The historic story of Beit Shalom, a boutique hotel in Metula

Eleven children were born in the original two-room stone house, this after a doctor in Beirut told the bride she couldn’t have any. Pioneers, they spread out and settled moshavim and kibbutzim throughout the Galilee. Each of the hotel’s rooms is dedicated to one of them.

“I love this place with every fiber of my being,” he says with emotion, sitting one summer evening on a bench in the hotel’s grassy garden, accented by pots overflowing with geraniums. The pendulous branches of willow trees sway in the breeze, and nearby five towering ivy-covered palm trees stand at the entrance. Although it’s an August evening and the rest of Israel swelters, in Metula there is a delightful breeze.

“I love every tree, the landscape that changes every day, the sense of being deeply rooted in a place, belonging to it,” says Chaim.

The hotel began modestly with three rooms and expanded to ten, with Chaim taking time off from farming (mainly apple, plum orchards and fig trees his grandfather brought from Damascus) to do much of the construction work himself.

When the neighboring house and lot went up for sale, Chaim and his wife, Miriam, bought it, added three luxury suites, a spa room and a chef restaurant that serves local cuisine using local ingredients that meld East and West. The menu includes stuffed vine leaves made daily by a woman in a nearby Arab village, as well as an apple pie from a 100-year-old recipe handed down to Miriam from her Polish mother. Miriam bakes it herself using apples picked in their orchard. The vintage dishes, the rich breakfast that changes each season, the antique tables, the artwork lining the walls and an impressive wine list make for a memorable stay.

“This is not just a hotel, it’s a cultural experience,” says Miriam, who manages the hotel but also finds time to create intricate textile artworks where each stitch embroiders Metula’s landscape.

The original family home has been transformed into a cozy gallery/ lobby showcasing Miriam’s art. Guests can also see on one wall a photo gallery documenting the history of both sides of the family – the Metula side and Miriam’s, whose parents were Polish Holocaust survivors.

“This place breathes history, and our mission is to preserve it,” she says, “We live it.”

The hotel, designated for couples, is a blend of East and West in both décor and cuisine. The walls in the rooms are made from local stone exposed when the hotel was renovated four years ago, furnished with antique Oriental furniture and art.

“The lace doilies placed on the local Damascus antiques were brought by my great-grandmother’s pioneer family who came from Lithuania,” says Irit Hod, the eldest daughter, an award-winning filmmaker who returned to Metula from Toronto a few years ago to continue the family legacy.

In casual conversation, Miriam marks time by referring to the First Lebanon War and the Second, which someone living in Tel Aviv is not likely to do.

Before the sudden withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 by then-prime minister Ehud Barak, the border crossing in Metula was known as “The Good Fence,” which symbolized the peaceful relationship between the southern Lebanese villages and Israel. A Lebanese woman worked in the hotel. In the chaos of the withdrawal, Chaim took his truck to a pre-arranged point along the border and transported the woman’s entire extended family of 20, including two children and one baby, to Metula.

“The woman whose name I cannot reveal because she has returned to Lebanon became part of our family in every way,” says Miriam. “After the withdrawal, her entire family was welcomed warmly in our home and lived with us for three years.”

Metula is one of Israel’s most charming towns, with a quaint European Alpine village vibe, red roofed houses which, seen from the road leading up to the town, line the hill like musical notes on a staff. Orchards of plum, apple and kiwi surround the town. The Ayun Waterfall is located at the entrance eight kilometers north after you pass Kiryat Shmona on Highway 90. The entrance to the nature reserve is a few minutes from the hotel, where one can walk in a gorge along a stream and pass several waterfalls.

And then there is the view. To the east towers Mount Hermon, snow-capped in winter. Below, the verdant fields of the Hula Valley stretch as far as the eye can see. And to the west and north, Lebanon’s villages and mountain ranges seem like you can reach out and touch them. It is the only place in Israel surrounded on three sides by an international border.

In fact, when Britain and France demarcated the Mandatory boundaries between Palestine and Lebanon in 1923, Metula’s houses remained inside Palestine, while most of the agricultural lands were transferred to Lebanon. Metula’s farmers, the Hod family included, were permitted to freely cross the border to cultivate their lands, about seven kilometers inside Lebanon, until Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

Metula follows the rhythms of nature. The flowering of the orchards in spring, the snow that covers the peaks of Mount Hermon in winter and the millions of migratory birds that fly so low overhead twice a year on their way from Europe to Africa and back, that one can hear their calls to each other.

“I’ve traveled to many places in the world with beautiful mountains and waterfalls, but for me the most beautiful place in the world is Metula,” says Chaim. “My father was the tenth son, and I am my father’s youngest. Today, I am 75 years old. I look around at everything I have built with satisfaction and feel that I have fulfilled my father’s wishes, something that his father, the one who pioneered Metula, could have only dreamed of.” ■