Northern Tour, Day 1

We left Yad Binyamin early on Sunday morning to begin our first day of touring with a tour guide, and, once again, we got a little lost. Waze is a great App, but my phone was slow to match where we were so there were these tiny delays and then we would have already missed the next turn. The highway never had a sign for the road we needed and we added a half an hour before we turned around, but it worked out. We picked up our tour guide on the outskirts of Jerusalem and headed around the city toward Jericho. (Toward, not to,)

Cool dust funnel we saw on the road.

Let me now introduce our tour guide, who will feature in several segments of the journal. Gershon Portnoy is an experienced Israel tour guide who lives in Elon Moreh, which is a settlement in the Samaria region of Israel. An American who came to Israel in the early 1970s, he is, what a North American might call, “hard core.” Passionate about Israel and the need for Jews to reside in ownership of our land, he added a fascinating aspect to our tour.

Our first stop was Nachal Kibbutzim, but the drive up there was filled with descriptions of things we were seeing: the names of settlements, historical stories and insights into the land and agriculture. Nachal Kibbutzim is a water hike in the Beit She’an Valley, directly in view of the Gilboa Mountains (for those into Biblical history, Mount Gilboa is where King Saul and his son Jonathan were slain by the Philistines). After another lunch of pita, hummas and cucumbers (and some yogurts for those who protested), we were ready for the hike.

Gershon had warned us to bring swimming gear (and he had an floaty-tube for Asher) and that we would be walking through water, but this was more of a swim than a hike. You entered the water that is part of a natural stream system and begin walking, but the water quickly increased so that the kids had to swim most of it. Luckily we had also purchased Yaakov a raft (although it kind of deflated)!  In the intense heat of the Beit She’an Valley (and there was a heat wave on in the already hot area), this was actually delightful. At the end of the hike was a water pipe that one could go through, but the intense narrowing of the flow of water at a steep pitch created a strong suction. It was fun but scary.  This was the end of the swim, and then we walked back to the car.

Our next stop sounded sort of unexciting to me, but it was actually really awesome! Dvorat HaTavor, a honey bee and silk worm farm at Moshav Shadmot Devorah. We walked in and an older gentleman was standing at the gate. He lazily nodded his head to us as we entered, and I figured he was one of the general workers of the kibbutz. The kibbutz area we were in had a pen of a whole bunch of animals: chickens, geese and peacocks (one of which displayed his grandeur for us), as well as goats. The kids enjoyed that. Gershon told us they were ready to begin and we headed inside for what I thought was going to be a video presentation. Nope. The guy who had been hanging outside, Yigal, was at the front and he gave a dynamic, fun, informative and interactive explanation of bees and honey. You would never have guessed. Then he showed us a video of a news story about his son, Boaz, who had participated in an international contest of people who “wear bees as beards.”  After the presentation, we were given a taste of some delightful fresh honey (which was quite sticky). Outside, Yigal gave us an explanation of how the bee boxes work and why smoke is used to calm the bees. He then guided us into a protected area where we watched him open a bee box. The final part of the tour was an explanation of the life cycle of the silk worm, which the kibbutz also raises. Then there was a nice little arts and crafts project for the kids painting butterflies, rolling bee’s wax candle and enjoying some chocolate and honey. Overall, it was a really cool experience.

By now it was almost 7 pm, and we were ready to find our night's accommodations. Using Airbnb, we had booked ourselves for the next few nights at the Yavneel Bed and Breakfast. This being our first Airbnb experience, I was pretty nervous about what we would find, but the location was AWESOME. Nili and Arnie Abrahams have a gorgeous wooden home (rare in Israel) located on a nice plot of land and surrounded by a desert garden. They use the upstairs as the B and B. The Abrahams had also made arrangements for Gershon, and it turned out that I knew the people who owned the “zimmer” (guest room). It was owned by the Veffers, who used to live in Har Nof Jerusalem, on the same floor that I lived on when I was at Midreshset Rachel. Going back further than that, I believe that I went to them for a Shabbas when I was at Hebrew University!

Satisfied with an awesome day, everyone fell asleep very quickly.