Tiberias, etc.

October 13, 2006

Sorry, everyone, for taking so long to post. This entry's come together in tiny pieces over the last few days, mostly due to distractions.

Can you believe we're nearly half-way through October??

This is about the time when I start missing Halloween...

At this writing, I’m coming off the last of two daylong shifts in Plasson that my class has worked to make up for our half-week Sukot vacation, which ended Tuesday. My friend James and I used the break to check out Tiberias, a small city planted on the east banks of the Kinneret (a.k.a. Sea of Galilee) about 2000 years ago in honor of the Roman emperor. Check out some Tiberian history (fascinating) here. The place is filled with historic sites & friendly orthodox Jews, plus some gorgeous views in the clear warm weather (apparently I need to be savoring what’s left of our sunshine before the rain/clouds begin… I haven’t focused much on the weather in these entries, but it’s worth noting the crystal-clear skies we’ve had virtually every day since early July. The only memorable cloud cover I’ve seen was two weeks ago, when it drizzled for about 15 minutes) , and good falafel / schwarma roasting sweetly on street counters. Tiberias, like so many places here, also has tons of potential for development. When this region finally is granted some long-standing peace & stability, I think we’ll see unprecedented growth. Even after the summer’s war, I’ve met plenty of folks who are just itching for a piece of the property market.

But our stay by the Kineret was also a palpable reminder of how desperately limited Israel’s resources can be (yes, you’re entering the Boring But Important section). Lake Kinneret, about 7mi wide by 13 mi long, is Israel’s only above-ground source of freshwater, and people here talk about freshwater the way Americans are starting to talk about oil: if Israelis don’t change their consumptive habits, the pot inevitably will run dry. As things stand, overdrawing and contamination threaten the water quality of the Kinneret and the coastal aquifer, respectively, leaving Israel’s mountain aquifer as the last “safe” water source in the country. But water overall is still vanishing faster than the winter rains can replenish, and the mountain aquifer lies problematically beneath land that the Palestinians want, and may conceivably be traded away in the coming years. So the water crisis is real.

How can Israel turn this situation around? A 2002 government report suggests that the biggest setback right now is inefficient and unqualified staffing in the gov’t divisions that oversee these sorts of things. You can also check out http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/water/zaslavsky.html for what may be a more focused look at the issue. This isn’t the first gripe I’ve heard about Israeli bureaucracy (sp?)… my UHaifa bud Eugene, who’s getting ready to risk it for 18 months in the army, was turned down for his visa after riding two hours to Jerusalem. Upon repeating the trip (and return trip) the next day, he found that the first day’s efforts owed their fruitlessness to a visa officer who turned him away so that she could take early leave rather than spend five minutes processing his application. And I’ve had some run-ins of my own. Basically, if you ever want to get anything out of Israeli bureaucracy, know someone.

Wrapping up on Water. I don’t know how they’re going to fix it. There’s a ton more to read on Israel’s water problems, and I won’t bore you with the volumes of detail you can look up on your own time.

Also this week, Eugene crashed in for a couple nights and seems to have caught the eye of about every ulpanist lady here. All I can say, Eugene, is you're a salty, salty dog.

On the docket for this weekend: Serious Relaxation. Too much time sorting through plastics just makes a guy want to… sit. On Shabbat I may also get to tutor one of my Ethiopians co-workers on his English. That could be fun.

The Russians next door have been beckoning me for an hour join them for drinks (vodka, appropriately)… I figure I at least owe them a visit.

PS Eating garlic cloves at the end of a meal, as tasty as they may be, makes a person’s breath smell of moldy rotten soiled-over waste.

PPS Sadly, my camera batteries died just before Tiberias, but I’ll try to get a hold of some pics from James’. We're going to try to make it back up, so if I don't land photos from this trip, stay tuned for pics next time.