Israel Day 4 – Multidimensional Identity

A very long day, beginning with another sumptuous array of breakfast choices, checking out from the kibbutz hotel, and the fastest purchase of two pairs of shoes in my history (a very brief stop at the nearby kibbutz where Naot shoes are made, just to shop at the factory outlet store!). I think it may have cured the sandal-envy I’ve been having lately, plus a very practical pair of black walking shoes.

We then bussed to Tzfat (Safed), known as the ancient seat of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and for its art galleries. Our stay there was too short to feel much of a spiritual nature, unless you count the fact that 2 cameras in a row didn’t work when people from our group asked Doron to take a group photo, and then just on the other side of the wall, mine didn’t work at first inside the synagogue we visited. (Or unless you count the gleeful sounds of the children studying in the yeshiva, the 4 feral kittens feeding on their mother’s teats in the middle of the sidewalk, or the length of the dreadlocks on the guy in the business office of the tallit-weaver’s shop).

Ellen and I did make one purchase, a lovely 3-(or, depending on how you look at it, 4-) dimensional Star of David pendant made by an artist in Tzfat, which I was planning to buy for myself but she bought for me instead. I was drawn to it because when I was in 8th grade I won a ribbon in a local science fair with a project called “Topology and the Fourth Dimension,” for which I made 3-dimensional representations of 4-dimensional cubes, tetrahedrons, and Mobius strips. A so-called “hyper-cube” can be represented in 3 dimensions similarly to how we draw a 3-dimensional cube on a flat piece of paper, using perspective. One of the ways to do this is by constructing a small cube inside a larger cube, with each of the 4 inner corners connected to one of the four outer corners. It may be hard to see in the picture, but there is a smaller 3-dimensional Mogen David inside the larger one. (Interestingly, one way of representing a hypercube in a 2-dimensional drawing looks a lot like the diagrams of the 10 Sefirot from Kabbalah, seen here in a stained glass representation from the main Ashkenazi synagogue in Tzfat.)

I also like the pendant because it makes me think of the multi-dimensionality of Jewish identity. Religious, ethnic, culinary, historical, geographical, genetic, political, spiritual…. Ellen said she liked it because it felt like blessing my chest.

We then went to Rosh Hanikra, where we took a cable car down the side of a bright white limestone cliff to see beautiful grottos the Mediterranean has carved into the rock (yes, I threatened to go for a swim, at which point Aunt Ellen pulled rank and said “NO!”). Back up at the top, we walked a few yards to the gate of the border with Lebanon, guarded by a group of Israeli soldiers who were playing guitar and singing. We talked and joked with one of them, who tried to answer our questions in English and said he liked it when tourists came because it gave him a chance to practice his English. He had to ask Doron for help in reply to my question about why there was olive green scalloped fabric woven into the fence. When we finally settled on the word “camouflage,” and I asked, “but what about the bright blue paint on the trim of the gate?”, he shrugged, and when I said the camouflage was “just for show?” he nodded. Doron confirmed that the border there has been very "quiet," unlike during his own time in the military.

We then stopped at Akko (Acre) and visited a fortress that was build by Crusaders in 1099, then used, re-used, and rebuilt by various people through the ages including Malmuks and the British army. As with all the other cities here, feral cats were everywhere. We ended the evening with home hospitality, a presentation and Q & A, and vast amounts of food (which I enjoyed a lot, especially the stuffed grape leaves and the date juice) in a Druze village.

Our Druze tour guide, a 20-year-old non-religious Druze woman named Nor, was delightful and it was fascinating to learn a little about this tiny minority religion, which split off from Islam 1000 years ago. They believe in a kind of reincarnation that creates strict population control; each soul is immediately reborn into another Druze body (men into boy babies, women into girl babies); there is NO intermarriage (only 120 people of the 136,000 Druze living in Israel have left due to intermarriage in the entire history of the State of Israel); NO way to convert to be a Druze, and each couple is only allowed 2 children if poor and up to 4 children if wealthy. Druze live in many locations around the world, and it is apparently somewhat controversial exactly how many of them there are; somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 million. I suspect the controversy is due to the fact that theoretically/theologically, there is no way for the population to grow or shrink by more than the difference between the death rate and the birth rate on any given day…. !

Most of the religion is secret, and only taught to Druze who decide to become “religions” Druze. At age 15 they get to chose whether to be religious Druze or not; they can later change their minds twice, but no more than that. Druze believe that God is everywhere, and thus are loyal to whatever country they live in. One sign of this loyalty is that Druze men (but not women) in Israel serve in the Israeli army, even though they are Arabs. (Interestingly, the Druze in the Golan Heights maintain their loyalty to Syria, and do not serve in the Israeli army).

We’re told this was the busiest day of the trip, and I think if that’s true it will be a good thing… not enough time to digest it all!!