It’s damn hard to find a decent skipping stones in the Sea of Galilee. All the rocks are large, angular and relatively light. They are what we called “pumace” when I was a kid, which is probably not their real name. As an English major, I know that these stone contain small pockets of air which were trapped when the lava which formed them cooled quickly. In the area of southern Appalachia where I live, these rocks have long since broken down and been compressed into more dense stones. The stones have subsequently been unearthed, tumbled in mountain streams, and rendered flat, smooth, and perfect for skipping. In other words, as Tallulah and I waded in the water on the shores where Jesus walked, it occurred to me that, geologically speaking, this place is much younger than where we live.
Nor is it any bigger. In fact, one of the great revelations of the day was that Capernaum, Jesus’ home base for most of his active period, was probably no larger than the neighborhood in which we live. The county in which we live now very likely has a larger population that did the Galilee region in Jesus’. The distances from one place to the next are incredibly short given the significance I attach to them. One can see pretty much all of the Sea of Galilee from the Mount of the Beatitudes (aka Sermon on the Mount mountain.) I can imagine that walking all around the lake would take a day.
A pretty long day, mind you, but a day. And a hot day. December or not, global warming or not, I think it has always been hot here. Plus that sun will just take the chutzpah right out of you, as it did us on the streets of Tzaft. As a little detour from all the Jesus, we wanted to visit the center of Kabbalist learning. There is a reason it thrives here: trying to navigate the town is a total mystery. We should have brought a tour guide. Or Madonna.
Or we could have asked, I imagine. People in Israel are not always immediately solicitous, but once asked they are very willing to help a stranger figure out what he is doing. A man on the street helped us pay for parking, which requires a little printed ticket that you put in the window of the car. A another customer in the pharmacy showed us where to sign the credit card slip (it was all in Hebrew and there were two lines.) The guy at the falafel stand made sure we got plenty of the good sauce. The pickles were good too.