Israel, Day 7

The remainder of the night – my time for sleep – was unfortunately limited to roughly three hours. I sprang to a sitting position and glanced around the tent at the forty-something inert bodies around me. There were some loud snores drifting over from the far corner. I heard some motion, a grunt, and the snoring ceased. A quick look at my watch told me there were still ten minutes before wake-up. Good going, Calvin prodded. Could have slept a whole ten more minutes. I shrugged.

As quietly as I could, I rustled through my bag and grabbed my clothing and some bathroom supplies. I was about to sit up when I saw a log of sleeping bag scrunch itself onto its knees. I waved a quick boker tov to Guy and he smiled back sleepily. His arms appeared and he picked up his guitar. The previous night, he and I had done a little show for some of the others since we had a few songs in common. He played his guitar and I sang along. I think the favorite was “Save Tonight,” by Eagle Eye Cherry.

Anyway, at 6:15 AM, he began to play “Here Comes the Sun”, quietly at first and moving around the tent, stepping over and among the slowly waking crowd.

How cool is it to wake up with a bunch of your friends in a tent in the desert, the sun still rising and the soft sounds of an acoustic guitar strumming out a Beatles tune? Apparently, not cool enough.

“Okay, that’s awesome. Now go back to sleep,” Stern groaned.

“I second that!” came Sarah’s voice through the groggy noises of a massive awakening. “We still have, like, another second to sleep.”

A few people grunted in agreement, still unmoving on the floor in their sleeping bags. Most people started stretching and gathering their belongings to get ready.

After dressing I wandered over to the breakfast tent with Josh. It was a large tented platform with a serving line and picnic tables set up. There were breakfast burritos and yogurt and apparently even coffee. I dislike coffee rather intensely, so I opted for juice instead.

“How’d everyone sleep last night?” I asked. It wasn’t meant to be rhetorical, but the fact that nobody really answered was an answer in itself.

The first activity on our schedule was a camel ride. We were still wiping the sleep from our eyes when we lined up on the edge of the open desert to receive our safety instructions. Hardly a word managed to lodge itself in our brains, which had already written these instructions off as common sense.

The camels were lined up in three columns, roped to one another so as to maintain the group and ease direction. Even from the thirty yards between us and the camels, we could see that they were rather domesticated.

“…so you want to be easy with the camels,” we heard.

“Yeah,” Paul said in a low voice, “You don’t want to crank that camel from zero to sixty right away.”

“No kidding,” Nancy agreed. We all laughed.

We paired off and mounted the camels. Emmanuel and I rode together. “We need to name our camel,” he said not two minutes after starting the ride.

“We need to name our camel?” I repeated.

“Yeah, totally.”

Our camel wasn’t exactly Captain Personality, so this would either be ridiculously easy or impossibly difficult.

“What was the name of that guy from Legends of the Hidden Temple? Olmec?”
“Yeah I think so.”

“We should name it Olmec,” I suggested. The second I said it I had changed my mind. Olmec was way too cool for our camel. The camel kept moving forward and didn’t turn its head to spit on me, so narrowed the list further: we couldn’t name it Psychic.

“Nah, how about Charles?” Emmanuel said.

“Why Charles?” I asked. That’s a strange name for a camel. I like it.

“Charles the Camel. It has… alliteration.”

Calvin took over. I tried to stop him, really, I did, but to no avail. “Alliteration is repetition of a consonant sound.” I shut him up, but in my head he was still yammering on. Sound, not letter. Something like Crackhead the Camel would be alliterative. We should call it Crackhead.

“Yeah, but it’s cool ‘cause it starts with a C.”

“It’s close. Yeah, okay, let’s go with Charles.”

“I’m pretty sure the camel doesn’t care, anyway.” Such profundity in the desert. The camel made it hard to argue this point. So I didn’t.

I had brought my camera on with me, which was great, because there were tons of cool spots for photographs. The desert vista, with the dunes rolling in the background beneath a silvery morning sky, was beautiful.

When the camel ride was over and we boarded the bus, almost everyone was awake. That might have been a side effect of having a camel’s hard back bouncing between the legs for twenty minutes.

“Wakie wakie!” Ran greeted us. “The camels said they liked how you rode them!”

Jesse, sitting on my left, leaned towards me. “Oh, so it was good for them, too?” she asked. I snickered.

Our cheerful guide informed us that we were going to a canyon for a morning hike in the desert. He advised us to bring water as though such advice was necessary.

The hike was great fun. It was entirely desert; there was sand and rock and gravel and sand everywhere. The sky had become a light but clear shade of blue and contrasted wonderfully with the top of the canyon side in the distance.

During our walk I had started talking to Danielle and Allie when Tair came and politely interrupted. I thought she was going to make a silly joke about so many Jews wandering in the desert, but she actually had something important to ask of us.

“Hey, guys, listen. Ran’s a really great guide, and he knows a lot of stuff, but nobody has really been asking him any questions. So the next time we stop, when he’s explaining something, please have a question ready. It can be anything, something silly, whatever, just ask a question. If nothing else it will be funny.”

I smiled and nodded. It would probably be hilarious.

We walked through winding paths between dunes until we came to a small clearing, if you could call it that. The canyon spread wide before and below us and the nearest hills were a short way away.

Ran explained briefly how the canyon was formed, the ages of water that used to be here and no longer were, and how the decrease in water level caused the horizontal ridge lines we could see in the distance. “Any questions?”

Twenty five hands shot up. Shock registered on Ran’s face in his wide eyes and open mouth. He called on someone.

“Yes?”

“How big is the desert?”

“Thirteen thousand square kilometers.”

“How much precipitation occurs here per year?”

“One to three hundred millimeters, depending on where in the Negev you are. Here it’s probably close to two hundred millimeters.”

“Did G-d spray-paint that rock?” Alan asked. I was waiting for Alan, who I knew would find a ludicrous question with which to challenge Ran. He did not disappoint. Everyone waited for Ran to admonish Alan for being silly.

“That’s a good question, actually,” Ran replied to our surprise. “The rock is painted as part of a path marked for our benefit, so that the hikers do not get lost. In effect, it is guiding us…” you see where this is going. Ran didn’t even miss a beat. I was thoroughly impressed.

“Any more questions?” he asked. There were none. How could we top that?

He instructed us to go off on our own for ten to fifteen minutes of personal reflective time. Get connected to the land, have a moment to yourself, take a few pictures – whatever would help us take it in.

I planned to do just that. Right after running up the huge dune several feet in front of us. Eli, Jeff, Marc, Guy, Reuben, Jess, and Cara all had the same idea. The race to the top concluded with the lot of us feeling exhilarated and rewarded with a beautiful view of the desert beneath us. Andrew came up behind us, supposedly to tell us that this wasn’t the point of the exercise, we were supposed to be doing some personal reflection, but I think he just wanted to check it out up there, too. He took a picture of us and then we all descended in different directions.

In a short time I was out of eyeshot of the rest of the group. Looking around at the desert, I found myself wordless in the midst of my meditation. I was hiking in the very desert where so many of the forefathers of our people had passed before. It’s a powerful thing, to have thousands of years of ancient history around you.

A moment later I figured it was time to start heading back to the group. On my way I heard a commotion. I looked up and saw a figure coming quickly, too quickly, down an exceptionally tall dune. I ran over to see who it was and if everything was okay.

It was Joe. He had taken a major spill down this desert mountain, the last third of his descent ending in a slide. Joe had gone off in search of a personal connection to the desert and found the desert somewhat eager to comply.

We asked him what happened, and I would describe it here but eventually I got him to write the story down for me from his perspective. It’s far better in his words:

I probably shouldn’t have climbed that mountain, but I did. I got halfway up there and said to myself, “This could be a bad idea.” But I didn’t want to pussy out. I thought, “I’ve made it halfway; I can’t go down now.” I was fully committed, invested mentally in climbing this f#!*ing mountain.

The sand was super soft as I reached the top. I just wanted to make it up there and have this desert mountain to myself. I wanted to follow Ran’s instructions and have five minutes of peace and quiet to myself.

I got up there finally and it was the best feeling ever. It had been a hard climb, considering I had smoked a few cigarettes beforehand. I was wheezing pretty bad but looking out on top at everyone and everything was amazing.

“Okay, let’s go now!” Ran said.

I thought, “Oh s%*#! How am I going to get down?!”

I started to slide down carefully and I was doing fine, but this was going to take forever. About halfway down the mountain, I thought, “I can sprint this thing. There’s not much left.”

I stood up and began a light sprint, which quickly turned into possibly the fastest run of any white American man, ever.

I got three fourths of the way down and realized it was going to end badly.

At that point, I didn’t really know what was going on. I can remember knowing for certain only that I needed to get down on the ground. It felt so intense, flying down like that. It happened so fast.

When I stopped moving I checked to make sure my personal extremities remained intact. Thank G-d they were. I quickly popped up and gave a thumbs up to let everyone know I was okay.

Shai came over to treat me. I remember saying to him, “I f#!*ed up, I’m sorry you have to treat me. This is my fault.”

He said it was okay, that he was my brother. I was completely speechless. It meant the world to me.

I had been here, to Israel, before, had a Bar Mitzvah here, floated in the Dead Sea, been to Yad Vashem and climbed Masada, but it took falling off a mountain to have a real connection with this country.

We helped Joe the Mountain Slider up from the ground after Shai fixed him up and got back to hiking.

Ran set us up with a little desert debate.

“There is a debate right now what to do with this land. Some people think it should be developed; some think it needs to be protected for the environment; some think it should go or remain with the Bedouins; and some think the Israeli Defense Force should be able to use it for training. So we are going to have a discussion. I need four volunteers, each to represent one of these views.”

Robby, writer and lover of a good argument, volunteered to discuss development. He explained that developing in the desert has been successful before, in Las Vegas. It’s clear that Israel needs to use more of its space as its population increases. They can bring water in using the geography to their advantage. And using this land for new residential and commercial centers would not displace a lot of existing wildlife, he pointed out with an arm outstretched into the desert.

Sarah said she would cover environmental protection. She emphasized that this was the place of our ancestors and that there is a historical side to protecting this land. “Look at how beautiful it is, too,” she said. Partway through a sentence about peace, she realized she really didn’t buy what she herself was selling. “Uh… there’s like no water here right now, and limited wildlife… GO VEGAS!”

“That wasn’t really the point of…” Ran trailed off. He switched tactics. “All right, let’s see what the IDF has to say.”

Alan had signed up to represent the Bedouins. It’s home to them, he said, and they’ve been here a long, long time. Plus they bring in a lot of tourism, which isn’t bad for the country. And don’t forget about the traditions that could be lost if they didn’t have all this desert anymore.

Representing the IDF, Dan was pretty convincing, to his credit. He said that the desert was truly prime training ground for military. Adding that much of the fighting would probably be done on desert land, it was the kind of climate and environment necessary to simulate combat situations. After asserting that border protection was key in Israel, and that much of Israel’s borders lay in desert land, he closed his argument.

We voted and walked off to finish our desert hike. The highest number of votes went with maintaining environmental protection of the desert, though I don’t think Sarah voted for her own clients.

At Sde Boker, the desert outpost and home of David Ben-Gurion, we were amazed that such a place of natural beauty could exist in the desert. The place was like a national park, with fields, trees, small stone walls, and ibexes. The ibexes were entirely free to roam, too. It was quite peaceful and free-feeling – definitely a place Ben-Gurion, who dreamed of blooms in the desert, would want to finally rest. It is customary, now, to think about your dreams in that place, so we sat and each spoke of one life dream we wanted to see come true in our time.

After we paid our respects to Ben-Gurion, we boarded the bus to go see the Ramon Crater. It is the largest crater in the Negev and has a really cool story behind its formation. The ocean that covered the desert started to move north and the hill that this crater used to be slowly flattened. About five million years ago, a valley started to form as the rivers changed course and with erosion the crater started to take its shape. Now it is five hundred meters deep and at the bottom there are some rocks as old as two hundred million years.

We got all of this information from more of Ran’s coloring-book-style pictorial slide shows.

There, he tested our knowledge of camels, and we learned that the Bedouin BMW is not actually another name for the camel.

We made a pit-stop at a mall where we would be able to find refreshments and perhaps some relaxation. I entered the mall feeling exhausted but I left feeling energized. Caffeinated, even, though I never ingested caffeine.

The culprit? A tastetastic smoothie.

Andrew and I were wandering through the mall when we came across a smoothie kiosk. He ordered one with orange juice, carrot, and (he later regretted) ginger. It was bittersweet and weird, though healthy.

I opted for apple, date, pecan, and milk, a flavor combination that confirmed Israel as the Promised Land.

Consequently, Andrew wanted a sip of my smoothie that turned into a quarter of the cup. That was okay, however, because I was intent on sharing this tongue-dazzling beverage with any of my friends who passed by.

Jesse walked past. I enthusiastically forced her to sample the smoothie and in return was eyed suspiciously for drug use. After a sip, she posed a question to Andrew in a soft, almost whispery voice. “When are you gonna show me that thing Guy never showed me?”

Taken out of context, there’s an underlying innuendo that begs the pronouncement, ‘That’s what she said,’ but apparently Jesse was simply referring to prayer practice; the Bat Mitzvah ceremony was to take place later that evening.

“Oh, THAT,” Andrew said when Jesse explained her obviously innocent intention. “We can talk in a bit.”

The Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony took place outside in the evening at the Israel Youth Hostel Association guest house in Arad. The complex is a two-tiered stone structure of rooms offset from one another, creating a visage like a huge staircase toppled over on its side. It’s set in a beautiful park-like atmosphere, with trees and grass all around and paths of tiled stone.

The circular stone clearing with ridge benches made the perfect setting for an outdoor evening ceremony. Reagan, Erin, Paul, Dustin, Jen, Blaire, Alissa, Allie, Erika, and Jesse each gave speeches and said the blessing before and after the torah portions read by our Israeli friends Shai, Matan, Avichai, Guy, Lital, Liron, Rotem, and Noy. They held the flashlight for one another through the reading since it had gotten dark outside and there was enough light by which to walk but not to read. It was a moving little ceremony, and everyone did a fantastic job.

After the ceremony it was time to party! We danced the hora, we sang, we hoisted the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in the chair, and then most of us went to a nearby bar to hang out for a while. Andrew and I beatboxed half the way there, which may or may not have driven the others to drink.