According to Jewish tradition, there are four holy cities, each corresponding to one of the elements with which God created the universe. Jerusalem is fire—the spark at the center of the world. Hebron is earth—the burial place of our ancestors. Tiberias, on the Kinneret, is water—the final convening point of the Sanhedrin. And Tzfat, in […]
Caesarea, like much of the Israel of old, was built by King Herod, who—despite being barely Jewish, was appointed King of the Jews by the Romans in 37 BCE. As his way of saying thanks, Herod ordered the construction of the port of Caesarea over the Phoenician town of Strato’s Tower on the Mediterranean coast. […]
I spent the past few days Couchsurfing in Haifa. My original plan was to crash by a couple of nudists who live in the German Colony beneath the Bahá’í Gardens, but they’re having their house redone, so instead I’m staying with a New York-born Israeli and his bodyguard girlfriend. We’re not all getting naked together, […]
A lot of people (Israelis especially) hate on Tel Aviv, and I guess you can’t really blame them. It’s the beach party, the most modern, international city in a country where history and tradition are tremendously important to the national identity. I was in Tel Aviv last Thursday for Laila Lavan, the annual White Night […]
It’s been one month to the day since I left my job to travel, since I left the States for Israel. At the start of this trip, I was one of a cohort of 48. Now I’m on my own. I’ve traveled solo before, but always in a structured context: for a wine conference in […]
“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” God is great, God is great, the women chant. They follow the armed escort, which is there to protect three Jewish men, and to prevent them from engaging in vandalism and prayer. We are on the Temple Mount, the spiritual epicenter of Arab-Israeli hatred, the focal point […]
I find no religion in churches. Temples leave me bemused at best, bored at worst. Mosques are nice to look at, but within their walls I feel no closer to God, divinity, spirituality, that great whatever-it-is in the sky. In the footsteps of poetic hoboes before me, I get my religion kicks from the echoes […]
The cultural treasures of Israel are sequestered by boundaries of politics and violence. One of the great tragedies of conflict is that it reduces access to the sum of human knowledge. A trip like Birthright, no matter how immersive, cannot be comprehensive, since much of the shared cultural heritage of this land is blocked off […]
It is Friday night in Tekoa, and my friend Nachshon’s mother lights the nerot shabbat. From the kitchen window, I can see the minarets of Beit Lechem—Bethlehem—where the muezzin sounds the evening prayer for the first Friday of Ramadan. Tekoa, an Israeli settlement considered illegal under international law, sits atop the Wadi Tekoa, a vast […]
“Tel Aviv is sweet, bro! For four days I would just sleep on the beach, wake up, smoke some hash, and go for a swim!” This was the advice I got from the bedouin tent DJ when I told him I was staying in Israel. He wore fingerless wool gloves in the middle of the […]
