Kibbutz Kfar Blum

Shabbat shalom!  

We're at Kibbutz Kfar Blum guesthouse in the Upper Galilee.  It turned out to be a great shabbat experience; the guesthouse welcomes Israeli Orthodox; Israeli secular; and tourists from around the world; each observing (or not observing) shabbat in their own way.

For our group, we started with a grand buffet breakfast and then headed over for shabbat morning t'filah, in our bathing suits!  Rabbi Stacy led the service and Rebecca delivered the d'var she wrote for her (third) bat mitzvah ceremony.  

After t'filah, we all boarded the (shabbat) bus for the ride to the Jordan River and our rafting/kayak adventure.  We picked a six person (OK, 1 man, 5 girl/women) boat with Ellen and Sophie Levin.  We donned life jackets, a few oars, climbed into the raft and we were LAUNCHED into the river.

Alex, a member of our group from the former Soviet Union, remarked that the Jordan river was just like the Russian River.  We told him that ANY river he was on....was the RUSSIAN river.  :)

There was one rapid....err slow....on the river.  We all stayed in the boat (unlike our last trip here 2 years ago).  We also learned that they pump water into the river to keep the boats floating...and when we arrived way late in the day two years ago, they decided NOT to turn the water back on for us...leaving us to have to drag the boats as much as float them.

We walked back to our rooms after the river expedition, showered, lunched, and then hopped on the (shabbat) bus for a 75 minute drive to Rosh Hanikra, the Israeli/Lebanese border right at the Mediterranean Sea.  It has a cable car that goes down to grottos.  In high school, we welcomed an Israeli exchange student to our home in L.A., Eran Naveh.  We've kept in touch over the decades and he drove up to visit, ever briefly, at Rosh Hanikra.  I also got to gaze, from afar, at my kibbutz, Hanita, located very near.  

We spent an hour or so touring the grottos and then returned to Kfar Blum in time for a walking tour of the ...kibbutz...  We learned that the children are no longer raised together, everyone gets a different salary, most all meals are eaten in private homes rather than the dining hall, even the cherished communal laundry is gone as most people now how their own machines.  Our guide, a third generation kibbutznik, isn't actually a kibbutznik since she merely rents her house from the kibbutz, works in town, and therefore, keeps all her salary.  We asked the difference between a kibbutz and a moshav (which is a collective farm with individual ownership).  She said the kibbutz is almost now a moshav.

Having had a few hours break from the bus, we hopped back on again and drove to Rosh Pinnah.  (I forgot what "Pinnah" meant in English and learned it was "corner."  Then I remembered the Purim song, "Ha'kovah sheli shalosh PINOTE..." and it all made sense.

Since the trip ends tomorrow, we came back and spent the late night packing...