Lotan and the Arava

After making my way back into Israel through a completely painless border cross, I landed at Kibbutz Lotan. As I'm sure you know, a kibbutz is an agricultural commune where the property is owned jointly by all (read: by none). Now there are various sorts of kibbutzim: some are more Orthodox, most are secular, almost all left-wing, and they have a variety of ideologies behind their communal settlements. But within this strange group of micro-communists, there's the good folks at Kibbutz Lotan.

And by good folks, I mean creepy tree-hugging self-righteous hippies.

Naturally, I went just in order to see what they'd done with the place (note: the place = the desert).

For a good overview from their own mouths, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yz6ggl03_0

Those domes you see aren't actually where the kibbutz members live, contrary to what the advertising video leads you to believe. Members live in semi-normal houses. The domes are where they stick people in the Green Apprenticeship Program for the duration of their stay while they learn to make mud bricks. Speaking of mud bricks, did anybody notice the use of children for construction labor in the video? They scoot right past it there, but they're a bit more vocal about their left-wing ideology of labor on one sign in the Creative Ecology Park:

"Under the Egyptians, Pharaoh made the Hebrew slaves gather their own straw and mud, but we'll gladly provide you with straw and mud here at the Creative Ecology Park!" It might as well continue: "But like under all forms of socialism, you're still slaves!" Fascinating.

At dinner the first evening I got a particularly enlightening peek into the culture of Lotan. One of the other people at the table began complaining about corn. "It's in everything!" she exclaims, and proceeds to detail the evils of corn by listing all the products in which corn is an ingredient. Finally someone asked "What's wrong with corn?" The response? "It's in everything!" Again, fascinating.

We were also told by the same girl that we needed to take eggs off the menu in order to restrict people's diet choices, since eggs are neither healthy nor vegan-friendly. Truly, the tendency of socialism to inevitably lead toward multiple avenues of total control is, yes, again, fascinating.

After escaping this hippie paradise I made a day trip through Timna Valley Park. Here are the world's oldest copper mines, dug by the Egyptians of the late New Kingdom in cooperation with the local Midianite population. The park was far larger than I'd thought, but fortunately I was driven around by a nice Russian-American family visiting relatives here in Israel for their son's Bar Mitzvah.

The park also contains a working replica of the wilderness tabernacle carried around by the Israelites that was eventually supplanted by Solomon's temple. It's a far, far better representation than the one done by Mennonites in Lancaster, PA. You just know there's quality work when various tools used in the incense offering and on the altar of burnt offerings are actually metal rather than plastic. Truly great.

Later I caught a bus to Masada. I spent the night in the wonderful hostel, followed by an early morning hike up the Snake Path in order to catch the dawn. Because of the Dead Sea, the sunrise here may just beat the dawn at Sinai. Maybe.

In any case, I also met a couple on vacation named Mark and Michelle. We went back on the same bus to Jerusalem and I ended up showing them how to find their hostel and got them oriented in the Old City. I swear, I might as well become a tour guide (too bad I'm not an Israeli citizen). And, of course, it was nice to come back to St. George's and find Ben still in the country and all the other faculty and staff happily preparing for the current course.

My apologies for the lack of pictures. The internet isn't cooperating tonight, but with a whole bunch of Easter activities beginning this week and updates to come on Palm Sunday, Bethany, and Wadi Qelt (hopefully), I figured I might as well get something up so that people know I'm well and alive. Inshallah, my pictures will be up on Facebook soon as well as the amazing videos from Sunday's mass procession.

Speaking of which: Happy Palm Sunday!