Where Three Continents Meet
Natural Israel is the land of balance and harmony.
Take a look at this screenshot from Google Maps:
Land of Harmony
Yup, that triangle on the left is the northern tip of Gaza. And the vertical line on the right is the Green Line separating the State of Israel from the West Bank (or eastern Judea, or the occupied territories, or whatever you’d like to call it).
But at The Healthy Jew, we’re watching the land of Natural Israel, not its political fault lines. In this picture, you see where this tiny country is the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Notice how the top-right corner is green, but most of the rest is brown.
The green is the southern edge of the fertile Judean lowlands (where I live, in Bet Shemesh), north of which is more green, all the way through Israel’s Galil region, then Lebanon, most of Turkey, and on to Europe to the west and Russia to the east.
The brown begins the Negev desert, which continues south into the Sinai desert, then west into Egypt and the rest of Africa. To the east of the Negev, the Arabian desert stretches deep into Asia.
Right here in Israel, the climates, plants, and animals of three continents flow into each other. For this reason, Israel is the land of healthy Jewish living, because health means the balance between all the extreme possibilities.
Israel isn’t green or brown. Israel holds green and brown together in harmony.
Learn more here about how Israel is the land of health:
Several months ago, I spent a morning at the southern edge of the Judean lowlands hiking with a friend, the excellent tour guide Nesanel Eisenman. It was there, in the Givat Gad Nature Reserve, that we encountered the Bar Kochva era tunnel system I told you about last week.
From the higher hilltops, we were able to see the sharp shift in climate down below. Turning north, we saw the green stretching as far as we can see - all the way to Europe. (Well, not quite.)
The Building on the Hill
The hill that boasts this stunning view has an ancient building on top.
Most people say it’s one of the many gravesites attributed to Sheik Ali, a mysterious medieval figure. Apparently he once commanded the earth to regurgitate some spilled milk for a hungry child, and in revenge the earth regurgitated his bones wherever they tried burying them. So the good sheik ended up with graves all over Israel.
But recently some folks have suggested this is the grave of Shimon the son of our forefather Yaakov. Hey, why not?