August 23, 2012
Making the most of our final day in Israel, we were up by 4ish, departing the hotel just after 5. Breakfast would be reserved for later, but there was coffee and chocolate cake waiting for those of us who wanted to put a little food in our stomachs before the morning hike.
As early as we were getting up, the whole morning felt like a race against the clock to see the sunrise from the top of Masada, former home to Jewish Roman King Herod in the 1st century BCE and famous because the last Jewish inhabitants of the city chose death over slavery to the sieging Roman army. It took about fifteen minutes driving from Arad to the foot of the mountain, and as the pretty first morning light crept over the eastern mountains, some of us grew nervous we wouldn't make it to the top of the mountain in time. We were dropped off on the west side of the mountain, where we made a mostly straight jaunt up the rocky face until the path turned to switchbacks for the last 100 feet or so. At the time, I was simultaneously trying to race to the top while not passing Einat—who was mandated to lead us—and take pictures of the early morning light illuminating the chalky mountains behind us without losing pace or wasting too much of my camera battery, which was waning, having not been charged since Tiberias, where I left my backup battery and charger. Like the miracle of Chanukah, my battery held out for eight days in Israel without being charged, finally succumbing when I got back to New York.
We got to the top as the first daylight crested over the Jordanian mountains across the Dead Sea to the east, and there we waited for fifteen more minutes till the sun finally soared over the far away ridge and lit up the sky. Even on the high summit of Masada we were only some 50 meters above sea level, though it felt like much more because at the eastern foot of the mountain sat the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, 280 meters down.
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Herod built his Greek and Roman-influenced palace as an escape from Jerusalem, more than a day's journey to the north. Earthquakes and pillagers brought the city down over time so that most buildings' walls only reached shoulder height, and those that included roofs had the assistance of later preservation efforts. The original stone was delineated from the new reconstructions by a black line painted across building after building around the former city. The ruins were reminiscent to me of those I saw at the Vesuvian destroyed city of Ercolano.
Marking another unique experience for our group, our companion soldier Nadav's father was one of the architects responsible for the modern-day rehabilitations, and he joined us at the summit to discuss his role in enhancing the historic site. The most fascinating thing he mentioned was they took the remaining paintings/murals off the walls, cutting them off the stone like butter two inches deep. They were then treated in a lab before being reattached to the walls. It made me wonder if the process was at all typical of ruins and perhaps occurred at Pompeii, where the murals were more numerous and expansive.
Closing out our time on the plateau, we held a small service, as several of our peers fulfilled a sort of spiritual bar mitzvah. The participants were split fairly evenly between those who wanted to re-commemorate their connection to Judaism—some now at 26, twice bar mitzvah age—and those who never had a bar mitzvah but wanted to now make their commitment to the faith more tangible. They jointly read a short torah portion in Hebrew, passing off the narrative from person to person, and then each explained their Hebrew name, be it given at birth, taken at a previous bat mitzvah, or chosen in the last few days a part of the occasion. We of course concluded the affair with a joyous bit of dancing while singing Hava Nagila.
At this point, the sun was rising high in the sky, the mountain top grew hot, and we made the half-hour's switched-back descent of the plateau's eastern face towards the Dead Sea. The ancient path was much longer and mostly consisted of stone steps built from the mountain's raw materials. It was a hike I would have dreaded in my youth, with my extreme fear of heights, but I now greatly enjoyed. After some fifteen minutes, our legs began to shake from over-exertion and perpetual movement, and a few of us took more of a jogging pace, leaping over rocks and past our peers to stretch out and extend our leg motion in order to stay loose. It was exhilarating, and at the bottom we pleasantly strolled into a cafeteria for breakfast resembling our typical Israeli morning fare: eggs, bread, assorted salads, yogurt, and cheese.
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We spent the late morning and afternoon at the Ein Gedi Spa along the Dead Sea. The rest of our schedule was pretty light, giving us a chance to decompress and soak in our last moments in Israel. The activities began with floating in the Dead Sea, which in contrast to the Mediterranean, took absolutely no technique. It was as simple as laying back, and our bodies sat atop the water as if we were lying on pool floats. Sandals were basically a necessity to walk in, as the base of the sea was a rough and densely compacted layer of salt, which made barefoot walking unbearable. As cool as the experience was, the high amount of salt in the water caused a burning sensation from every cut or wound. We were warned in advance not to shave before going in, but most people found a few spots that started to bother them within a minute or two and continued to sting with greater persistence the longer we stayed in.
Leaving the sea, we next sauntered over to a small feeder creek bed full of mineral rich mud, which we slathered over every exposed inch of our bodies, leaving our skin silky smooth upon removal. Covered in mud, we looked like a band of Celtic warriors, with naked bodies painted for battle to scare enemies; however, we were a much merrier bunch. Conveniently placed by the shore were a pair of simple showers where we could rinse off the mud.
Next, we retreated to the spa, spending another thirty to forty minutes in the normal outdoor chlorinated pool before a few of us went indoors to briefly bathe in the sulfur pools. These also induced floating but reeked so terribly of rotten eggs that we could not tolerate breathing the air for much more than five or ten minutes. (An unfortunate consequence is I felt my skin had a slight sulfur smell for days after, despite the fact that I thoroughly scrubbed it with soap at both the spa showers and each subsequent day back home.)
We concluded our time at the spa with a group meeting, sharing our thoughts as American and Israelis traveling with one another. It became an overwhelming show of warmth and affection from both sides, appreciating the experiences with and commonalities of our counterparts. Each was happy to learn their stereotypes of the other were generally wrong, with the Israelis believing the Americans would be fat, stupid, morally-questionable party animals with hardly any affiliation to Judaism while the Americans believed the Israelis would be cold withdrawn Arab-averse killers. Both images were shown to be nearly entirely false, at least within the sampling of this group. We were able to identify with each other immediately and delayed our travel north with a goodbye session of hugs and last words that went well beyond the allotted amount of time.
As we pulled into Jerusalem an hour later the farewells continued with the Israelis walking up and down the bus to the infectious reggae tune that had become an anthem of sorts for the trip, "Jerusalem, If I Forget You." As the Israelis departed by the train station, heading back to their military stations, we snapped photos and waved until we could see each other no more.
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