, Kibbutz Kfar Haruv, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. 

I must admit that I was a little worried before we arrived Kibbutz Kfar Haruv for our two-night stay. I was thinking back to my experience as a volunteer on a different kibbutz in 1976. At the time, conditions for volunteers on Givat Hayim Meuchad were quite spartan. Much to my delight, I discovered that it was nothing like that for paying guests at the Peace Vista Lodge on the grounds of Kibbutz Kfar Haruv. 

Like each of us on the tour, I had my own modern and fully equipped cabin, complete with a welcoming bottle of wine, a plate of green apples, and a jar full of cookies. There was even a Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom, which I made a mental note to try during our two-night stay here. 

My cabin at the Peace Vista Lodge on Kibbutz Kfar Haruv

The setting was breathtaking. From our perch on a steep hillside on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, we looked directly out over the water. Within minutes, I was sitting on my front porch with a freshly made cup of tea and a handful of cookies. A feeling of calm settled over me as I watched the sun sink slowly into a bank of clouds on the horizon. The lights were just starting to twinkle on the opposite shore when I joined the rest of the group for dinner in the kibbutz dining room. 

The view of the Sea of Galilee

That night, I slept better than I’d imagined possible. The total darkness and silence enveloped. Ensconced in my cozy bed, the only clue that dawn was imminent was the gentle twittering of the birds in the trees outside the window. I opened the front door of cabin around 6:30 to a silvery shroud of dawn light over the lake below. Not a soul was in sight as I started out on a short pre-breakfast hike along the steep trail that ran below the cabins. Of course, I made sure to stay to stay on the trail in order to avoid any remaining land mines. 

Watch out for leftover land mines!

A section of the trail

At 7:20 am, a young kibbutznik (the Hebrew word for a person who lives on a kibbutz) knocked on my door with an enormous basket. I couldn’t possibly eat all the contents: five balls of different kinds of soft goat cheese, more than a dozen each of black and green olives (who eats that many olives at breakfast?), several slices of hard cheese, labneh(a thick yogurt) with za’atar, sliced veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers), a couple of plums, 2 containers of yogurt (fruit and plain), butter, honey, jam, a packet of granola, 2 very large rolls, a croissant, an enormous doughnut-shaped bread sprinkled with sesame seeds (a bagel on steroids?), a savory cheese-filled turnover, and even a freshly made omelette. Really? For one person? It was easily a day’s worth of food.  No wonder Alon had asked us to save our leftovers for a picnic dinner. 

We learned a lot about life on the kibbutz from a long-time kibbutznik, who was our guide for the day. Speaking in a meeting room in one of the kibbutz’s bomb shelters (there are several), she told us that Kibbutz Kfar Haruv was established in 1973, prior to the Yom Kippur War. It got its name from the nearby village of the same name. By the way, “kfar” means village in Hebrew and “haruv” means carob, a tree native to the region. 

A carob tree

The land was covered with lava rocks when the founders arrived although they found carved stones on the site from a Hebrew settlement dating back 2000 years. Currently, Kfar Haruv has approximately 120 members plus 150 children. Obviously, this type of communal living isn’t for everyone. In fact, our guide told us that only 2% of Israel’s population lives on kibbutzim (the plural of kibbutz). 

Before taking a tour of the property, we learned a little about the kibbutz way of life and the history of the kibbutz movement. Central to the kibbutz philosophy is communal life. The idealistic young founders of the kibbutz movement, most of whom came from Eastern Europe, were influenced by socialist ideologies as well as the desire to return to the Promised Land. 

Originally, there was no private ownership at all on a kibbutz. However, in recent years, many kibbutzim have chosen to move away from total communal ownership to some privatization. Each of the 270 kibbutzim in Israel makes its own decisions about organization. 

It seemed like a lot had changed since I was a kibbutz volunteer at Givat Hayim Mechuad, forty-something years ago. I recalled that all the children lived in communal children’s houses. Today, at Kibbutz Kfar Haruv, the children sleep in their parents’ homes. And instead of eating three meals a day in the communal dining room, kibbutzniks come together only once a day for a cafeteria-style lunch.  

Almost all kibbutzim started out as agricultural enterprises. At Kfar Haruv, revenue comes from the almond orchard and the dairy farm, but also from a very profitable factory producing valves for water treatment systems. The factory employs outside workers in addition to kibbutzniks. Likewise, some kibbutzniks have offsite jobs. Another important source of income for the kibbutz is its Peace Vista Lodge, which attracts many Israeli vacationers. 

We began our tour in the kibbutz dining room, where our guide set out buckets of sweet potatoes, which we peeled for the midday meal. From there, we proceeded to the cowshed, home to 1200 Holsteins, including several adorable newborn calves. A couple of members of our group who grew up on farms noted the extremely clean conditions. 

The communal dining room

The cowshed

From there, we walked past the factory and then on towards the living areas. Each family unit has its own small house. There is a clinic, activity buildings, and child-care facilities. Several groups of pre-school age children, accompanied by their teachers, came running past, heading to one of many play areas that dot the kibbutz’s open green spaces. With no worries about crime or traffic, it looked like an ideal place to raise a child. 

Play areas were everywhere. 

On our last evening on the kibbutz, our group shared an informal dinner picnic in the clearing in front of the cabins. Using our cell phones for light, we ate, drank (someone managed to find some beer), laughed and told stories. In the relatively short time we’d been together, our group of fifteen had become a family, thanks in large measure to our remarkable guide, Alon. 

The next morning, the mist outside my cabin was so heavy that I couldn’t see the opposite shore of the lake. There would be no early morning walk today. I crossed my fingers that rain wouldn’t interfere with our plans to explore several sites bordering the Sea of Galilee.