I admit it.  I wanted to get away from Independence Day.  Not because I don’t love this country with all my heart, but because I am full of sadness at what has become of the ideology of Independence Day.  And I don’t believe in barbeques.  

Now how can I show this sadness to my grandchildren?  

So we came up north – and how could I have believed that here, in Tiberias, we would find the peace of the Galilee?

  The music is pounding in our ears and the pool we thought we’d be relaxing in is filled with screaming children.  So we went hiking in the hills – as much as my still-sore toe could bear.  To Susita.

where we were pretty much on our own, and the ruins were all around us.

A sarcophagus on the road, a view of Hermon mountain, the amazing green mountains around us – all, all was wonderful.  And I remembered suddenly that when I was down in the valley, on the banks of the sea, in Ein Gev, in 1966, the Syrians were firing down at us from up here. 

Then we went up to Metula, when my friend still lives on there on her own – an intellectual and pastoral life – with many books and pictures of family, and part of a shell that fell into her yard in one of the more recent wars on a shelf among the books.

It centers one a bit.

Then as we drove back down south, passing all the exceedingly well-kept Christian sites, and visited the Mount of Beatitudes. 

I’m just showing the most banal aspects of the Mount of Beatitudes.  Of course, there are much more beauteous pictures.  But just from this, you can see how effective the Sermon on the Mount would be here.  Here it seems almost easy to love one another.

Back in Tiberias, however, I’m thinking maybe I have to learn to stop looking down on celebrants – they don’t have a sore toe and aren’t thinking about the Prime Minister who is leading us into war so we can make sure he clinches his government.  

Yes! Happy Independence Day!