On the Friday after Purim, we prepared the supper ready to cook the moment we got back and went on a tiyul to the Golan. We headed north via Rosh Pina and, as we wouldn’t have time to make challa for Shabbat, we stopped in Kiryat Shmona at a bakery, and also got some burekas and sweet pastries for a picnic lunch. Our first proper stop was just after Kiryat Shmoan, at Tel Hai, outside Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, where I wanted to show the children the famous Tel Hai monument.
The defiant lion representing Trumpeldor and his comrades commemorates the deaths on 1 March 1920, during an attack by Bedouins, of the eight Jews, six men and two women, among whom was the one-armed Joseph Trumpeldor. Indeed Kiryat Shmona, literally Town of the Eight, on which Tel Hai borders, was named after them. The memorial, on the Naftali mountains, overlooks the Hula valley, and is on the edge of the beautifully maintained and landscaped cemetery of the Kibbutz. The view below shows the snow-capped Mount Hermon, on the border between Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
On the far side of the cemetery from the monument, right next to the entrance to the kibbutz, On August 6, during the 2006 Lebanon War, twelve reserve IDF soldiers were killed after being hit by a Katyusha rocket launched by Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon. The group of artillery gunners were gathering on the kibbutz in preparation to support their comrades, and the survivors carried on to do so. Thus there is a newer memorial at Tel Hai, to these men.
We then travelled through fields of cherry and apple blossom (the Golan gets sufficiently cold for cherries)...
...and after a couple of miles came to Nahal Ayun, just south of Metula, a national park, where the Ayun stream, originating in the Marj’ayoun valley in southern Lebanon, enters Israel and runs along the border over four waterfalls, becoming a tributary of the Jordan. The Iyon Stream is mentioned in the Talmud as the “path of Iyon.”
After sitting in the picnic area with our burekas, we did the short 15-minute walk from the car park to the lowest (and most spectacular) fall, the Tanur waterfall which is 30 metres high.
There are various reasons given for the name of the waterfall. "Tanur" is the name given to the long skirt worn by Lebanese Arab women. Another origin might be from the shape which resembles the chimney of a Tabun or bread oven, also called Tanur in Arabic.
Whilst Amber and Riva sat by the stream, Yonatan and I climbed to the lookout above the falls (from which the spectacular view, left looking downstream towards Tel Hai), and walked a little way upstream, before returning to join them. Below you see the Mitspe Mapal HaTanur, the Tanur waterfall lookout - if you look very carefully you can spot Yonatan!
This is the view looking down on the waterfall from the lookout. The waterfall is divided by a large rock.
And here is the view south from the lookout, following both the path to the lookout and the Ayoun stream into the Hula valley, with the Naftali mountains beyond.
After our walk we drove into Metula, and looked around briefly (it was getting late so another trip is planned to take a closer look at this historic frontier town), before climbing in the car to the Dado Lookout, named for David "Dado" Elazar, who served as the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War, where there were four groups: an Arab family, a Chasidic family, a secular Jewish family, and us – the Eshchar family!
In the picture below you see the panorama north; everything beyond the line of the town in the foreground (which is Metula) is Lebanon. There was heavy traffic evident along the Tsahal road along the border fence, and we know there are Iranian troops not far from that, but we saw and heard nothing that peaceful day.
We then took the road back through the Naftali mountains, just grazing Tsfat, and got home in time to light the candles, shove the chicken in the oven, and get to shul!