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The Mother of All Tiyulim

by Hannah Karpin, 11th grade, Southern California

We started off the morning at a Crusader’s Fortress in Kohav HaYarden and learned about the First Crusade that took place from 1096-1099. During the Islamic rule over the land of Israel, Pope Urban II gave a unifying speech that inspired Christians to take over the region. This barbaric, violent crusade initiated all of the other crusades that followed. The crusaders fought from fortresses like the one we visited. They were spread out on mountaintops in order to give the impression that the army was a lot bigger than it actually was. 

Next, we stopped at Kibbutz Afikim for lunch in their Hadar Ochel on the way to Tzfat to learn about Jewish Mysticism. We learned about the Zohar, which according to tradition was written by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi) and was a mystical commentary on the secrets of the Torah. The traditionalists would argue that the Zohar was written on a mountain top by Tzfat. The modernists, on the other hand, would say that the Zohar was written by Rabbi Moshe DeLeon in Spain in the 14th century. The Zohar inspired the mystical ideas of Kabbalah (literay "receiving") that was invented by the Rabbis in Tzfat. The main requirements of studying Kabalah are that you are Jewish, male, married with kids, and extremely knowledgeable of the Torah. We visited a few synagogues to see where the Jews prayed hundreds of years ago. A fellow Jew politely interrupted our lesson to sing us his creative versions of Jewish prayers. At another synagogue, the praying Jews felt disgraced by the fact that girls entered their Beit Knesset and they rudely kicked us all out. We encountered many different types of people on this tiyul but it was an interesting experience.

After a long day of learning, we stopped at a farm on the way back to Tzuba for a dinner of cheese platters and cheese pizza before calling it a day. As David says, this was the “Mother of all tiyulim”.