TL; DR - Mitch is in Israel, enjoying his sabbatical.
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Today we (the Wyles) were in the Zippori National Park near Tiberias and at Blue Beach on the Sea of Galilee. We crawled / walked through 400 meters of an underground aqueduct and toured the entire national park, seeing many mosaics and the completion of Midrash and the origins of Talmud. The beach at the Kinneret is bathtub warm. Photos are uploading now and will be at:
My youngest daughter loved the Mosaics most of all. They are very impressive.
Notice the perspective, coloration, and shading the artist created using rough-hewn stones! Her eyes follow you as you walk past, just like the Mona Lisa (only 2,400 years earlier).
Mitch was blown away by the Roman underground aqueduct and Cistern / reservoir. You crawl and walk underground for over 1,300 feet in pitch black tunnels, using cell phones for lighting.
The entire underground portion of the aqueduct is 600 m long; the gargantuan cistern enabled many thousands of Tiberias Romans to have water year round: the engineering is mind boggling.
We became educated about the origins of Midrash and Talmud by watching the videos and reading the placards in all the museums. Who knew Talmud was created in Zippori?
In the afternoon we hung out at the "blue beach" resort on the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret). The water was bathtub warm. Hebrew hip-hop music blasted at us swimmers and beach bathers. Young people congregated in the shallows like a Las Vegas hotel pool (without the beer). Many fish of all sizes swam in the shallows, nibbling at us. It was not too crowded.
In the evening we walked along the Mediterranean beach near our hotel. We noticed a distressed "girl" on an enormous Unicorn inflatable pulled by tide and wind away from the beach. In traditional Israeli fashion, the people jogging or walking past noticed her distress, swam over, rescued her, and called an ambulance for her dehydration. The self-organization and helpfulness among normal people is very impressive, even now. I love Israel!
For dinner we made dal from the ingredients our AirBnB host left out for us to cook up. Our apartment is on the beach and wonderful.
Our Hebrew is weak but improving; the natives are very patient.
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mwyle@ebay.com +1.425.249.3936
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