Birthright: My First Time in Israel – Day 4
June 2 – Golan Heights
Instead of visiting a specific city, today was dedicated to learning about the Northern region of Israel. Each excursion was the location of a different part of the Heights’ history. So why is this region so important? This area was the site of a lot of tension. In a desert, water is really important. In the early years of the state of Israel, Syria wanted to steal Israel’s Galilee via aqueduct. With no help from allies, Israel had to take care of the situation on its own. This, along with several other reasons, led to the start of the Six Day War in 1967. Fighting was on multiple fronts, mainly in the west with Egypt and within the city of Jerusalem. The government was hesitant to open a third front in the north against Syria, but finally, it was a necessity. After a victory, Israel took the Golan as a buffer area and new region of the country.
From an observatory point, I was able to look into Syria!
Golan Heights is named after an old “purgatory town” – one of six cities in which forgivable Jewish criminals were held. The region is also very historic Jewishly. There are stories in the bible about the prisoners in these areas, describing how the wives of the high priests would bring them food. Why? The wives wanted to prevent them from praying against their husbands. Artifacts have been found proving criminal families’ negative sentiments towards the Kohans (remnants of prayers against the priests).
Our main event of the day was visiting the Yehudia Nature Reserve, a protected national park. This park, as well as the greater Golan Heights area, is volcanic. There are about six resting or inactive volcanoes in the area! This, along with the extremely hot climate, has caused many brush fires throughout the summers. It wasn’t rare for me to look out the bus and see some smoke coming from the 
mountains. When I say the group “visited” the nature reserve, I actually mean we took a very tiring hike through the grounds, only to reach a view of a distant waterfall. Chen told us many stories about people who jumped off the cliffs into the waterfall for fun, or by accident while deviating from their guides. Perhaps this was to frighten our group into behaving!!!
As I said, most of the day was dedicated to learning about the Israeli/Syrian tensions up north. But, 
there were some fun activities too (not that I didn’t enjoy learning)! We all went rafting on the Jordan River. I didn’t steer at all, and just relaxed in the middle as Cara, Mara, and Lindsay did the work. It was tons of fun and definitely refreshing. Our hike in the park was so exhausting and hot that we truly needed a break!
After taking a sleep-filled two hour ride to Tel-Aviv, and having a late dinner, we all went out for a night on the town. I wasn’t too excited about staying out late and hanging around in bars. I obviously didn’t drink and just had water and garlic bread. I guess I had a pretty okay time watching everyone else drink, but I would definitely have rather been sleeping! A 2:00 AM bedtime is not nice.
