3/26/2011 - Haifa and Tel Hatzor

Breakfast was served in a beach-side room and then we had a Shabbat morning minyan as a group in one of the private rooms.  Although some of our group isn't familiar with the Shabbat morning service, there are enough of us who regularly attend the Shabbat morning minyan that we can carry the service.

We leave Tel Aviv today for Haifa and the Golan Heights.  We took some last photos of the Mediterranean from our room at the Carlton Hotel.

Jaffa in the distance.

 Across the street from the Carlton Hotel was a building that appeared to have been draped in wet toilet paper or plaster like papier mache.

We loaded on the bus and after a couple of false starts (people not checking their room safes), we headed north to Haifa.


In Haifa we stopped at the BaHai Temple Gardens.  The actual BaHai Temple is shrouded in scaffolding as it is being renovated, but the 19 steps of the gardens are quite beautiful and the view of Haifa is amazing.  We could see over to Acco and up to Rosh Hanikra.

Rabbis Rick & Susan Rheins

Following our stop in Haifa we continued up Route 90 toward Tel Hatzor in the Golan Heights.  Along the way we stopped for lunch at a shopping center where one of the restaurants was Pizza Perfecto, another Cafe Espresso.  A car in the parking lot has a sticker on it that said premium in Hebrew.

We reach Tel Hatzor and it is truly amazing.  It has various levels of civilization built one on top of the other.  We were able to go down the five flights of stairs to the water source where the steps from 4000 years ago still remain beside the newer steps.

The women would carry the water from the cistern/well for the community to use.

We saw a storage house as well as a residence.

The residence had an olive press in it that used a basket system to press the olives.  When all the oil had been pressed out leaving the pits and remnant olive parts, these materials would be balled up and burned.