Side Trips

Meiron

Eight kilometers (5 miles) west of Safed is the town of Meiron, a holy place for religious Jews for 1,700 years. Meiron has had a continuously Jewish population for nearly 18 centuries. When Judea fell to the Romans after the Second Revolt against Rome in A.D. 135, the mountainous northern Galilee took on many refugees. One early Meiron inhabitant, a 2nd-century Talmudist named Shimon Bar Yochai, was ultimately forced to hide in a cave in Peqiin, outside Meiron. There, according to legend, he wrote the mystical Zohar, or Book of Splendor, which is central to the cabalist belief.

Meiron is the scene of considerable pageantry during the holiday of Lag b'Omer, which occurs in the spring just 3 1/2 weeks after Passover. Thousands of Orthodox Jews pour into Safed and there follows a torchlight parade to Meiron, with singing and dancing. Here they burn candles on top of Rabbi Shimon's tomb and light a great bonfire into which some, overcome by emotion, throw their clothes. In the morning, after the all-night festivities, 3-year-old boys are given their first haircuts, and the cut hair is thrown into the fire.

There still exists a ruined ancient synagogue from the 3rd century A.D., as well as Rabbi Shimon's tomb and a rock called the Messiah's Chair. Reputedly, on the day the Messiah arrives, he will sit right here while Elijah blows the trumpet to announce his coming. Mount Meiron, the highest peak in the Galilee at 878m (2,881 ft.), dominates the rugged countryside, with vistas that sweep virtually across northern Israel. The local SPNI Field School (tel. 04/698-0023) offers trail maps and information about a number of hikes through the beautiful, wooded Meiron Nature Reserve.

Ma'alot Tarshisha & Northwestern Galilee

Nineteen kilometers (12 miles) east of Nahariya, Ma'alot Tarshisha, with a population of 8,000, is at the center of the forested Northwestern Galilee (Crusader Castle Country), and sits astride the main road from the coast to the Upper Galilee. Its location makes it an ideal base for those who want to rent a car and freewheel for a few days around the region. The 1997 opening of the Hacienda Plaza Resort, formerly a private retreat on the outskirts of the city, made it possible to stay here in comfort.

Ma'alot is a development town founded in 1957; the municipality is united with the contiguous Arab-Israeli town of Tarshisha, whose history dates from Talmudic times. It's a pleasant, busy community, the center of the region's carefully planned checkerboard of agricultural, industrial, and natural districts. The town made history in 1974 when terrorists who had infiltrated into Israel from Lebanon took a school filled with Israeli children hostage; 14 children were killed in the attack. To this day security around every town and city in the northern Galilee is very tight.

Sasa & the Bar'am Synagogue

Kibbutz Sasa is on the northern foothills of Mount Meiron 16km (10 miles) northwest of Safed. In 1949, American and Canadian settlers built atop a 900m-high (2,953-ft.) hill and persevered despite many problems, including a polio epidemic. The thriving kibbutz is now the center of an area of forest reservations.

Just 5km (3 miles) to the north, the 3rd- to 4th-century-A.D. Bar'am Synagogue is probably the best preserved and most beautiful of all the ancient synagogues in Israel. Its location, in the wild mountains near the Lebanese border, is breathtaking. According to some scholars, the synagogue may have been in use through early medieval times. In the style of early Galilee synagogues, the building faces south, toward Jerusalem. Beautifully carved clusters of grapes ornamenting the main entrance testify to the town's abundant vineyards and orchards. At some point the design of the synagogue was changed and the main entrance walled over with large ashlars that can be seen in a 19th-century engraving of the ruined site, made from an early photograph. Archaeologists theorize that over the centuries, it became customary for worshipers to face both the Ark of the Torah and Jerusalem while praying, and the central doorway, on the southern wall of the synagogue, was walled over in order to build a Torah shrine. By the late 19th century, the ashlars walling the entrance, as well as other chunks of the synagogue, had been carried off by locals for reuse in other buildings.

Medieval through 19th-century travelers record the existence of a second, smaller ruined synagogue at Bar'am, now totally obliterated. According to one visitor, an inscription on the lintel of one of its doorways reads: "Do not be surprised by snow in Nisan [Mar-Apr]. We have seen it in Sivan [May-June]." Although this lintel stone has vanished, the inscription over the main doorway was preserved and carted off to the Louvre in 1861. Its message: "May there be peace in this place and in all the places of Israel." The National Park at Bar'am (tel. 04/698-9301; www.parks.org.il) is open daily from 8am to 4pm (until 5pm in summer); admission is NIS 18 ($4.50/£2.25). The park is wheelchair accessible.

The ruins of the Maronite (Christian) Arab village of Birim surround the cleared areas around the synagogue. As noncombatants during the 1948 War of Independence, the residents of Birim had quartered Israeli troops in their homes. Late in the war, the people of Birim were told by the Israeli army to evacuate their town for what was promised would be a short time during a possible enemy offensive. They were never allowed to return, despite a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court in the early 1950s upholding the villagers' rights to their homes. Since then, the former inhabitants of Birim, who all possess Israeli citizenship and are now scattered throughout the Galilee, have maintained an unending legal struggle to reclaim their village.

Past the synagogue, you can follow a path to the left and uphill to the Church of Birim, still maintained by the people of the village for weddings and funerals. If you climb the rather difficult stairs onto the roof of the church, you will be rewarded with a dramatic panorama of countryside so intensely loved by two peoples. Arabic graffiti on the church walls promise that the members of the congregation will return.