Walking the Land:
A History of Israeli Hiking Trails, by Shai Rabineau.
Indiana University Press, 2023.
As an experienced hiker in the United States, I am delighted to review Walking the Land: A History of Israeli Hiking Trails, by Shai Rabineau. This well-written book makes it clear that the history of the marked hiking trails in Israel is far different than the history of such trails in the United States. Here in the United States, we view hiking trails as vehicles for recreation. But in Israel, as the book demonstrates, they have historically been viewed as political statements, and, to some extent, they continue to be viewed in that manner today.
The book begins by explaining that, during the years of the British Mandate, hiking was considered an aspect of yediʾat haʾarets—becoming more familiar with the sacred land. Rabineau points out that the area the early hikers chose to explore was the Judean Desert, and he notes that the reason this area was chosen for exploration was precisely that it was not well known. Paths through the desert had existed for hundreds of years, but they were unmarked and could not easily be followed by inexperienced hikers. Initially, Bedouin were hired to lead treks (masaʾot), although the Jewish leaders of the Palmach soon acquired enough familiarity with the terrain to lead groups by themselves. A series of incidents involving hikers in 1947 convinced Israeli hiking pioneer Hillel Birger, along with a group of Palmach scouts, to mark the first hiking trail in the Judean Desert: the path up the mountain known as Ras Feshkha, which was part of the route from Beit Haʿaravah to Masada. This was the start of the simun shivilim (marking of paths/trails) movement in Israel.
Ironically, the marking of the trail up Ras Feshkha began on November 22, 1947. Just one week later, the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan to partition what was then known as Palestine, and a civil war began between the Arabs and Jews. The marking of the trail was not completed, and the trail itself became a part of the Jordanian-occupied West Bank. Of course, with the establishment of a State of Israel that did not include the Judean Desert, hiking trails had to be established elsewhere. Rabineau discusses the first large-scale effort in April and June 1959 to mark trails up Masada and in the area of Ein Gedi—the portion of the Judean Desert that remained in Israeli hands—as well as the expansion of the effort in 1961. He continues by describing the marking of trails in the Eilat Mountains in the southern Negev in 1963.
When the entire West Bank once again opened to hiking in the wake of the Six Day War in 1967, the simun shvilim movement returned to the northern Judean Desert and marked a network of trails in the area. Indeed, Rabineau states, “the expansion of the Israeli trail network in the northern Judean Desert…established the first large-scale Israeli civilian presence” in the area. Rabineau goes on to discuss the establishment in 1973 of Israel’s third trail network, in the Golan Heights. Here, he points out, the Israel Defense Force’s Northern Command took an active role in selecting the location of the trails, as the area had been heavily mined by the Syrians. Next, he points out, a network of marked hiking trails was established in the Mount Carmel area in 1976. Yediʾat haʾarets, which emphasized hiking by “scouts” and “fit walkers” in “desolate areas,” was no longer the primary motive; rather, the purpose of this new trail network was to enable “families and individual hikers” to explore green spaces closer to home.
After discussing these various trail networks, Rabineau goes on to describe how the Shvil Yisraʾel, which is often translated as the Israel National Trail, was established in 1995. He explains that the concept originated in a newspaper article in which a veteran hiker referred to the Appalachian Trail as the “national trail” of the United States (a characterization with which I do not fully agree) and suggested that a similar trail be established in Israel. Even here, Rabineau points out, the decision of where to route the trail was influenced by political considerations. The final route stays within the 1948 borders of Israel and avoids any “politically contentious areas,” including Jerusalem, although two “add-on” trails, Shvil haGolan and Shvil Yerushalayim, were subsequently established.
Finally, Rabineau discusses the establishment of the Jesus Trail, created for the benefit of foreign tourists, that extends from Nazareth to Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee; the Nativity Trail, which connects Nazareth with Bethlehem; and the Palestinian Heritage Trail in the West Bank. These trails were all established by non-Jewish individuals and organizations and were not designed to cater to Israelis.
Interestingly, Rabineau points out that the standards established for marking trails in Israel were based on those established in Europe—namely, a single colored stripe on a background of two white stripes. (This is not the standard for marking hiking trails in the United States.) Rabineau also discusses the marking of the Israeli hiking trails on topographical maps and the publication of these maps as a guide to hikers. As one who is deeply involved in the creation and publication of hiking trail maps in the United States, I fully appreciate the significance of this effort as essential to making the trails available to the general public.
In sum, I found that the book not only provides a well-written and interesting history of the marking of hiking trails in the Land of Israel but also explains how the role of hiking trails in Israel has differed historically from their role in the United States and elsewhere.
Daniel Chazin, a retired attorney living in Teaneck, New Jersey, is an avid hiker who writes a column on hiking for a local newspaper and has written or edited many books on hiking, including the Appalachian Trail Data Book, 50 Hikes in New Jersey, and 50 Hikes in the Lower Hudson Valley. He also is Scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 226, chartered to the Teaneck Jewish Center, and is the Secretary of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting, on which he has served for over 40 years.
Atḥalta. Musar umesoret beʿeidan shel koaḥ Yehudi
(The Dawn of Redemption: Morality and Tradition in an Age of Jewish Power)
by Mikhael Manekin.
E-vrit, 2021.
When I was a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I remember attending public lectures of Professor Aviezer Ravitzky, who often spoke about Judaism, the value of peace, and the challenge of Jewish power. One source that Professor Ravitzky would often quote is found in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, a dialogue between a rabbi, a priest, an imam, and the Khazar king. The text that Professor Ravitzky would quote (I:113–14) directly addresses the absence of Jewish power throughout most of Jewish history and its effect on both Jewish behavior and how Jews see themselves. After the rabbi praises the degradation and downtrodden state of the Jewish people, the king responds and says that “This might be so, if your humility were voluntary; but it is involuntary, and if you had power you would slay.”1 As I read Mikhael Manekin’s Atḥalta, I kept thinking of this text from the Kuzari. Is the lens through which we discuss Jewish power tainted by powerlessness? Are texts that were formulated in a reality when Jewish sovereignty was absent relevant to our present when Jewish sovereignty has been restored?
In the first chapter of Atḥalta, Manekin writes that, “[i]n recent years I have been bothered by the question ‘How to be a Jew in Israel’” (16).2 He goes on to say:
I want to be an active Jew, a good Jew. I close my eyes and try to imagine the image of a Jew that I strive to be. I see a person with a commitment to divine truth, a gentle person, thoughtful, compassionate, reticent to use violence, loving other people. I imagine a learned person, attentive, curious and a lover of knowledge. I see a believing person (16–17).
Manekin then describes the dissonance that he feels between his image of the Jew and the reality of Judaism in the State of Israel. “This Jew is from the pre-Israeli past, a Jew who doesn’t find their identity in terms such as ‘national pride’ and ‘sovereignty,’ rather in terms such as ‘humility’ and ‘compassion’” (17).
Atḥalta is a very personal attempt to address the tensions between morality and sovereignty, between a Jewish tradition that emphasizes compassion and humility, on the one hand, and an Israeli Judaism that sometimes makes these and other values subservient to power and sovereignty, on the other. Manekin weaves together his own personal experiences, both as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces and a member of the Religious Zionist community, along with discussions about Jewish texts, Zionist history, and Israeli political and religious culture.
Toward the end of the book, Manekin formulates what in his opinion is the root of the problem.
In the decision that the sovereign state is a substitute for a king anointed by a prophet, Religious Zionism denies the logic behind the morality of the laws of war in halakhah. The Sages built a halakhic framework that was based upon a suspicion of any war, and therefore required the explicit participation of God in every decision about going to war. This doesn’t mean that they oppose a defensive war, rather, they do not attribute to it any religious meaning, and surely they don’t attribute to it a religious command. On the other hand, the rabbis of Religious Zionism claim that the secular state represents the entirety of the Jewish people, and that its wars are religious wars, since the state is the state of the people (113).
For Manekin, this attribution of divine authority to the decisions of the secular state causes the “religious soldier…to nullify his independence of ethical thought” (113). He emphasizes that “[the] problem is not, as many tend to believe, that religious beliefs are causing the secular state to deteriorate, rather, it’s that the sanctification of secularism is corrupting religion and making it subservient to the changing needs of the state” (113).
Religious values are meant to challenge the secular institutions of sovereignty and not to sanctify them. Once the trappings of secular statehood are sanctified, its policy decisions are no longer to be found in the realm of fallible decisions made by human beings but should be sought in divinely sanctioned actions that in due course attain a status that is beyond both human reproach and reason.
Was the Khazar king correct that “if you had power you would slay?” Is the Jewish people destined to be like so many other nations in the ways of nationalism and war? Atḥalta is a attempt to say “no,” and to emphasize that, despite the vast gulf that may exist between the political and social reality of the State of Israel today and most of Jewish history in the past, many of the values that shaped Jewish thought and law in the past are as relevant as ever in today’s reality of Jewish sovereignty.
Rabbi Michael Pitkowsky, Ph.D., is Manager of Enrollment Analytics at St. Francis College and book review editor for this journal.
Stories for the Sake of Argument, by Robbie Gringras and Abi Dauber Sterne.
FSA Publications, 2022.
Stories for the Sake of Argument by Robbie Gringras and Abi Dauber Stern is a powerful resource that introduces an innovative and aspirational framework for teaching and learning about Israel. Its purpose is to help learners to develop the technical skills, emotional resilience, and content knowledge to engage in healthy arguments that lead to growth in their understanding of and relationship with Israel. This book, and the accompanying resources and facilitator training workshops, should become part of the repertoire of all Israel educators and anyone searching for methods to understand and engage in the most challenging and interesting issues in and about Israel.
The approach taken by Gringras and Stern notes the overarching societal trends such as political polarization and the general decline in civil discourse, along with the increasing anxiety and contentiousness associated with conversations around Israel and Zionism. They challenge the stance that arguing risks healthy relationships, and they offer an alternative to the consensus approach to teaching and learning about Israel. They seek instead to create a culture of healthy disagreement characterized by arguments that are differentiated from debates (intended to persuade) or negotiations (intended to solve), arguments that instead create broader understandings of and clarity on what values and information comprise various perspectives.
To do this, Gringras and Stern provide a collection of twenty-four short stories helpfully tagged as “warmup,” “Israel,” or “allegory”—each including a brief introduction, followed by guiding questions and some background information on the story’s topic. The first story, a warmup titled “Monstrosities,” describes a child’s perspective on her grandfather’s refusal to shake the hand of the synagogue president because of his political views. Readers are prompted to argue about the legitimacy of the character’s actions, and the prompt addresses the costs of choosing to argue versus not to argue and the boundaries of acceptable disagreement. An example of the allegories in the volume is “The Brothers’ House,” in which Jonny lives in the family house, while David lives abroad and disagrees with changes Jonny has made to the house during David’s absence. The argument between the brothers is an allegory about the relationship between Israeli and diaspora Jews. Among the stories in the “Israel” category is “Why the Heck Should I Vote?,” about the factors that inform the choice of a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem to vote in a municipal election, and “Praying at the Kotel,” about a devout woman’s perspective on women who pray at the Kotel in nontraditional ways. Many of the stories have been adapted as professionally produced animated videos to accompany the texts.
The stories are brief and engaging, are intended to produce disagreement and create opportunities for robust argument among readers. They address challenging topics by inviting readers to take a side and express disagreement while providing a structure and framework that make room for uncertainty, provide opportunity to change positions, and invite readers to ask questions and seek more information, as well as experience disagreement as an experience that unites rather than divides.
This project is the latest contribution to a growing collection of recent educational resources advocating for a Jewish approach to healthy disagreement and civil discourse. Civilly Speaking: A Curriculum on Civil Discourse by Joel Lurie Grishaver and Ira J. Wise, is a six-unit curriculum for middle and high school aged learners to adults to “bring more kind and empathetic discourse—and possibly more peace—to our classrooms and our world.” Facing History and Ourselves offers (2022), a guide for educators to help prepare students to engage in reflective conversations on topics that matter. Additional educational resources include “Jewish Values and Civil Discourse” on and Behrman House’s series of “Hot Topics” guidebooks. The most robust of these curricula is the directed by Sefi Kraut at the Jerusalem-based Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, which takes a text-based approach to fostering a culture of healthy disagreement and includes curricular resources for a variety of age groups and educational settings, as well as educator training programs. While compatible with these resources, Stories for the Sake of Argument is different because of its focus on Israel content and its intention to create and elevate disagreement as a primary goal.
This resource may best be used by educators as an introduction or anticipatory set to explore contentious or evaded topics within a larger Israel education curriculum. The technical skill of participating in healthy arguments is valuable and transferable. In my experience using this resource with middle and high school aged students, the stories are engaging and largely successful at sparking interest and buy-in about the topics, as well as motivating deeper understanding of the issues. The twenty-four stories in the book address a range of topics and levels of complexity. Educators must carefully choose stories that best initiate disagreement among their specific learners. The process is most effective when there is heat—passionate disagreement—and least effective when there is consensus. This requires that the educator know their audience. Those in educational settings characterized by an ideologically narrow approach to, or high level of anxiety around, Israel education may experience resistance to this approach. Some may critique specific stories or their framing because the presentation of various positions is perceived as unbalanced or because it includes views that are not invited into the conversation in their setting. Stories for the Sake of Argument invites learners to express, hear, and understand a range of views on contentious issues. The learning outcomes are based on the breadth and depth of understanding and caring about the issues, not on the learners taking a specific side. Not all educators embrace this approach. An exploration and argument for this learning approach in the form of a dialogue is included in the Appendix III of the book. The workshops supporting educators to facilitate this curriculum are opportunities to further explore this pedagogical method.
Funded in 2022 by a $1.1 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, the book is the first of a three-part educational project described in Appendix IV as “an innovative educational project aimed at harnessing the energy of interactivity of live disagreement for the health of the Jewish People in general and Israel engagement in particular.” In addition to the book, drivers of activity include the creation of “argument circles” led by facilitators trained in the curriculum and pedagogical approach and the development of a new pedagogy of argument that aims for learners to acquire the information, emotional stamina, and confidence to have healthy arguments about Israel and Israel’s issues.
Stories for the Sake of Argument is especially timely and relevant as Israel is experiencing a political crisis that impacts both Israelis and those who care about Israel—in July 2023, the authors added Democratya, a booklet of four new stories on Israel’s judicial reforms and the protest movement. As educators search for resources to help learners engage with and care about the most challenging questions about Israel and understand the underlying causes and complex issues driving the current political disagreements, Stories for the Sake of Argument is an essential tool for engaging learners in Israel’s current events, as well as in the more enduring questions and topics about Israel.
Mason Voit has served as the Director of Education and Jewish Family Life at the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale (CSAIR) since 2003. In the field of Israel education, Voit was a post-graduate fellow of the Melton Senior Educators Program of Hebrew University and received an iCenter Graduate Certificate in Israel Education at George Washington University. He participated in the first cohort and served as a mentor in the Qushiyot Israel Education Fellowship of the Jewish Education Project, in the inaugural cohort of the Pardes Senior Educator Learning Fellowship (SELF) and is a recent graduate of the Mandel Educational Leadership Program.