Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer’s day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land…
* * *
It has become a sort of annual event. The children of the Brisk family, who attend various cheders in Jerusalem, have precious few vacation days that allow them to go on an overnight trip. The beginning of Chodesh Nissan leading to Pesach is too busy a time for me. So it’s important to chap the last days of Chanukah. Their father is a sofer stam whom I met in Jerusalem a number of years ago. We even learned together for a while. After taking him for a few tiyulim and earning his trust, he thought it would be a good idea for me to take his children, too. I’ve been taking them around the country, usually on their half-day off on Rosh Chodesh, for a couple of years now.
We went to the pristine Galil the last two years, so I thought it would be a nice change of pace to take them south to the barren Negev. I meticulously planned the itinerary. First, we needed a place to sleep over. When I made inquiries, I found that all the hotels in the vicinity of our final destination – Machtesh Ramon, the Ramon Crater – were fully booked, even though Chanukah was still weeks away.
I finally found Midreshet BeYachad in Yerucham, a sleepy little town, population 10,000, 52 kilometers from Mitzpe Ramon. The dormitory-style hostel has rooms containing four bunk beds and a bathroom, and offers an optional supper and breakfast under the hechsher of the Rabbanut. Since the boys only ate food from the mehadrin certifications of Rubin and Eidah Chareidis, and there is no eatery in the Negev with that kind of hechsher, I would have to do some extra legwork.
I got the phone number of Rabbi Yitzchak Shalev, the Chief Rabbi of Yerucham and explained my predicament. He told me that there were two places under his direct supervision that used only products with a good hechsher: One was the dairy restaurant “Chalav al Hazman,” located in the community center (matnas) of Yerucham. The other was the bar/restaurant of the hotel Irus Hamidbar. (It’s amazing that this two-bit dusty town in the middle of the desert has a four-star hotel with a good hechsher!) I gave the rabbi’s phone number to the father of the boys, and a few days later, the father called and gave me the green light to eat at those places.
Next on the agenda was selecting the places we were going to see. I read that the vast Ramon Crater valley was the only place in the Middle East designated as an official stargazing area! That’s because, once you leave the town of Mitzpe Ramon, which is just outside the crater, it’s pitch dark. With some more internet surfing, I came up with two companies that offer stargazing tours. I contacted deepdesertisrael.com. They had this deal where you get a guide, a campfire, and four (!) telescopes for two hours. It was expensive, but I wanted the boys to have an intimate experience with the stars, not a large, diluted group experience.
So on the seventh day of Chanukah, I picked up Pinchos (age 16), Shloimie (13), and Yisroel Meir (11) from their home in Kiryat HaYovel. Then we picked up Nachman, the Breslover chasid I bumped into a few years ago when I was in Uman for Rosh Hashanah. He was only too happy to join us, after he got permission from his wife to leave her and six screaming kids behind.
* * *
Off we went, from Kvish (Route) 1, the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Highway, to Kvish 3, the road to Ashkelon, to Kvish 6. We left at 10:00 a.m., and it was going to take three hours (with time to stop for Yisroel Meir to throw up and discard his vomit bag and for older guys like me to take our restroom stops), until we would arrive at our first destination: 178 kilometers (110 miles) from Jerusalem.
As we entered Kvish 6 at the Nachal Soreq junction, near Kibbutz Chofetz Chaim and Moshav Yesodot, I put the boys on notice that the topography was going to change. At first we encountered fields and fields of wheat. I told them that the Northern Negev was the breadbasket of Israel. As we neared Beer Sheva, the scene changed dramatically to arid, barren hills. After Beer Sheva, we came across many Bedouin shanty communities, some camels, and desolation.
By 1 p.m., we reached Ein Avdat, where the Tzin Stream had carved out a deep and impressive canyon. Three springs feed a brook that flows all year round and waters an enchanting oasis. Stunning would be an understatement!
(Ein Avdat was at the foot of Midreshet Ben Gurion, next to kibbutz Sde Boker, the lonely desert kibbutz where Ben Gurion retired and worked as a volunteer. He is also buried there. It has a fascinating museum about him, but I had no illusions about taking the boys there.)
After passing through the entrance gate of the national park, we got out of the car. Below us was a winding road that went deep, deep into a gorge of gold-hued stone. It was stunning! We hopped back into the car and drove to the parking lot, where we ate at the picnic tables. Then we began walking.
We entered a deep gorge, and I noticed scores of grooves on each side of the canyon walls. The crevices were formed through erosion by the force of streaming water. Each groove took many, many years to form. I felt as if I were going through a time tunnel. It wasn’t so much the height of the canyon walls as its ancient wrinkles that made me cower as a tiny point in a vast sea of time.
As we continued along the trail, we looked up and saw vultures gliding effortlessly against the golden cliffs and the deep blue sky, studded here and there with puffs of clouds. The birds really got the boys’ attention. I wondered whether they were imagining themselves gliding from on high, almost as light as a feather, seemingly impervious to gravity.
A little further on, we came across a flowing stream, and with it, life! Bulrushes and even a small tree could be spotted here and there. Our Breslover comrade seemed deep in thought. What was he contemplating? Was he engaged in hitbodedut, solitude, in intimate conversation with his Creator? Or was he connecting the life-transforming water in the parched desert with a teaching of Rabbi Nachman that there is no room for ye’ush, losing hope?
Where G-d and Torah touches man, no matter how remote and parched his soul may be, there will be light and life! Wherever the water is flowing, there is the smell of freshness. Where it stagnates, there is fungus and stench. Isn’t the water a symbol of the stream of life and what we do with it?
* * *
We spent one hour in this fascinating place, and now it was time to go. We had to get to Yerucham and find a minyan for Mincha before sundown, before we would light the candles for the seventh night of Chanukah.
We sped off to Yerucham, passing the tiny religious yishuv of Merchav Am, whose families live in caravans but host a number of cottages for travelers and provide guides for desert tours. That would have been my first choice, but I called too late; everything was booked.
In Yerucham, we found the hostel, dropped our bags in our respective rooms, and walked two blocks to the small chareidi neighborhood that had two shuls: one for Sefardim and the other for Ashkenazim. Returning to the hostel, we found two tables in the lobby covered with aluminum foil. We took down our chanukiyot and lit candles. We sang Maoz Tzur with the other people in the lobby, who were lighting as well. They were all young dati-leumi families. Our motley little group – the American greener, an alumnus of Yeshiva University; the boys, chareidi Litvaks; and Nachman, a Breslover chasid from one of their most extreme sects – stood out a bit, but no one seemed to care. We were all celebrating the same miracle and singing the same songs.
Then we went downstairs to daven Maariv and sped off to the Chalav al Ha’zman restaurant. Although their specialty was pizza, they were out of cheese. (Welcome to Yerucham!) It would take another 20 minutes to replenish their stock and time was of essence. We had a 7:30 p.m. appointment with the stargazing guide – or else we would miss it because he had another group scheduled right after us. So, after gulping down the cheese-less pizzas and coke, we headed south.
* * *
The road was winding and dark. Except for a few yards of headlight illumination, nothing around us was visible to the eye. We were to meet our guide off a side road from the main highway that ran through the Ramon crater all the way to Eilat. (As a matter of fact, Eilat was a two-hour drive from our destination.)
After a short stretch of well-lit road that ran alongside a prison, we entered Mitzpe Ramon (population 5,123 in 2016). We passed the amazing Bereshit Hotel, which has rooms overlooking the canyon; some of those rooms have their own private swimming pool! (I heard they go for $1,000 a night, although the kashrut in the hotel is not of the highest start, if you know what I mean.)
We started our descent down a steep and winding road. The boys had no sense of the breathtaking scenery we were passing. That was part of the “experience.” At the bottom, after a few harrowing curves, we drove on flat terrain until we saw two vehicles on the side of the road, and one had blinking lights. We found our guide!
We followed him down the dirt road for around 10 minutes, passing another group of stargazers, and finally got out of our car, where our guide led us to a campfire.
We looked up. The sky was dazzling! I hadn’t seen so many thousands of stars in years! The sky was illuminated by thousands of little diamonds. We were amazed. We sat down on mats around the campfire, where the guide and his assistant brewed some tea for us.
What could I give to these children in terms of religion? They were more meticulous in their observance, more religious in their outlook than I am. The beis medrash I can’t give them, but I can give them a religious angle to experiencing nature. G-d can be sensed everywhere. If I could turn a tiyul from just an escape from cheder into a religious encounter for them, showing them that there is a seamless continuity between their shul experience and the wonders of the heavens, then I have bequeathed them something. Yiddishkeit is everywhere.
So before the guide started talking about the stars, I motioned to him to wait a few minutes. I pulled out some photocopied sheets and distributed them to the group. I began to read, very slowly, in Hebrew, with special emphasis on the last two lines:
O Lord, our Master, how mighty is Your name in all the earth, for which You should bestow Your majesty upon the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, You have established strength because of Your adversaries, in order to put an end to enemy and avenger.
When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that You have established,
What is man that You should remember him, and the son of man that You should be mindful of him?
Seeing the vastness of the starry sky and the thousands shining diamonds may be mind numbing. While many astronomers and philosophers have drawn the conclusion that man is just an insignificant speck of atomic dust in the universe, the Psalmist doesn’t seem to think so:
For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his dominion.
I read a few more verses from the daily prayers that dealt with stars, and turned the presentation over to the guide.
* * *
Our guide, who was of Yemenite extraction, and masorati (traditional) held an object in his hand that sent a laser beam into the sky. He pointed to a particularly bright star named Sirius. After explaining the concept of a light year[b], he told us that Sirius was 600 light years away, and that the light we were seeing from that star now is what it looked like six hundred years ago! The boys were astounded. (He wanted to talk about stars that were hundreds of thousands of light years away, but I intervened and suggested he not get into that, as that would confuse the boys. (I pondered these questions when I was in high school and college and have my own ideas. The Breslover had emunah peshutah and couldn’t care less. The boys were taught by their father not to believe in scientists. But I wanted to steer clear of debate under the enchanting starlight.) He told us of a certain ancient Greek astronomer who actually counted all the visible stars, which came out to 9,000 and change.
The guide explained that we live in a galaxy called the Milky Way and that most of the stars were from that galaxy, but a few stars were visible that emanated from another galaxy, Andromeda. (The Andromeda galaxy is thought to be 2.25 million light years from us.) And how many stars are there in the Milky Way? At the very least, an estimated 100 billion! And how many galaxies are there? After the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers estimate about two trillion galaxies!
We got up from the campfire and walked a few meters to the four telescopes. I was a bit disappointed with the telescopes. I thought I would get a close look at Mars or Jupiter or get to see the rings of Saturn. Instead, I just saw more dots of light – usually stars that were invisible to the naked eye. But for the boys, who had never even seen a telescope in their lives, it was a fascinating experience.
* * *
We drove back to Yerucham “starry eyed.” I was exhausted from all the driving. I showered and rolled into bed but didn't fall asleep until after two in the morning. By the time I got up at 7 a.m., my Breslover roommate was not in the room. He had already risen for vasikin and was davening with tallis and tefilin in some field near the dormitory complex. While he was in the middle of Shmoneh Esrei, he was engulfed by a flock of sheep being escorted by a Bedouin shepherd.
I made it to the 8 o’clock minyan in the miklat, an air raid shelter converted into a shteibel. The kids caught up 15 minutes later. From there we went to the Iris Hotel where we ate a big breakfast/brunch. Shloimie, wanting to get the most from the trip, ordered fish and chips, something he would never dream of getting at home. I got scrambled eggs and salad, a typical Israeli breakfast. Then we were off.
We returned to Mitzpe Ramon and headed for the visitors center. The boys saw that there was the option of a tour that included a movie about the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. (The only connection to Mitzpe Ramon is the same name!) They definitely wanted to see it. (When do chareidi kids ever see movies?) So I booked tickets for the 2 p.m. showing, which meant that we had to move fast.
We walked to the observation platform, and the boys were astounded to see the vast valley below – Machtesh[c] Ramon – Israel’s little Grand Canyon. They were even more astounded to learn that we had been there last night! They couldn’t believe that they had visited such an awesome place and were totally oblivious to their surroundings!
After a half hour of gawking, we hopped into the car and drove again down the same winding road into the “crater,” the road leading to Eilat. Our first stop was the Minsara, the “Carpentry Shop,” at the center of the crater. Formed from the remains of a volcano, its black rocks look like wood! The rocks are composed of sand that melted and turned liquid during a volcanic eruption, and then cooled into these quartzite prisms.
We climbed to the top of the hill with these strange looking rocks, then came down and drove a bit more, looking for the side road where we had met the stargazing guide the night before. Then we hurried back to the visitors’ center.
* * *
The boys saw a space suit, models of the Challenger shuttle, then a movie about Ilan Ramon. Ramon was an Israeli Air Force pilot who flew on the dangerous mission to bomb Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in Iraq. He was sent by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. He was the first Israeli to become an astronaut.
Ramon was part of the space mission STS-107 Columbia (January 16 to February 1, 2003). The 16-day flight was dedicated to science and research. We saw Ramon and the rest of the space crew floating in zero gravity and doing all kinds of experiments aboard the space shuttle. According to Wikipedia:
Although considered a secular Jew, Ramon reportedly sought to follow Jewish observances while in orbit. In an interview he said, “I feel I am representing all Jews and all Israelis.” He was the first spaceflight participant to request kosher food.
The space mission ended abruptly when Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed and its crew perished during reentry, 16 minutes before scheduled landing. The 37 pages from the diary he was keeping while in orbit survived the crash and were returned to his widow, Rona. One of the pages contained a copy of the Kiddush prayer. Ramon’s mother and grandmother were survivors of Auschwitz.
After the movie was over, the screen lifted, the curtains opened, and the vastness of the Ramon Crater was revealed in all its glory through the huge windows.
We walked quietly to the parking lot, where the boys spotted some ibexes just a few feet from the car. Just before Shloimie got into the car, he turned to me and said, “If there is one thing I learned from this trip, it’s how tiny we are in the vast scheme of things.”
We drove home. Mission accomplished.
[a] The lyrics of the song “Vincent,” by Don McLean, about the artist Vincent Van Gogh.
[b] A light-year is a unit of distance. It is the distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) each second. So in one year, it can travel about 10 trillion km. More precisely, one light-year is equal to 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles). There are a million millions in a trillion!
A makhtesh has steep walls of resistant rock surrounding a deep closed valley, which is usually drained by a single wadi. Though called a crater, it is really a canyon. The “crater” is 40 km long (25 miles), 2-10 km wide, and 500 meters (1640 feet) deep, and is shaped like an elongated heart.
