Eight-year-old Shoval leaves her father behind as she eagerly runs ahead to
explore a hillside several kilometers from Ness Harim in the Judean Hills. Her
father, a taxi driver from Rishon Lezion, spends every Saturday hiking with his
family. Several weeks ago, with his wife at home sick, he took Shoval and their
small dog Julie to the area around Ness Harim.
They wander toward the
ruins of Beit Itab. There, below the historic walls of the former Arab
village, lies the spring Ein Hod. According to the Israel Nature and
Parks Authority (INPA) this spring has a 40-meterlong tunnel which brings the
water to an underground pool. In turn, the pool provides water pressure for a
trough from which animals used to drink. The government restored the area in
2006. Like at all springs maintained by the INPA, the sign notes “drinking or
swimming in the water is prohibited.”
On that particular day 50 teens
from a Gadna troop are busy sitting and flirting beneath the trees that dot the
site. Shoval and her father pass the spring, traversing the ruins nearby, and then proceed down the hill to search out another spring,
called Ein Sufla. It is here that I encounter them.
According to
amudanan.co.il, a website that provides maps and points of interest for hikers,
the spring called Sufla is located under an old tree and is described as
“seasonal” by other hikers, meaning it does not flow all the time. Despite the
best efforts to locate it, the only thing I can find are several wild turtles, a
few interesting birds and an old tree. No spring. Shoval, picking up and playing
with one of the turtles, asks her father, “can we take it home?” The search for
springs and the enjoyment of them is a popular subculture of Israeli society,
one that is especially enjoyed on Independence Day and over the spring
holidays.
It bridges almost all social, religious and political gaps.
Young haredim (ultra- Orthodox) go to springs, such as Lifta in the picturesque
ruins beside Jerusalem, to use them as a mikve (ritual bath) and escape the
cloister of their yeshiva world. Kibbutzniks and secular Israelis from all walks
of life use the weekends in the spring and summer to hike the countryside in
search of watering holes. For the national-religious, particularly in the West
Bank, springs are an integral part of redeeming and loving the Land of
Israel.
For Arabs, springs near their villages have long served as places
to socialize, relax and escape the conservative constraints of family
life.
For David Gal-Or and his son Liran, springs have provided a
livelihood. Publishers of a popular series on hiking and walking, they wrote a
series called 365 Springs (in Hebrew), which retails for NIS 190. Gal-Or
explains that while Israel has always had springs, the culture of visiting them
has only taken off in the last decade.
“Only in the last five years did
we see that books were being published, such as Springs on the Hill, a popular
and much loved book about springs in the area of Jerusalem. Today there is so
much information for people to use,” he writes.
Gal-Or argues that
visiting springs has become a “sexy,” in-thing to do, and understandable given
the terrain of Israel. “When one journeys the country they want to be next to water, that is
natural.”
The springs are integral to the history of the human
inhabitation of the country.
Springs, he writes, were the source of the
agriculture that took place in the hills, and settlements around the springs
were quite developed. “If you look at Sataf [a spring and site near Ein Kerem],
you can see that a pool was constructed for the water and then this was used to
irrigate the terraces there.”
Traditionally, the springs of the country
are situated in the hills, and are particularly common in certain areas, such as
around Jerusalem. Springs also exist in the valleys and plains of the country,
such as around Beit She’an and in the Negev, but they are much less common.
Because Ein Yorkam is one of the few large springs in the Negev it becomes
immensely crowded during holidays like Passover.
Claude Condor, a
19th-century British surveyor and traveler, chronicled how the springs played an
integral role in the historic life of the country. At Latrun he recalled a
spring which was “supposed to have healing virtues.” Near Nablus he met some
Arabs who told him that “the long rivulets [here] are fed by no less than 80
springs.” He imagined that, “for 4,000 years the women have gone down to the
same spring, quarreled, talked scandal and returned with their brown jars on
their heads.”
Life has changed but the quarreling in some cases has not.
Near the Jewish community of Halamish in the West Bank lies the Arab village of
Nabi Salih. Almost every Friday for the last year, villagers, along with their
Israeli and international supporters, have led a protest march. Ostensibly the
protest is about the seizure of the village’s lands by the Israeli
establishment.
Scott Campbell, an activist blogger, posted a video on
March 25 on his site angrywhitekid.blogs.com purporting to show IDF
soldiers blocking Palestinians from entering the spring by Nabi Salih. “While
Israeli settlers freely visited the spring, the Israeli army and Border Police
repeatedly blocked the inhabitants of Nabi Saleh and their supporters from
reaching the spring, using force and threats of arrest,” he
writes.
However, when I went to visit the place with tour guide Avi
Margolin, there was no evidence of conflict. The spring has been refurbished
over the years, with picnic tables set up and palm fronds placed over the place
to provide shade. The improvements were carried out by Jews. But the villagers
say they are prevented from visiting the spring to which their village has an
ancestral connection.
Eitan Levy, a tall, skinny man with a wispy beard
and large kippa, who made aliya from Colorado in 2006, remembers the times he
has spent at springs around Bat Ayin in the West Bank. He never recalls there
being a conflict. “We never ran into trouble with Arabs, but you definitely
might think twice about going by yourself at night, but that is probably true of
wandering around in open areas in general in the territories.”
For Levy,
the springs served as a rejuvenating experience. “I started going to springs
when I was living there, they functioned for me as a mikve. I remember we went
once on this all-night desert tour and then jumped in the
ma’ayan at sunrise,”
he says, using the Hebrew word for spring. “It was refreshing, purifying, a
spiritual experience. There is something pure about being in water that is
coming out of the mountain.”
He says it’s more meaningful to perform the
ritual bath, usually done before Shabbat, holidays and other special occasions,
in a natural setting. “It is a theme in Judaism – water is Torah, water is life,
the kind that comes from the ground is the best kind, the highest form of a
mikve.”
Levy recalls that the local residents work to rehabilitate the
infrastructure of the spring from time to time, but the rustic feel remained
basically intact with little maintenance.
For intrepid explorers like
Margolin, who drives his jeep out to visit the countryside weekly, springs serve
as an ideal setting to sit and enjoy the landscape. Wherever he goes a small gas
stove accompanies him. Water from the spring is combined with Turkish coffee,
boiled to perfection and then served in small glasses, half of which always seem
to be cracked. “There was a time when I wouldn’t go on a hike without a spring
being the destination, it had to be part of the itinerary,” Margolin
says.
At a recent visit with him to Ein Haniya near Jerusalem there were
several shepherds from Walaja, a Palestinian village in the West Bank. A mule,
donkey and flock of sheep were grazing on the countryside, which was unusually
green due to all the rains. An old tuna can and Red Bull container sufficed in
lieu of a finjan, or traditional coffee pot. “This really is the life,”
he says.
