Sukkat Shalom Reform Synagogue

Greetings from the Jordan Valley, the nearest thing to paradise that I have so far discovered!

As I write this dispatch from the Promised Land, yet another peace conference is about to start tomorrow in Maryland. Well, together with all my fellow Israelis (yes, I am now one of them), I pray for a successful outcome - that elusive thing called peace.

It is now six months since I left the UK, and settled in this little corner of Israel that time and progress seem to have forgotten. We have no railway, no motorway, not even a dual carriageway until Afula or Nazareth. But we also have no pollution, a beautifully clean Lake, no traffic jams, and one of the four holy cities of Judaism – Tiberias. Did you know that Maimonides, Rabbi Akiva and a host of ancient and medieval sages are all buried in Tiberias, and that Ivrit vowels were invented here by the sages to help the masses study the Torah more easily? I am living in Kibbutz Degania Bet, the fifth oldest kibbutz in Israel, sandwiched between

Degania Aleph, the first kibbutz, and Kinnereth, the second oldest. The history of why this particular kibbutz is long and complicated, but suffice to say that subconsciously I know thirty years ago that I would retire here.

I think that first it is necessary to dispel a few myths about Israel in general these days, and Aliyah in particular. The bureaucracy of the past has almost disappeared, and been replaced with modern technology and efficiency.
Granted that most of the bureaucrats
still don’t actually smile while dealing with you, but they are coldly efficient even if not yet warmly welcoming. As an example, I received my ‘Teudat Zehut’ (identity card) within 30 minutes of entering the Interior Ministry, my Israeli passport was processed in under 30 minutes, and received in the post 5 days later, my Kupat Cholim registration was completed in under an hour, and my new immigrant basket of benefits was set up in two short meetings at the Ministry of Absorbsion.

Well, life here up to now is great, I seem to have more to do than time to do it, even though I usually can’t quantify what I do each day. I have an up-to-date

fitness centre with indoor and outdoor pools in a near kibbutz, and a modern health centre in the next kibbutz, where I can book a doctor’s appointment on the internet and get one the following day guaranteed. We have four excellent restaurants, three concert halls and a modern cinema all within a ten minute drive, and trees full of mandarins, red grapefruit, lemons, and pecan nuts, as well as our commercial bananas and dates, all waiting to be picked – I go and pick my breakfast grapefruit every morning. I don’t cook – we have a dining room, I don’t wash clothes – we have a laundry, and the hairdresser, the chiropodist, and the dentist all come to the kibbutz. And the icing on the cake for eastbound intrepid travellers like myself, in 30 minutes I can be at the Sheik Hussein Bridge border crossing into Jordan, be in Amman Airport in 2 hours, and in Bangkok in under 7 hours! As I said, the nearest thing to paradise that I have so far discovered.