Day Two: Up North- The Golan Heights and Tzfat

Yesterday . . . we did a lot. After waking up and eating breakfast (true to what I have been assured, Israeli breakfast, even at Thai Village, includes fresh salad as a major component. Also cheeses and eggs and rolls and chocolate milk in a bag). Pretty much on time we got on the bus and moved out of the valley partway up to the Golan Heights to Mitzpeh Gadot, where we got to see a memorial to Israeli soldiers who died fighting in the area and an abandoned Syrian bunker overlooking the Galilee. Yoni told us about the area, especially in terms of modern Zionism up to the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War. After that we drove up to onto the Golan Heights themselves (and saw a good number of cows and a few horses in the fields we passed along the way. We arrived at Chan El Al, where team building sessions were lead by Yaakov for the guys and his wife Leah for the girls. I can't speak for what the guys did - I'm pretty sure some of their activities varied - but Leah gave us various challenges and encouraged us to work as a team, with different leaders for each activity. Some were physical, some were mental puzzles (she taught us that lots of times solving a problem is %90 planning and %10 execution) and included rolling our entire group over on a barrel, getting our hand on and swinging over a dip on a rope (she called this the Tarzan challenge), walking one girl on a series of planks held off the ground, among a few others. After discussing what we learned, we went in for a delicious lunch including many more salads, chummus and babaganoush, potatoes, rice, and chicken - and wonderful tangerines. That done, we drove down and through the Galilee, passing the Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, along the way to Tzefat, or Safed. This city, Yoni told us, was one of the four holy cities of Israel and the highest city in Israel; it has also been a center of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, since the Middle Ages, and today also boasts an artists' colony. The first thing we did when we got there was visit Sheva Chaya, a local artist who paints and does glassblowing art connected to Kabbalah. She spoke a little bit about her life, and how she came to love Israel and become interested in her Judaism and Kabbalah, and she demonstrated glassblowing, making a small drinking or shot glass with L'chaim!' written on it in Hebrew. Then we moved onto the main area of Tzfat, where Yoni told us more about the rise of Kabbalah in the area and we got to visit the synagogue of the Ari, a primary Kabbalist of Tzfat (which has a beautiful ark brought from Europe which had to bend at the ceiling because the measurements had been wrong. Then we got to visit the shops, stalls, and galleries along the way, which old and displayed beautiful and diverse pieces of art and functional Judaica. I got to try Lachuch, a Yemenite Jewish dish vaguely akin to pizza but much more interesting and delicious, sold from a shop that opened onto the street. All too soon (or so it felt), we had to go back to the bus and back to Thai village, where we concluded our day and got ready for today, which, presumably, you'll hear more about tomorrow. -Tamar