Adventures in Eretz Yisrael: Central Shomron: Avarta - the hornet's nest

I remember growing up in Chicago what the cold was like. On the really cold days, and especially when it was really windy, the ice cold chill would rip right through your bones. It did not matter how many layers of clothing you were wearing. If you were caught outside on one of those really cold days, such as the 10 below zero days with it being 20 below with the windchill factor, or the coldest day I remember when it hit -40 and was something like -80 with the windchill factor (I just did a google search and found the coldest day in Chicago history to be January 20 1985 when it hit -27 and was -93 with the windchill factor), you would feel it like ice running through your veins. People would die of hypothermia and lose fingers and toes to frostbite.

For the first time I can remember in the 17+ years I have lived in Israel I felt that Chicago cold in Israel. This weekend, from Thursday night through Shabbos, and it will continue through about Tuesday (though not quite as bad), Israel experienced sub-zero temperatures. It was really cold.

And if you think it was really cold in Bet Shemesh or Jerusalem, you should have been out trekking through the hills of the Shomron with me on Thursday night!! That was really cold! The Shomron is always cold at night. It is a high area and gets windy and cold. But in these sub-zero temperatures, it was like the old days in Chicago with the wind ripping through your bones, no matter how bundled up you were!

So what was I doing in the hills of the Shomron in sub-zero weather?

That leads us to the review of my latest Adventure in Eretz Yisrael..

At about 8:30 PM on Thursday night, Jameel calls me up on the phone. Whenever Jameel calls, you know something is up. He tells me that he just got word they are opening the village of [I could not catch the name of the village], and this is a place they only open to Jews once a year. In this village are the grave sites of Elazar and Isamar, 2 of the sons of Aharon Ha'Kohen, and the gravesite of the 70 elders. The buses would be leaving from "Bat Shalosh" at about 12 am and there was no need to pre-register.

We went over the directions quickly, and hung up. I called Jameel about 10:15 to go over the directions again, as I am not as familiar with the roads of the Shomron as he is. He tells me that he probably would not be going, but we went over the directions again.

So I head out to the Shomron. The trip was pretty smooth. Driving through the Shomron at night is a bit spooky, if you are not familiar with the roads. You drive through some Arab villages that straddle the "highway". You know that if you make a wrong turn you will end up on the morning news as the victim of a lynching. The signs "could be better", the lighting of the roads "could be better".

So I pass the Tapuach Junction, and Bat Shalosh is supposed to be a minute or two after that. I see two hassidic men hitchhiking on the side of the road. I figured they are probably going to the same place I am going, so I pulled over and offered them a ride.

They look at me and ask, in pure ivris, "Ata Misnachel?" - are you a settler? I said I am not but do they need a ride. They ask where I am going and I said to Shchem, to the kevarim (I said shchem just because it is the general area, but these graves are not in shchem, rather in a neighboring village). Their eyes get real wide and they say, Really? You are going to Shchem??"

So I explained that I am going near Shchem to the graves of Elazar, etc. They said forget it. They are tryign to get into Shchem and go to Kever Yosef. I said that is not open tonight, but these other ones are. they said they know but are trying to get in anyways. I said goodbye as I am not going there. I only go when it is open and secured.

So I get to Bat Shalosh and board the bus.

I still had no idea where I was going, so I asked someone on the bus. He told me the name of the village, and said that tradition, as brought in the midrash and the shulchan aruch, is that this shabbos would be the yahrtzeit of the zkeinim (elders) that are buried there. I do not know if it is the yahrtzeit of all 70, or just some of them. I also do not know if all 70 are buried there or just some of them.

So after some minor delays, we are finally off in the armored bus to the village of Avarta. Avarta is a village on the outskirts of Shchem (or Nablus in English). When I later told my brother (the mercenary soldier) where I was, he knew of the village and said "that is part of Balata". According to the map below, it is not really part of Balata, but the borders of these villages sometimes are unclear and Avarta is next to Balata, so at least in spirit it is part of Balata, even if in terms of municipal services it might not be.

Balata is known to be a hornet's nest for terrorists, and Avarta is no different. I think even most terrorists are afraid to go there!


The bus brings us in to the village and we arrive at the grave marker of Isamar ben Aharon Ha'Kohen.

They handed out sheets that had special prayers that were written to be said by these graves. Eveyone davened, from the sheets, general tehillim, personal prayers... After I davened, I was snapping some photos. It was dark and I was just snapping without really looking for something specific. One funny resulting photograph is the one below where it looks like this one guy smashed his face into a cream pie which splattered all over the grave marker. In reality he had simply just positioned himself there, over some grafitti, to daven...

From there we were told that the site of the elders is a just a few minutes walk away. So we start to head out in that direction. The soldiers stop us asking us where we are going. When we tell them we are walking to the zkeinim, they say we have to wait and we cannot go anywhere on our own. So, despite the fact that they had already secured the whole area, they sent a patrol of soldiers further down the street to make sure it was still clear, and then they escorted us. BTW, the soldiers were heavily, and I mean heavily, armed.
The site of the zkeinim was next to a small Arab cemetery. Their site was a structure, not a marker. I guess they were buried underneath it somewhere. We went in to the structure, which contained 2 small rooms and everyone davened. It was nice and warm in there, compared to the freezing cold outside, so people were reluctant to leave this one.. The walls were covered in soot, probably from having been burned by the locals. The soot though must have been old because it was hard on the walls, and was not coming off.

As I made my way towards the front of the rooms, towards where people were davening, I noticed some people were taking turns to bend down near the floor to lean on the entrance to what seemed like a cave. I took my turn and davened there for a moment, assuming that cave must be where the zkeinim were buried. I also snapped a couple of shots... (it looks like some remnants of a beer bottle are in there if you enlarge the photo)When they cleared us out of that area, they sent us on our way to the last site - the site of Elazar ben Aharon Ha'Kohen. This site was on the other side of the village and they made us go by bus. It took some time for the bus to weave through the small roads of the village. The bus could only go so far and we had to continue by foot. It was an unusual situation - we had to walk up the side of a mountain in the pitch black (and still freezing cold). We literally had to climb up gripping to rocks in the field, as this was near the top of the hill.


After davening for a bit, I noticed some people with steaming hot plates of food. I went to see what was happening and saw that someone had brought a big pot of cholent to warm up the visitors! I have no idea how he got this big pot of cholent there, but he did. He put it on some stones and lit a fire to keep it hot. he dished out hundreds of plates of cholent and gave people the energy to continue on for a bit longer.