Crossing the Yarden, 9 August 2007

Crossing the Yarden

By Yarden Frankl

Twenty-Five Hundred Years Young

Neve Daniel just threw a big party to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary. All sorts of fun and games took place throughout the day, highlighted by an interesting and entertaining band. We all got a good laugh at the little fog machine they brought for special effects. Hey, this is Neve Daniel. Didn’t anyone tell them this is where fog is made?

My other favorite part of the performance was when the group sang “Dor Mitsuyan.” I guess someone warned them that there were a lot of us Anglos in the crowd so every now and then they sang the chorus in English. (“Oh, yeah, we are the good generation” – inspiring, don't you think?) While it was a nice gesture, I think even us Anglos like the Hebrew better.

In 1982, a small group of people set up tents on a barren hillside and the place now known as Neve Daniel was born. Seeing pictures of the tent community and the actual small generator which was the only source of power was fascinating. Just twenty-five years after the tent city, we are a town of over 350 families. We have many beautiful houses. There are a number of synagogues, a supermarket, library, bakery, and many more facilities that make life fairly easy for us now. It’s hard to think of yourself as a pioneer when you can get hot pizza delivered.

There are many who would point to the anniversary as proof that Jewish presence on this land is historically recent and came about as a result of military occupation. Yet this place is a lot older than a twenty-fifth anniversary celebration would have you think. In the 1930s, the Cohen family bought up the land on this hill to start a farm. While they had to abandon the project because of the rough winters, the stone walls of this farm still surround Neve Daniel and are evidence that this Jewish community was actually here before the State of Israel. While Tel Aviv was mostly sand dunes, Jews lived and worked the land in these hills.

To really celebrate this community’s birth, we need to go much farther than even the Cohen farm. A few hundred meters from Neve Daniel are ancient mikvaot, ritual baths from over 2,000 years ago. Our heritage clearly talks about Jews living in this area making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year. Along the way, they stopped to immerse themselves in mikva water. Anyone who would claim that the Jewish presence here is due to “military occupation” and that our roots do not grower deeper than twenty-five years had better come up with an explanation why an ancient path to Jerusalem that has mikvas along the way threads right through the center of our Yishuv.

The conflict between Arabs and Jews is over a lot more than a piece of land. If only it was that simple. The fact is there can never be real peace unless the world accepts the truth of Jewish legacy to this land. There are many accommodations that can be made in the interest of achieving peace, but they must all start from the basic understanding that long before there was a United Nations, a PLO, “occupied territory,” or even Islam and Christianity, there was a Jewish people living in the Jewish land that we today call the nation of Israel. Ignoring this truth in order to be “politically correct” actually hurts the effort to achieve peace.

But maybe the kids dancing at the party will be the ones who will actually insist on a real peace, not diplomatic games. After all, they are the “good” generation.

Shabbat Shalom from our Blessed Nation.