Sanhedrin Trail to be Israel’s First Interactive Hiking Path

Hikers on the Sanhedrin Trail will have an augmented reality app. Photo courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

The 70km trail will cross the Galilee and interface with an innovative augmented reality-based app to bring history alive for hikers of all ages.

By ISRAEL21c Staff

Israel’s first “smart” hiking trail, under construction between Tiberias and Beit Sheʽarim National Park in the Lower Galilee, will bring hikers back in history to the Second Temple period more than 2,000 years ago, when the Great Sanhedrin — the supreme Jewish authority of sages – was active in this region.

Hikers will have access to an innovative augmented reality-based smartphone application that will virtually reconstruct heritage sites, integrate virtual guides for children along the route and bring to life prominent scholars such as the four rabbis mentioned in the Passover Haggadah.

Due to be completed in spring 2018, the trail marks three important “70s.” It will be inaugurated for the State of Israel’s 70thanniversary, will stretch 70 kilometers, and will pass sites associated with the 70 members of the Great Sanhedrin.

These scholars recorded the Mishnah and Talmud during their 290 years in the Galilee following the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome in 135 CE. The Great Sanhedrin originally sat on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

The Sanhedrin Trail will cross the Lower Galilee by way of many historic sites, such as the Roman theater of Tiberias shown here. Photo courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority

“People such Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, the members of the Sanhedrin who were active here 2,000 years ago, determined to a great extent much of how our lives are run today. It is according to these religious laws that we marry or conduct funeral ceremonies, and even administer Jewish law,” said Yair Amitzur, the Israel Antiquities Authority’s antiquities inspector for the Eastern Galilee, and one of the initiators of the idea.

“The establishment of the trail and walking on it will connect those who live here today with the atmosphere and frame of mind of that period,” Amitzur continued. “In walking along the Galilee trails while using the application that will be developed specifically for this project, the trail will afford visitors a learning experience about the Mishnah and Talmud period and connect them to the world of the sages who shaped Judaism in the religious houses of learning.”

Map of the planned Sanhedrin Trail. Drafting by Anastasia Shapiro and Yair Amitzur/Israel Antiquities Authority

The family-friendly Sanhedrin Trail is to be divided into five segments that can be covered during the course of five days of walking, and also will include circular routes.

Work on the first section of the trail began this March with the help of volunteers and thousands of high school students from the National Religious school system of the Ministry of Education.

“We learn a lot in the classroom and at school, but in practice the studies only really sink in when you feel it, when you walk it,” said Tal Dothan, one of the students participating in the Sanhedrin Trail work.

High school students doing archaeological excavations to prepare the Sanhedrin Trail. Photo by Shmuel Magal/Israel Antiquities Authority.

In preparation for the Tiberias section of the Sanhedrin Trail, the teens have been taking part in archaeological excavations along the cardo, the main street of the ancient Roman city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee.

 A visitors’ center will be built here to give the public an opportunity to better understand the project and participate in the excavations while getting to know the city’s ancient heritage.

Israel Hasson, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said he will work with regional councils through which the trail passes to get local residents involved in building “a spectacular and enjoyable interactive trail for tens of thousands of hikers that will connect the hikers to their past.”

The Sanhedrin Trail was initiated by the Israel Antiquities Authority in cooperation with the National Religious Education Administration of the Ministry of Education, and is financed by the Landmarks Project of the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage. Regional councils and towns along the route, as well as environmental organizations, are partnering in the effort as well.

Article courtesy of www.Israel21c.org

The Culinary Improvisations of Erez Komarovsky

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Erez Komarovsky in a still from the film The New Cuisine of Israel.

Erez Komarovsky is a man who naturally brings together all the best aspects of food. Erez built his reputation as a baker; he is credited with instigating Israel’s “bread revolution” some twenty years ago. Bakers tend to be a finicky and exacting breed, but on the afternoon we spent in his kitchen, few ingredients were measured out: dishes were tossed together by hand, tasted frequently, thoroughly enjoyed, and lightning bolts of inspiration were accepted as a matter of course. In the film The New Cuisine of Israel you will get to visit him at his beautiful home at Mitzpe Matat in the Upper Galilee, overlooking Israel’s border with Lebanon. We had the privilege of visiting him there to cook and eat, but our day with Erez began early, at the marketplace in Akko.

“Erez brings a spirit of improvisation, integrity, and exuberance to the experience of food.”

We met for breakfast at the busy Sa’id hummus shop, where the waiters  clearly knew Erez and gave him a perfunctory nod. From there, we strolled over to the market fishmongers, who glanced at Erez askance as he inspected their wares, seeking out the brightest eyes and scales, the bluest claws, the perfect aroma—that is, a slightly salty non-aroma in the case of the freshest fish. He spoke with them in Arabic, asking (it was clear) what other fish they had in the back, then examining that secret stock with a raised eyebrow and haggling like the pro he is, and finally coming away with a couple of pounds of blue-silver calamari and a weighty, sparkling sea bass, which he hefted matter-of-factly into an ice cooler in the back of his truck.

About an hour’s drive to the north, Erez showed us around his beautiful, somewhat chaotic stone home. We wandered the tiers of his vegetable patches, carrying baskets and filling them with dark-red cherry tomatoes, kale, Thai basil, scary-looking tiny hot peppers, Jerusalem artichokes, and more.

Working with whatever he has at hand, Erez riffs like a brilliant jazzman. His kitchen is light and open and well stocked, although like many cooks, he mostly uses only a few favorite tools. The mortar and pestle are indispensable (everything from basil and garlic to peppercorns is purposefully smashed), as are a couple of good, super-sharp knives.

Just before the bass, onions, tomatoes, kohlrabi, basil, and crushed salt and pepper were flung in the taboon, they received a liberal drizzling of honey from the hives of the beekeeper down the road and olive oil from a neighbor’s press. Sometime later, greens, vegetables, and fish were piled into a gorgeous knoll on a platter, and we sat down to a truly unforgettable meal.

Erez brings a spirit of improvisation, integrity, and exuberance to the experience of food. We think that is the finest way to cook and to eat.

Sa’id Hummus >

Stills from the film The New Cuisine of Israel, available with the purchase of The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today’s Israel.

Reviving the Spirit at Pina Barosh Inn

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A guestroom at the Pina Barosh inn, Rosh Pina. Photo © and courtesy Cookie West 

The building that houses the Pina Barosh inn, perched on Rosh Pina’s HaKhalutzim Street, has been in the Friedman family since the 1870s; today, six generations along, the family continues here. Nili Friedman, who now owns and runs the inn, is a warm, effusive, and very welcoming hostess—she is, like many others in Rosh Pina, also an artist, and some of her paintings can be seen hanging on the walls of Pina Barosh’s seven charming guest rooms, most of which look out onto the broad green-and-gold Hula Valley. Some rooms have private outdoor hot tubs, in which guests can loll indulgently with a glass of wine and gaze out all the way across the valley to Mount Hermon.

“Mornings at Pina Barosh will likely find you sitting at the inn’s wide, stone-columned outdoor dining room, overlooking the Hula Valley.”

Mornings at Pina Barosh will likely find you sitting at the inn’s wide, stone-columned outdoor dining room—warmed in cooler months with a blazing fire in a central fireplace—and looking out at this astonishing view. Here are served magnificent, many-dish breakfasts, including homemade cheeses, fig jam, breads, tapenades, tahini, fresh eggs and yogurts, and the requisite Israeli salads—such a satisfying, nourishing, and gorgeous way to start the day. Nili’s daughter, Shiri, trained as a chef in France and New York, and runs the excellent Shiri Bistro here that also serves lunch and dinner, applying her refined culinary approach to the bounty of local produce and other ingredients.

Pina Barosh >

Falling in Love with Rosh Pina

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Rosh Pina doorway. Photo by Itamar Grinberg, courtesy Israeli Ministry of Tourism and Creative Commons

Driving to the town of Rosh Pina, your car climbs straight up a cypress-lined road, passing charming homes and bed and breakfasts in weathered stone buildings with terracotta roofs, windows overflowing with pink geraniums and bright orange bougainvillea. The combination of old stone and brilliant flowers may bring to mind the hills of Provence.

“Rosh Pina is roughshod in the most enchanting way.”

Rosh Pina is roughshod in the most enchanting way—its cobbled streets are punctuated with artists’ studios and workshops. Among the stones is the beautiful Pina Barosh inn, which overlooks the richly colorful expanse of the nearby Hula Valley.

It is not at all hard to fall in love with Rosh Pina—which translates to “cornerstone.” Clearly, this place is a foundational point, a creative homeplace, a cornerstone of Israel.

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman in the Galilee

Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman menu. Image courtesy the restaurant

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman is a low-key restaurant set in the Golan Heights; its setting is verdant and wild, hills unfurling in all directions in wide rolls of misty color. Nearby you’ll find Nimrod’s Castle—an imposing, twelfth-century Mamluk fortress standing guard on the dark-green hills near Mount Hermon.

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman is a sweet and unpretentious, almost shack-like place, with a sweeping view of swath after swath of green-blue-silver Golan hills and snaking roadways, the huge, bulkily clouded sky above it all. The restaurant is appealingly funky inside, dotted with funny little witch-dolls in keeping with the theme of the place.

If you visit on a cool day after a hike in the nearby hills, you’ll find it has the perfect menu of delicious, thick stews to warm you up and slow the rushing world down.

The Witch’s Cauldron and the Milkman >