October Newsletter - Heritage

Hof Hacarmel Day Trip

On our kibbutz, we belong to a group that is called “Moadon Tvuna,” or in English, “The Wisdom Club.” It’s basically a group of the 50-80-year-old crowd, and we enjoy getting together and doing social activities. Sometimes it’s having a potluck meal together, or enjoying cultural activities, or going off on a day trip together, which is what we did in September.

This time, they even organized a minibus for us. A brand new one, that was purchased just a few days before the trip! It was very nice.

And in our group, we are fortunate to have among us a truly wonderful tour guide, named Avirama Harris. Both her knowledge and memory are amazing, and she’s a great storyteller too. (If you ever want/need a private tour guide in the North, please contact Avirama. Or if you want one in the Jerusalem area, you can contact the equally wonderful Shari Robins.)

So on a Friday morning (before the recent situation in the North) we all got together and climbed into this new minibus and headed off for the Carmel Beach region.

Our first stop was at the fascinating Atlit Detention Camp. You may remember that we were there on our own in 2019. But this heritage site is always being upgraded, and this time we saw exhibits there that didn’t exist in 2019. For instance, the airplane - the airplane was viewable from the outside back then, but now we were able to go inside it, and watch a fascinating film about the airplane, and how it helped bring to Eretz Yisrael illegal Jewish immigrants from Iraq! What an amazing story! A tour guide employed at the site took us around and gave us interesting explanations.

Our next stop was at a Crusader post called Khirbet Qarta (or Karta), which is on a hill across from the famous Atlit Crusader Castle, also called Château Pèlerin - it’s the one you see off the Haifa - Tel Aviv highway, but that one is off limits to civilians since it is inside a naval base. We were also told about an ancient, submerged Neolithic village off the coast of Atlit called Atlit Yam. You can read more about this fascinating area here.

After our picnic lunch, we continued up to Ein Hod and walked around to see the beautiful sculptures that are placed throughout this quaint little artists’ town. Avirama told us some wonderful stories about this place too.

It was quite a hot day, with lots of walking around in the sun. And we were all pooped. So after finishing at Ein Hod, we all clambered back up onto the minibus and drove off toward home. Or at least that’s what we thought we were doing.

We drove just a few hundred meters down the hill from the parking lot at Ein Hod, turned off the road and parked. Avirama jumped off the bus and said, “Okay, everybody, let’s go!” and she ran off up some stairs. No one on the blissfully air-conditioned minibus moved. Finally, after sitting for a while, one of us said, “Come on, guys, last stop. Let’s do it.” We all slowly dragged ourselves off the bus and up the stairs, into what turned out to be the most delightful, amazing place!

We entered the building and had no idea we would be in for such a wonderful treat! We were invited into the inner room, and then sat there speechless. But we’ll tell you all about that visit in a separate post in a coming newsletter as it deserves a whole article of its own.