Yes, you can go mountain biking in the Holy Land. They’ve got it all: hair-raising descents, arresting scenery, arduous climbs—and you can become closer to your deity at the same time. See Christian, Jewish, and Muslim holy sites while burning away calories and improving your aerobic fitness.

I went mountain biking in the Jerusalem Forest with my guide, Joe Zias, who generously lent me his Salsa 29er. The views of steep terraced hill sides and the wooded hills of Jerusalem were stunning. We saw the Monastery of St. John the Baptist, a Palestinian shepherd tending his flock, Arab villages, and Jewish settlements.

I am not much good at descents on rock strewn paths that required constant concentration, but I got better as the day wore on. I was pretty respectable at the 20 minute climb out of the valley. It was hot and dry and sunny—28 degrees Celsius, which was a big improvement over last week in Jerusalem when it was about 6 Celsius. We weren’t alone—we saw at least 15 other riders. Not everyone can go mountain biking on Shabbat in Jerusalem, but it is a form of rest if you ignore how strenuous it is.

This was a great thing to do and it was a much needed break from talking politics, existential questions, and religious pluralism. I heartily thank Joe for the ride and Navona (apologies for the spelling) for the fabulous post-ride lunch.

We’ve seen so much and gotten so immersed in the situation here my head is spinning.  I don’t know how to reduce everything to sound bites.

In the past two days we’ve met the leading feminist in Israel to talk about religious pluralism and women’s issues in Judaism, an atypical Palestinian journalist, and an impressive Israeli journalist who tried, admirably, to “sum it all up.”  We had a group discussion of our impressions.

I vowed I would kill the next person on the trip who said, “it’s so complicated,” and then I said it and I won’t kill myself.  So, everyone else is safe now.

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Petra was the great city of the Nabateans from approximately 200 BCE.  It is one of the places where you feel like you are living 20 centuries ago because of the raw power of the place.  You can imagine the hidden city with its mysterious temples carved into the living rock.  You can imagine defending the narrow ravine against an attack.  We don’t know much about the Nabateans, but we can feel some of the same awe they felt when they entered their canyon city.

This is a bit out of chronological order in the blog because we visited Petra on February 28.

Our guide Mohammed explains Petra before we enter.	The narrow entrance to the canyon city.  In some places it is only as wide as two people—a marvelous defensive fortification provided by nature.
The last gap and Roman paving stones added after Romans occupied the city.	The “Treasury”—the first structure you see when you pass the gap.  It is like the facade of a Greek temple carved directly into the living rock.

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We were in Sderot, just 3 miles from the Gaza Strip and one of the villages that has received the most rockets launched from Gaza.  We went to a hill overlooking Gaza where you can see the buildings of Jabaliya:

People in Israel constantly remind you of how close things are.  In Seattle, we are about 200 miles from Canada—our nearest international border and a rather peaceful one.  Nearly all of Israel would fit in that distance.  And the distance from Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, to Gaza is about the same as the distance between Tacoma and Seattle.  Last I heard, Tacoma was not launching missiles towards Seattle and Seattle was not bombing Tacoma.  Sderot is closer to Gaza than Tel Aviv.  In the satellite image below, the pushpin on the right is Sderot; the middle one is the border with the Gaza strip; the one on the left is Jabaliya—one of the large cities in the Gaza Strip.  Note the distance scale near the bottom of the satellite photo:

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Yehuda (Judah) is a former IDF soldier who is also an orthodox Jew, which makes him a bit more to the right, by background, then many Israelis who question some Israeli policies. His sister is a settler. But, when Judah came back from his mandatory 3 years of service, as a sergeant and platoon leader, he wondered if what he had done had been right. His question to himself was, “where is the moral boundary beyond which Jews defending the state of Israel should not go?” He also wondered if most Israelis knew, understood, or cared what the army was doing on their behalf in the occupied territories. While there is probably no Israeli Jew who would not defend Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish democracy and who would understand defending threats within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, most probably don’t realize that many of the actions taken in the territories do not have a defensive character.

I am already getting more political than Judah. He came back from serving in Hebron wondering if what he had done was right. Starting with his own platoon, he asked others how they felt and many felt the same way. They collected photos and videos of their service in Hebron and mounted an exhibit at the Israel Museum (or was it the Tel Aviv museum?) in 2005. It quickly became the talk of all Israel.

Hebron is a challenging place. It was an Arab village through 1967 that was occupied after the Israeli victory in the 6 day war. Hebron contains the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which allegedly is the burial spot of Abraham/Ibrahim and Isaac and is holy to both Muslims and Jews. The Taliban-esque Rabbi Levinger decided that Jews should recover the tomb, with approval of the government of Israel and military leaders in charge of the occupation. The history of the settlement is told in Gershom Gorenberg’s masterful The Accidental Empire.

Now, Hebron has a settlement of 800 Jews more or less in the middle of an Arab village of 16,000. Most of the other West Bank Israeli settlements are distinct villages or small cities that are separated from Arab villages. But, here some Israeli Jewish houses and Arab houses share walls. The settlers are mostly orthodox and ultra-orthodox. They carry machine guns. They frequently taunt and interfere with the Arabs. The army is there to protect the settlers but more than occasionally finds itself defending the Arabs from the settlers—and then getting abuse from the settlers for defending the wrong people.

So, Hebron is a tough neighborhood. Judah started Breaking the Silence to enable soldiers who had been stationed in Hebron to recount specific facts about what they had done in Hebron. He gave us two examples:

…when you see a bag in the middle of the street you don’t know if it is a bomb or just a bag of garbage. How do you tell? You can do one of three things: You can shoot it from a distance and if it is a bomb it will blow up. You can call a demolition engineer to examine and dismantle it. You can grab a Palestinian off the street in the day—or pull someone out of their house at night—and have the Palestinian pick it up and carry it away—and he’ll blow up if it is a bomb. So, which happens the most often? Number 3—it’s easier; it shows who is in charge; it adds a little excitement to boring duty. And it’s wrong.

… a lot of missions involve breaking into someone’s house to arrest someone or to search the house. But, you don’t go directly to the suspect house. You go the neighbor’s house and then you drag the neighbor out of his house and hold him in front of you when you knock down the door of the suspect house. This is called “bringing a neighbor along.” It was challenged by an NGO in the High Court of Justice and made illegal. But, does it stop? Of course not. Now you “bring a friend…”

I have a book of these reminisces and it just makes me sick to read them. Is this worse than what the Americans do in Iraq? Or what the Serbians did in Bosnia? Or what any other occupying army does? As Judah put it, “That’s not the point. It’s not what Israelis should be doing.”

You can see some of this for yourself at: http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il

This is a frivolous post.  Every country has little things that are different than what you are accustomed to—these things aren’t better or worse than what’s familiar—just different.

No Pens in Hotels:  Every US hotel, even the cheapest Day’s Inn has free pens.  They must go through millions of them and each pen might cost 3 cents.  In Israel, you get a black pencil:  the lead is black, the outside is black, and the wood is black.  No pens.

Wetnap after meal:  In many restaurants you get one of those refreshing packets containing a moistened “towlette”.  In the US, you get one if the food is particularly messy.  In Israel, messiness isn’t part of it.

Salad for breakfast:  Since many restaurants in Israel are kosher, they have to choose whether they serve “meat” or “dairy.”  Breakfast pretty much has to be “dairy” (can you imagine coffee without cream or cereal without milk or fruit without yogurt?).  So, in addition to wonderful bread and pastries, lots of fruit, and a variety of previously Eastern European fish, you can have salad with breakfast.  “Israeli salad” consists of finely chopped cucumber and tomato. You’ll also find cabbage, finely sliced carrots (tsimmes), and other salads.  It’s quite nice, actually, and very good for you.

Hebrew Transliterations of English words:  If you grew up in the US you’ve undoubtedly seen English phonetic transliterations of Hebrew for people whose Hebrew is rusty (“baruch atoh adonai,” etc.).  In Israel, as in so many other places, English words are added to the language with phonetics.  But, the nearest equivalent Hebrew sounds for the English words are not always a very close match.  So, “Crown Plaza” turns into something like “krone platsa”;  the Italian restaurant “Bocaccio” turns into “bokatsyo”.  Of course, the English transliterations of Hebrew aren’t much better. It’s just sort of humorous sounding out some really long word and realizing it’s meant to be the English sounds.

Virgin Toilet Paper:  Take this with a grain of salt….   Apparently, in Israel as in other places recycled paper pulp is being used to make toilet paper.  The ultra-orthodox (or a few of a few) insist on buying virgin toilet paper made from paper pulp from trees to make sure that no prayer books have been used to make the toilet paper.  Now, this seems very unlikely as any book or other liturgical object would never be thrown away by a devout or not-so-devout Jew.  Synagogues collect this material and when there is enough, they give the material a proper religious burial—so it’s just not going to find its way into the recycling.  Besides, Israelis hardly recycle anything….