Afula Part 2 and Passover

Jews worldwide will usher in Passover with a seder on Monday evening.

Of all the Jewish holidays, the Passover seder is the most widely celebrated event in the Jewish calendar. Probably because its message is one of freedom-we were freed from slavery and this struggle is used as an example of how peoples around the world still need to struggle for their freedom.

Seders will be conducted in formal settings, informally in as many places as one could imagine and in countless creative ways to meet the needs of the seder participants.

This whole thing started when Joseph sojourned to Egypt. Initially welcomed, Joseph and his cohorts flourished, but as guests sometimes do, they overstayed their welcome, and their hosts became somewhat agitated.

Eventually the Egyptians turned on those Israelites and their journey to Freedom is memorialized in the Passover seder.

The freed slaves were promised a land flowing of milk and honey, but once having arrived, realized that such was not the case. Much work had to be done to reclaim the land and make it prosper.

Even today there is still much to do. The Gilboa region has embarked on one novel approach:

While in Israel, we visited Sha'ar Hagilboa, a new ski site and tourism complex in the Gilboa region. The Gilboa ski as it is called is located on the northern slope of Mt. Gilboa and allows visitors to ski on an intriguing slope that offers a beautiful view of the Gilboa scenery. The Gilboa is mentioned in the bible in the Book of Samuel. On the Gilboa, David said in his Lamentation to Jonathan: "Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is viley cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil".

Standing on Mt Gilboa overlooking the Jezreel Valley where so many Biblical stories occurred, our Jewish history came alive. And combined with the new tourist attractions in the region created a sense that our present is truly interconnected with our past. The modernity of a man made ski resort on the Gilboa where David roamed is truly a remarkable experience.

The struggles for freedom are not over...in the Afula/Gilboa region, immigrants from Ethiopia are learning how to be free...Arab and Jewish Israelis are struggling to learn about one another...

But at this Passover season, we celebrate the freedoms we have here and in Israel, and the freedoms that we all hope for, for all peoples.