Shabbat

From children to parents: It was a normal day today. Heard about US bombing Syria when we woke up. But don’t worry, all is safe. No change to the trip itinerary or the state of Israel. Great trip. Love you all!

Moving on to what we did today. Today is Shabbat (Sabbath) in Israel which falls on a Saturday. This means most Jewish people working in this kibbutz we have the privilege of laying our heads, were not present this day, but at home with family resting. Our meals were a bit different as well. It’s not permitted as part of the religious custom to light a fire or work in general on Saturday. So all food that was not already prepared yesterday for the Sabbath today was left in a warm oven overnight and cooked over those sleep hours. It was great! Our tour guide (who is Jewish but takes his Sabbath the days he’s not doing tours) said that in a home setting, you might end up with some uncooked grub in the morning on Sabbath. So you never know what you’re gonna get. God will let cook what he wants eaten.

Sorry if that was boring to read, just wanted to set up this day’s vibes in the land it all happened in. ‘Just relax folks. God is good. Time to kick back.’

Our kibbutz is called Ein Gev and is a ten minutes drive from the ruins of the city Hippos (Susita). It’s up the hill behind us. We hiked up the sweeping grassland cliffs to the top where many dozens of fallen columns lay in shop and temple and home ruins. All this dotted with fenced off excavation areas and patches of grass blocked off by barbed wire.

Eric Simpson spoke to us within the ruins about the pig incident. You know, Jesus expelling the legion of demons to roughly 3,000 pigs. That was here. The story really came to life. We’ll tell y’all more later in person.

Next stop for us was Beth She’an (pronounced Bet Shay-on). This was a Tel (Tel: a man made lasagna hill) in the region of the Jezreel valley, which is the only place in Israel, really, where you can cross from west to east cause there aren’t any passable desert mountains.

Bet She’an is where the Philistines took king Saul’s dismembered body to show it off to the Israelites after he killed himself. After we hiked up the Tel and our tour guide Ronan told us this, we hiked down the other side where something much bigger was. The biggest ruins we’ve seen so far, a city that was once one of the ten biggest cities of the ancient world. Skitopolis. We couldn’t even see it hiking up the Tel, but when we saw it...breath taken away. A well preserved theatre, the largest bath house ruins ever found, large town square, thick columns everywhere, Nymphaeum (a fountain where you could cool yourself from the water coming from naked lady statues; the statues are gone now), gymnasium, and a temple to Zeus and Dionysus! But our guide Ronan is a biblical expert, not a Greco Roman expert. So Ronan passed us on to another tour guide: Ronanimus Maximus (Ronan in a Toga). That tour guide was a few thousand years old and told us about his life in the city over the years. After the tour, we recited the Sh’ma on the stage in the theatre. Then Ronan came back and we left for the next place!

Twenty minutes west, towards Mt Gilboa (a general area of high lands that’s called a mountain?) are the Springs of Harod (pronounced H are odd). This is the pool where God separated the Judge Gideon’s men by who drank the water like dogs. Most of them did, so 9,700 soldiers went home and only 300 stayed. Those 300 Israelites defeated and killed 120,000 Philistine soldiers. Wow! Death!

We swam in the modern pools for a few hours. We just relaxed and had fun for a while. Why? The Sabbath. We had lunch and lots of us ate ice cream,
Next stop: a boat on the Sea of Galilee. They gave us some quiet time (with music, so not quiet, but good). Sam talked about the two times Jesus calmed the storm. Then we had a dance party on ze boat. On the other side of the lake (sea or whatever) we ate a fish whole (cooked) at a restaurant. Then retired back to Kibbutz  Ein Gev. Now here we are! See y’all tomorrow!

- Written by Zach