Monday 9/19/11

A long and hot day in Tiberius and the environs. We began the morning with a visit to Maimonides' tomb. It was hotter than our hottest day in Spain and much more humid. It was very hard to concentrate and very frustrating to see that the Ultra-Orthodox have put a divider over his grave so that men have to go to one side and women to the other. You see half of the tomb and can read half of the inscription. The site itself is well planned out, with a walkway/staircase leading up to the tomb with 7 pillars on each side, representing the 14 Chapters of his major opus, The Mishneh Torah. The sun made interesting patterns on the walk and under the superstructure above the tomb when I viewed it through the gauze-like material covering the monument.










Next we went to a hotel that houses a collection of memorabilia dedicated to Doña Gracia. The docent spent over an hour telling us the story of Doña Gracia, a story I had never heard. She was a fabulous story teller and the story itself is most fascinating. Well worth googling her to learn more. Below is a replica of the table she commissioned in Venice to seat forty people.





I would tell you more myself, but I'm running out of time. I don't have my 3G Internet connection anymore, and it is way too expensive to buy a Sim card in Israel for the short time we are here. I'm paying for Wi Fi in the hotel tonight and only have 30 minutes total, so I'll upload some more pix and sketch out the rest of the day.

We next went to Mt. Meron, near Sefad, to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai for a study session. We learned that last Lag bar Omer 300,000 Israelis visited his tomb.






Next stop was Sefad where we had 20 minutes to shop (actually this was Haim's second concession of the day). I learned that the photographer I wanted to visit, Yaacov Kaszemacher, had died about a month ago. I had met him on a previous Melton trip and been introduced to him by Haim. He used mathematical patterns and mystical symbols in his work and we have two of his photographs hanging in our home.

Pomegranates were in full fruit all over Sefad.






We completed our visit to Sefad with another study session. As the sun set, we left Sefad for a fabulous multiple-course dinner at a lovely restaurant near Tiberius.








Tomorrow we leave Tiberius for Jerusalem.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad