Thursday, May 10: Haifa and Area

In the morning, the view was even better. But we were out in a hurry, because an ambulance was on its way!

Y'see, the London Jewish community had been raising funds for a while, and recently bought an ambulance for Magen David Adom, Israel's version of the Red Cross. So said ambulance came by the hotel, and it had "London Ontario" stenciled on it, and everyone took lots of pictures. Plus the driver, a young paramedic named Shai, was really cute, so all the women made sure to get in a photo with him.

Solar-powered hot water heaters

By the way, and apropos of nothing: everyone has solar-powered water heaters on their roof. Everyone! But we couldn't figure out why they didn't put up some more solar panels and use them to generate electricity for their other appliances. There's no hydro or nuclear in Israel, so all their electricity comes from coal and oil.

After taking pictures of the ambulance, we headed out, stopping for some quick Haifa highlights, including the beautiful gardens where The Bab, the second holiest dude in Baha'i, is buried.

The best Haifa highlight was Leo Baeck High School, a model of excellence in education and in multicultural respect. It's a very hopeful place, where you get a sense that there might indeed be peace on the horizon. This experience was especially meaningful to one group member, Wally, who'd attended the school as a youth and hadn't ever been back. Wally was known on the trip as master of the camera, taking huge quantities of photos everywhere we went.

The worst Haifa highlight was the Cave of Elijah, a horrible, dirty, commercialized, tawdry, depressing place where Elijah may or may not have spent some time, back in the day. This place demonstrated very clearly why secular Israelis want nothing to do with religion. It was awful. I'm glad we were there, because it was important to see, but yuk.

Crusader fortress under Akko

So back on the bus and up the coast to Akko (aka Acre). To get the significance of Akko, we need a quick history lesson.

Israel's been under the control of quite a few different groups of people. Following the period of the united monarchy under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, it split into a northern and a southern monarchy. Both countries were at war with their neighbours, including each other, pretty much constantly, and eventually both fell to a succession of empires. In 164 BCE, the Jews managed to regain control—this is the Hanukkah story—and kept control until 63 BCE, when the Romans moved in. That marked the last time that any independent state existed in the region right up till 1948 when the modern state of Israel was founded.

So in 63 BCE, the Romans took over, with Herod building all his great stuff shortly afterward, and they held onto the territory until 638, when the Moslem Caliph Omar took over. In 1099, the Crusaders moved in, and stayed until 1244. Then it was the Turks until 1917, and Britain until 1948. All of these periods are represented in archaeology, and that brings us to the point of this whole explanation: Akko was the capital city of the Crusaders, see, so there's tons of keen stuff left over from that period. Most of the other things we saw on the trip were from early Roman times or modern times, so it was nifty to see something from the intermediate centuries.

Marvin and Hannah

Akko was also where a class of happy little Arab kids waved hello at us as they walked by. Some people took it as cynical, but most of us thought it was really sweet.

From Akko the bus continued back to the hotel for dinner, thence a talk from someone who'd been a principal of Leo Baeck. But I wasn't on it. Instead, I and one other person, Annecke, took a sherut (a public taxi) to Karmiel, to visit Marvin and Hannah, ex-Londoners, in their native habitat. It was lovely. They keep a beautiful garden. We didn't have long together, but we had a very nice visit. They even fed us, which was an unexpected treat. Thence back to Haifa on another sherut. Internet was down, so dinner and to bed.

Next: Friday, May 11, Toward Jerusalem