Israel's brown desert

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Brown goats, brownish sheep, a brown shepherdess, and the brown Negev desert. 

Yep, BROWN is today's November 1 theme for City Daily Photo group. 
See what fellow bloggers found for the subject here. 
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Makhtesh Ramon in the desert

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Welcome to the Mitzpe Ramon Visitor Center.
Inside you can learn about this unique area in Israel's Mount Negev region.
The new Ilan Ramon Museum is also inside, commemorating our astronaut who perished when the space shuttle Colombia burned up in 2003. 

The Visitor Center perches on the cliff  500 meters above the floor of Makhtesh Ramon.
Click on the photo twice to see the little people.

The Negev desert has three enormous craterlike makhteshim, which are unique to the region: Makhtesh Ramon, Makhtesh Gadol, and Makhtesh Katan.

The Wikipedia article on makhtesh says,

Although commonly referred to as "craters," these formations are "erosion cirques" (steephead valleys or box canyons).
Craters are formed by the impact of a meteor or volcanic eruption, whereas makhteshim are created by erosion.
The word makhtesh is the Hebrew word for a mortar grinder (מַכְתֵּשׁ‎). The geological landform was given this name because of its similarity to a grinding bowl.

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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
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Sand fly threat

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So, let's get back to discussing the intentional communities in Ramat Negev Regional Council that my group visited a few weeks ago. 

Everything looks nice and we heard about the advantages and good feeling of living together by choice in a communal settlement (yishuv kehilati).
 But we also noticed the lecturers kept rubbing their arms as they spoke.

And then our guide pointed out these fly traps hung all around (around the kindergarten, in this photo)  and the source of the itching became clear.
Traps not just for regular pesky flies but rather for dangerous little sand flies.

Sand flies of the genus Leishmania bite and cause leishmaniasis, known colloquially as the Rose of Jericho.  (Warning: that link shows ugly scars that can result from the bites.)
It has always been endemic in Jericho, but apparently in the last few years the disease has spread into Israel's Jordan Valley.
And now the sand fly has invaded certain parts of the Negev too.

Two years ago the Israel Ministry of Health designated  Sanford F. Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases of the Hebrew University as Israel’s National Laboratory for Leishmaniasis.
I just hope the various government authorities get their act together and decide who should be  responsible for controlling this threat in Israel.
 An estimated 12 million cases of leishmaniasis are reported worldwide, with 1.5-2 million new cases a year.

No one promised the early and the current pioneers in the Negev a rose garden, but they should not have to suffer from the Rose of Jericho.
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(For ABC Wednesday, U is for ugly urticarial papules.)
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Bedouin girl and camel

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A Bedouin girl brings in the family camel.
One of many small Bedouin settlements in the Negev,  Israel's southern desert.

Please enlarge the photo a few times to see them better (photo from a fast-moving bus).

Linking to Camera Critters.
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A religious pioneering community in the Negev

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This week the blog has been showing you some of the three different types of intentional communities that our group visited last Friday.
They all belong to the Ramat Negev Regional Council in southern Israel.

Here is the Council's "city hall" in the desert.

Our next stop was Kfar Retamim, a religious community/ yeshuv kehilati.
They started small in 2006 and today they are 180 adults and 280 children. 

A member (with his first-born holding his hand) explained to our group how it works.
But why not hear it from this 6-minute video. Enjoy the young woman's enthusiasm!

And more info and a map are here.

I'll be showing you two surprising things at Retamim in the coming posts.
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Happy Thanksgiving to the friends in America.
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UPDATE: Online info about Retamim.
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15 young families living together in the desert

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As I was saying (in the cat selfie post), on Friday my Shishi Zioni group went down south of Beer Sheva to visit and learn about three different ways of living together in the Negev desert:
 1. a kibbutz mitchadesh, 2. a religious yeshuv kehilati (community settlement/planned community), and 3. a mixed religious + secular yeshuv kehilati.

Our bus slowly went up the dirt road to Sheizaf.
Half in jest our guide said not to fear the guard dogs because they were tired from having barked all night.

Our busload of older Israelis numbered just about the same as the current population of Sheizaf which is 15  young couples with 20 little kids.

Each family lives in a caravan, the portable pre-fab houses that were set on the ground in 2012.
Or maybe they are big enough to be considered caravillot.
(The Hebrew word caravilla is a portmanteau of the words caravan and villa.)

  Itai, who was a driving force in creating this yeshuv kehilati/community settlement, spoke with pride about the young people who were attracted from all over the country to come and establish a new place in the sparsely-populated Negev desert.
BTW, recruitment was done via e-mail and Internet. 

Our guide for the morning was Ofir, head of hityashvut/settlement for the Ramat Negev Local Council.
In addition to his help, Sheizaf got backing from Ayalim Association, a 21st century organization whose slogan is "Bringing young adults to live and volunteer in the toughest places in Israel to serve as its newest Pioneers."
This means the Negev and the Galilee. *

See a short video explaining Ayalim's altruistic aims.

Sheizaf is not enclosed within a fence.
At their website you can enjoy a slideshow of the houses and people of the community.

One of the fathers brought up his little son, to the delight of all the grandparents of our group.

Sheizaf is a rare example of a social experiment  deliberately mixing observant and non-observant Jews.
There vision is to grow to 250-400 families and when the kids are ready for school to have a mixed religious + secular education for them.
(The practice in Israel today is for a child to attend either religious school or secular school.)
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Good luck to these brave and idealistic young people who chose a far-from-easy life!
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*UPDATE: I see Ayalim does good work in central Israel as well.  This article and little video about their new project in Lod just appeared today.  A shipping container village is going up to house the enthusiastic students!

Selfie of a cat

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Well! -- this was the first time I ever took a selfie of a CAT!

But there is a good reason why I couldn't get up and stand in front of the cat and take a normal shot.

Yesterday my Shishi Zioni group went to three places in the Ramat Negev region to hear about three different types of communities.  (More about that in coming posts.)
Most of the folks sat down on chairs on one side to hear Itai, a member of Shizaf, talk to us.

I sat on a row of stacked stones on another side.
A cat came from behind to check out the several people on the stones.
I said "Psst psst" to invite her him over.
She He accepted and came for a good snuggle, then settled down right next to me!
The lady on the other side of the cat was not at all happy about our new neighbor.
But I happily laid my hand on the warm, fluffy, clean, purring kitty and tried to concentrate on the lecture and not attract attention.
I just had to,  however, take one discreet selfie of this sweet animal!
Wish I could have taken her him home. 
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UPDATE: I am now reading the garinsheizaf Facebook page of the community and learn that the cat is a male named Bentzi and he is their only cat.
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(Linking to Camera Critters.)
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Learning the land on foot

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MEITAR MARCH
    Starting point

Bright and early Friday morning hundreds of Meitar pupils set out on the 23rd annual Meitar hike.

Granddaughter Libby's pre-kindergarten class sat down for breakfast, and their teacher, Orli, used the time to teach them how to look for animal footprints and droppings and try to guess which animals had been there not long before them.

A general orientation of what's out there.
Meitar at the bottom.
Straight west on the middle line would be Lakiya [Bedouin town],  then somewhere on a bare hill the Negev Brigade [Palmach] Memorial.

Going from 10:00 to 2:00 on the "map"--
Hura [Bedouin township],    the Bedouin diaspora [i.e. unrecognized settlements],   Omer [Jewish town],  Beer Sheva [big city]
and to the right:  Sansana Forest,   the Green Line,   Sansana [a Jewish settlement just over the Green Line in the West Bank],    Ramabin Tribe [or clan].

See the area on a real Google map here.

 Border Police were stationed along the route, making sure the kids did not take a wrong turn.

 
I was surprised to come upon antiquities, only partly excavated a long time ago, it looked like!
Will have to find out more about that. 

The whole hike in the desert was only two and a half hours, and then we descended down to little Meitar, home.
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It's great to have the South Hebron Hills / Northern Negev nature right in our backyard.
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"Bezeq shalom, how can I help you today?"

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In the previous post we talked about the exciting new discovery of beautiful mosaics and a Byzantine monastery at the entrance to Hura, our neighbor to the east.

Yesterday's 23rd annual Meitar March took hundreds of school kids out into the Negev desert surrounding our town and I got to see Hura for the first time, albeit from a distance.
Click on the photo once and then once again and you'll be able to see its several tall minarets and many multi-storey buildings.
Begun in 1989, just a few years after Meitar, Hura is now much bigger than us in area and population.
Israel's Bedouin population doubles every 15 years.

In reading Wikipedia about Hura and about Negev Bedouin I learned that in 2012  Bezeq, Israel's giant telecommunications group, opened a call center to provide assistance to Internet customers. 
Where? -- in the Bedouin village of Hura!
Where exactly?  -- in the mosque!

Al Arabiya News has a nice article and a short video about this. 
Here is part of it:

Because of their traditional, patriarchal lifestyle, persuading husbands and fathers to allow wives and daughters to go to work was not easy and the best way to allay fears was overcome by housing the call center at the mosque.
”The girls felt safe when we told them that they will work under a mosque. They were so happy because a girl feels she is in a safe place, like in her house and her village. Now we have two shifts, morning and evening and the girls work until 23:00, and we could only get this because we operate from the mosque,” said Naifa al-Nabari, vocational coordinator for Rayan Center.
Al-Nabari added that there were plenty of well educated women in Hura and other towns in the area but that until now almost all had become teachers. Working in customer service was a new departure.

A Ynet article adds that "The center is managed and operated by 50 Bedouin women, but it is expected to employ more women in the future. It offers assistance in Hebrew, Arabic and Russian."
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Green fields

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The northern Negev, or Mediterranean zone, has fairly fertile soils and receives (in a normal winter) 300 mm of rain.

That 12 inches of rain is enough to grow some field crops.

You can even find some patchwork fields near Meitar.
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(Click a few times to enlarge the fields.)
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Mt. Hiran, Jabel Um el-Hiran

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One of the highest mountains in our Northern Negev area--Mount Hiran, or in Arabic, Jabel Um el-Hiran.
As seen from the Israel Trail next to Meitar.
I have not been there yet, but this Abraham Path map shows Mt. Hiran as 592 meters high.
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Linking this January sky to SkyWatch Friday.
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That in-the-middle-of-nowhere feeling

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A dozen hikers gathered today to walk the Israel National Trail for three hours.
Our excellent guide, Dr. Zeev Zivan, showed us on a 1956 map what a difference half a century can make.
Our town, Meitar, did not exist back then. 
In fact, the northern Negev was quite an empty place.

Actually, even today we walked  over  vast expanses of uninhabited spaces.
It's a great feeling of wilderness!
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P.S. See more about our Trail at  http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/the-israel-trail-so-close-to-home.html

A map of the Trail:   http://www.natureisrael.org/cms_uploads/Israel%20National%20Trail%20Documents/IsraelNationalTrail_map.jpg

More info:  http://www.natureisrael.org/INT
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Sculptures in the middle of nowhere

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Random roadside sculptures in the Negev desert.

(Photographed from a moving bus, so please click and enlarge to see them clearer.)
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For SkyWatch Friday.
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Mommy longlegs

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I've heard of "Cast a Giant Shadow" but this shadow  is ridiculously long.

It was 3:45 when I set out for a walk in the empty spaces down where my street in Meitar ends.
The sun was low and by 4:38 it was already down.

I love the desert!
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(Linking to Shadow Shot Sunday.)
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Speeches today at Ben-Gurion's grave

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For several days I've been posting about my visit to Ben-Gurion College at Kibbutz Sde Boker.
Here you can see the kibbutz perched above  deep Nahal Zin, in the wilderness of Zin.

Today the leaders of Israel gathered at the kibbutz, at the tomb of David Ben-Gurion and his wife, to mark 40 years since his passing.

See what Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke about at
www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-pleads-for-a-palestinian-ben-gurion/

including this:

Turning to the need to make the Negev bloom in accordance with Ben-Gurion’s vision, Netanyahu promised that there would soon be a rapid and dramatic increase in the percentage of Israelis living in the Negev — which has long hovered at around 8 percent. A huge “critical mass” would start flowing south, he vowed.

And Shimon Peres' Facebook page quotes our President as saying this:

We have gathered here today in memory of David Ben Gurion, but also to remind ourselves of our duty to continue his legacy of making the desert bloom and securing peace among ourselves and our neighbors. His legacy will continue to light our way.
We must ensure that we control our own destiny and make the two state solution a reality. Ben Gurion was adamant that Israel should give up land if that meant maintaining a Jewish majority, for without it, there will be no Jewish State. Since then, many changes have occurred, but this issue has remained as it was 66 years ago.

See also http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/PM-says-waiting-for-Palestinian-Ben-Gurion-to-end-Mideast-conflict-331163
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Greening the desert

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See the bust down on the ground floor of this unusual building?

It is David Ben-Gurion,  Israel's first prime minister.

Today I was there  at Ben-Gurion College at  Sde Boker, Ben-Gurion's kibbutz.
One Friday a month they offer great lectures and/or guided tours.

At the entrance to the kibbutz is Ben-Gurion's famous prophecy about how we would make the desert bloom and make the Negev a blessing to the State of Israel.
The green shrubbery overtaking the writing on the wall seems to prove that it  really is happening.
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(Linking to Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors meme.)
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Camels

Waiting for the tourists on the Mount of Olives. . .

Here they come. Four kids on one camel!

Down in the Negev desert, camels owned by Bedouin graze freely.


These are Dromedaries. The Bactrian camels in Asia have two humps.
A mnemonic to remember: letter D on its side is like one hump and B is two.
In the early 1900s Israel had 20,000 camels. Today their numbers are down to maybe 2,500.
 A very interesting article on the Jewish veterinarian who cares for the Bedouin camels just appeared in the Jerusalem Post. You can read why camels are disappearing by clicking here.
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Lots more animals can be found at the Camera-Critters blog every Sunday.