After about an hour, the bus was resurrected, and we dove to Kibbutz Lavi-- one of Israel's religious kibbutzim. Founded in 1949, the layout of the kibbutz reflects its values: the synagogue is in the center surrounded by buildings for every day life, just as in the Talmud the main text is in the center of the page surrounded by commentary which applies it to daily life. The first kibbutz was established in 1909 on the southern shores of Galilee, but it was atheistic. In 1935 a group of young Jews, seeing that all of the existing kibbutzim were secular or even anti-religious, founded Kibbutz Tera Sevi, the first religious kibbutz. Today there are 270 kibbutzim, seventeen are orthodox religious, four are conservative or reformed religious. The rest are secular. Kibbutz Lavi, one of the seventeen orthodox kibbutzim, has as its founding principle the golden rule: love of God and neighbor.
We were led by our guide, Mr. Ed Snitkoff, first to the synagogue. Prayer, he explained, now takes the place of ritual sacrifice to atone for sins: "May the words of our lips be as acceptable to You as the sacrifice of the Temple." An orthodox synagogue, there are separate areas for men and women (although, Mr. Snitkoff assures us, work and social life in the kibbutz are egalitarian). Wanting a synagogue that was indigenous to the Galilee, the kibbutzniks made its furniture here in the kibbutz's factory, and designed the building itself to fit into the surroundings. The square building with its pillars and rectangular shapes faces Jerusalem. Made of stone, the synagogue is set low, so that one must descend to enter it; "From the depths I cry unto Thee, O Lord." Everyone in the kibbutz has his or her assigned seat in the synagogue, and special seats are constructed for those who are ill or handicapped. Outside is a mosaic of the twelve tribes of Israael. Judah is the most important, since all Jews are Judeans-- the other tribes having been destroyed in 722 B.C. by the Assyrians. Around the mosaic are holes for the four poles of the chuppah for weddings. Mr. Snitkoff explained that there are no private weddings on the kibbutz; everyone comes, which sometimes means an excess of 1,000 people.
Across from the synagogue is a place of study and a library which contains, among other things, a memorial room with books on the life of each kibbutznik who has died. Here, Mr. Snitkoff explains that among religious Jews, religious Zionism is a minority opinion, especially criticised in the during the early days of the newly formed state. The first aliyah was religious, but they numbered only 6,000 and were largely vilified. After that, the influx of settlers tended to be secular, though religious Zionism did influence Herzel in his efforts to found the modern state of Israel.
Near the library is a theater, a dining room and childrens's area. The children are raised not only by their parents but by the entire kibbutz; they spend their days at the communal day care, but they sleep at home with ther parents. Here, kibbutzniks believe that parents' fundamental duties towards their children include three things: teaching them Torah, teaching them to swim and teaching them a trade. Mr. Snitkoff explains that here in Israel, it is a virtue to hit back and stand up for oneself. In a land beset by hostility, independance and self-sufficiency are highly prized; these qualities are encouraged in children, who generally play unsupervised. Children are educated here from grades K-8; for grades 9-12 they go to an area high school for kids from religious kibbutzim. All of their young men and women comply with Israel's manadatory draft, not seeing their religous identity as a reason to evade the service. 90% of their boys go on to become officers.
Next to the dining room are the laundry facilities; behind it the mikvah--ritual baths. Everybody passing by seems to be pulling a wagon laden with food, clothing or children.
From where we stand we can see the mountain that is one of the possible locations for the Sermon on the Mount.The plains below (past the cows) are where the battle of the Horn of Hattin took place and the Crusaders lost the kingdom of Jerusalem. To the right is Tiberias; to the left, on the Sea of Galilee, stands the city of Zippori.
Having discussed geography, it was now time to turn our attention to the cows. This being a religious kibbutz, the cows were a source of talmudic debate: What to do with them on Shabbat? The verdict of the rabbis: Don't buy cows. But kibbutzniks came up with their own solution. Making use of alternative milking methods, the dairy is hooked up to switches that work on air pressure--thus avoiding electricity--to turn on the milking machines automatically on Shabbat.
Kibbutz Lavi boasts the world's largest synagogue furniture factory. The wood is imported from eastern Eurpoe, mostly the former Yugoslavia, and is cut here, mechanically, by entering coordinates into a computer and placing the wood in mechanized cutting and drilling planes. In the work area, a radio blasting Israeli news and music competes with the roar of machines and drills. Over 2,000 synagogues house furniture from Kibbutz Lavi.
According to Mr. Snitkoff, unlike many secular kibbutzim, Kibbutz Lavi is highly successful, boasting a 50% retention rate for their children.
We bid farewell to our host and Kibbutz Lavi and headed towards Zippori. Driving along the road connecting Nazareth and Capurnum, we passed Cana. The Catholics and Greek Orthodox have an ongoing debate concerning the actual site of the biblical wedding feast, but archeology seems to support the Catholic claim: there is a Church built on top of what used to be a synagogue, and excavations have unearthed stone jars like the ones that contained the water turned wine. While on the topic of marriage, our guide explained that many Jews get married on Tuesday, because it is the night in the creation story when God said, "It was good" twice; hence the passage from the Gospel, "On the second day, there was a wedding in Cana." The Franciscans built a church over the old synagogue where the wedding would have taken place.
We drove next through moshav Zippori. Moshavim are small, close-knit agricultural communities. There are two kinds--some operate as a collective, while in others the families are more autonomous.
Finally, we entered Zippori proper, the town where Anna and Joachim are said to have been born, and met our tour guide, Mitch, who bore an odd resemblance to Robert DeNiro. Mitch told our group that there are two sites which were of immense historical significance to Judaism; Jerusalem, of course, being the first. Zippori is the second, important especially because of its influence as what Mitch termed "a keyhole of ancient philosophy," from which stems modern rabbinical thought as well as Christian philosophy.
Zippori has existed here for 2,500 years. It has never been destroyed, and its name (the root of which means "bird") has never been changed. For the first six centuries A.D., over 30,000 Jews lived here in what was universally acknowledged to be one of the ancient world's great religious, cultural and political centers.
At the highest point is the Acropolis, with the city extending down to the bottom of the hill. In 90 A.D. a typical Roman theater was built here, housing 4,500. The theater was not representative of Jewsih culture, since it would have been seen as a waste of time at best and idolatry at worst, yet it was built by Jews only twenty years after Rome destroyed Jerusalem. The reason for this apparant contradiciton may lie in the fact that Zippori was the base of Jewish pacifist idealogy; the city signed a peace treaty with Rome, offering the Romans a base of operations in exchange for safety. As a result, Zippori was the only major Jewish town that wasn't destroyed by the Romans; today it is a source of debate--were the inhabitants of Zippori heroes or traitors? Whatever the answer, the city sided with the winning team, and it flourished.
Zippori is about an hour's donkey ride from Nazareth, and perhaps is the biblical "city on a hill" mentioned by Jesus. Many believe Jesus learned rabbinics and rhetoric here, rather than in the little town of Nazareth. Since Joseph was a carpenter and Zippori was in the middle of a building boom, it is almost certain that he and his young son would have traveled back and forth on business between the two towns.
In the 12th century, the Crusaders made Zippori the center of Galilee. The city is in a prime location-- it is among the most fertile land in the area, and produced an abundant crop of winter wheat. Looking north at the foot of the valley is a road, thousands of years old, still with its original paving stones: the Via Maris, linking Zippori with Akko, Caeserea and Rome, making it a wealthy trading center attractive to tourists and merchants alike.
To the west we see the remains of a church built on top of a synagogue in the 2nd century by Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, in honor of Anna and Joachim. We walked along a narrow street from the first century B.C. Made of stone and lined with houses on both sides, this is perhaps one of the streets Jesus would have walked to visit his grandparents.
Zippori is also important to the history of Judaism as a religion. In the 300's, Prince Yehuda Nasi, a wealthy and learned political leader, came here. He advocated major changes in Judaism. Instead of mourning the loss of the Temple and pinning all hopes on its restoration, Nasi supported a decentralized community-based religion where power rests with the local scholars. He established the mishnah (later expanded into the Talmud) as a formative "guidebook" for this new approach to religion in which the authority of the kohanim is only symbolic.
We exited the citadel to make our way to what was touted as the "spectacular residence." I wasn't sure if this meant it was nice or it was full of pictures, but as it turns out, it was both. The house dates to the Roman period, the 3rd century, and at the center is a beautifully preserved mosaic of a woman's face, so lovely that it is called the "Mona Lisa of the Galilee". Scenes from the life of Dionysius adorn the triclinium, and there is even a bathroom with running water which, Mitch assures us, represents "real Roman elegance." The owner of the house is yet another source of debate: was it a Jew or Greek pagan who lived here? There are lots of Greek symbols and no Jewish ones, but there is no record of Greeks living in Zippori at the time. Some speculate that the house was owned by Rabbi Yehuda Nasi, especially since it is written that he received the Roman Emperor in his home.
