On Being Off the Beaten Track in Israel

On Shabbat, when most of Israel takes the day off one way or another, it seemed only logical to head off to Christian sights.

On our way to Nazareth, we stopped first in Kfar Kama, the Circassian town.  It was eerily quiet and spotlessly clean.  Blundering our way without signs, we parked the car and walked aimlessly.  Very few people were out on the streets, most of them at the local grocery store.  In a combination of Hebrew and English, and after asking 3 or 4 different people, we found the cultural center.  It’s fairly new, built only 5 years ago, the young man who took us around said.  It has 3 rooms showing costumes and implements of traditional Circassian life.  We were the only Western tourists.  There was a party of Arab women behind us but I don’t know where they were taken; to the mosque, perhaps.  We had our own private PowerPoint screening of a short history of the Circassian ethnic group.  Originating in the Caucasus, their traditional homeland is bordered by the Black Sea, Georgia and Russia.  Like the Jews, they have 12 tribes.  Also like the Jews, the majority of them don’t live in their homeland.  The Russian tsar declared war on them in the 17^th century, even though the Circassians had adopted Orthodox Christianity.  Forced to flee, they turned south to the Ottoman Empire, which offered them asylum if they adopted Islam.  “Religion doesn’t mean much to us,” explained our guide, and there was no reason for them to feel any loyalty to Russian Orthodoxy given the treatment they received.  He said the Circassians had even approached the Caucasian Jewish community about conversion but the Jews told them they did not encourage converts.  (Too bad, I thought, they’d have made pretty handy converts, given their fighting tradition.)  They migrated south to Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and a small group to Palestine in the mid-19^th century.

World Circassian population is 3 million, with a plurality (about 1 million) in Turkey.  About 50,000 live in the US.  I told him we were from New Jersey, where there is a sizable Circassian community, and he said his wife’s brother and his family live in Wayne.  The Circassion warriors, shown in the PowerPoint presentation, look very impressive in their coat-like caftans and turbans.  They always carry a cutlass and a dagger as well as a rifle.  Their dances are fascinating combining foot-stamping, arm and hand motions and high kicks, primarily by the men.

After the presentation, our guide (I never got his name) led us through the display rooms.  He spent rather more time than I needed describing traditional Circassian infant care and toilet-training techniques, which involve swaddling, nursing one hour then sleeping five, shunning diapers for cutting a hole in the kid’s cradle for the waste and sending boys off at age 7 to live with foster families, not returning until he's 18.  This is to instill responsibility and a dose of reality.  The mother stitches the boy’s adult garment while he’s away, a long kaftan combined with a cloak.  The children are all supposed to have very thin waists, so they are corseted at a young age.  The girls also wear long caftans but are not corseted quite as tightly as the boys.  Our guide, while quite presentable, showed no signs of having been corseted.

Continuing his spiel, he said men and women had equal status in Circassian society.  He said children are never allowed to criticize each other on the basis of gender.  Young women choose their mates independently; at a gathering or when there is communal dancing, a girl will indicate her interest in one young man.  They then see each other secretly for several years; they won’t tell their parents or acknowledge each other in public.  But when they feel—or, rather, she feels—ready, she will tell her parents.  The two sets of parents will then meet and plan the wedding.  Alternatively, if the girl’s parents object, the couple can plan an elopement if the girl decides to marry despite her parents’ disapproval.  The young man rides up to her house on a pre-arranged night; she slips out to meet him; he throws her over the pommel of his saddle and fires one shot. They then ride off.  Then a wedding is performed (those details were somewhat dim), with only her brothers in attendance.  The couple comes back to her parents’ home and he fires three shots to announce the marriage.  Circassian men’s caftans have cartridge pockets where other men’s suits have breast pockets.  And oh yes, they are expert horsemen.  I briefly discussed horses with our docent, who much prefers the Circassian breed to the Arab.

Circassian warriors eat squatting, with one hand always on their sword pommels.  (Presumably, this is only when they're on patrol.)  They squat down before a small circular table set on the ground, arranged so that they can never be taken by surprise at a meal.  Our guide said that if any Circassian man ever met his death at dinner, his companions would not bury him.  They would leave his body to rot as a lesson for his carelessness.  He added that Circassians do not approve of public appearances and that was why we didn’t see people on the streets.  All entertainment and socializing takes place in the home, he said, adding that they are also strict about keeping their environment tidy.  The village, population 4,000, appears not only well-tended but comfortable, even affluent.  The Circassian language, he said, was unrelated to any other and when he spoke a few words it was easy to accept that this was a unique language.  A lot of sibilant "shhhs" start many words and there is almost a tonal quality to some of it.

The village mosque is built of bands of alternating black basalt and white limestone and looks quite striking.  We spent about an hour all told in Kfar Kama and went on to Nazareth.

After the calm of the village, the unruly traffic and noise of Cana and Nazareth were jarring.  We didn’t get to visit any churches or shrines but we did wind up in a reclamation project sponsored by Benedict XVI and the Jewish National Fund, a forest on top of a mountain overlooking the city.  The city had 500 people in Jesus’ time, but Jesus wouldn’t recognize the hometown.  It flows over three hilltops, the old quarter probably buried somewhere behind shopping streets and hotels.  It was hard to find the churches, even with road signs—which are not all that efficient to begin with.

To get to Nazareth, we took the road through Kfar Cana, the town where Jesus  performed the marriage miracle.  The main road was tortuously slow.  Both towns are mainly Arab and therefore Saturday was just another day.  Schoolkids with backpacks, trucks making deliveries, buses hauling tourists and commuters.  We were ultimately relieved to get out onto the highway to Tiberias.

Back to Tiberias, we stopped at Magdala, an archeological site opposite the village of Migdal and being developed as “Mary Magdalen’s Village,” the next tourist attraction for the northern shore of Lake Tiberias.  The site was closed but we indulged in a bit of trespassing, Kevin taking photos and I looking at the excavated areas, remembering my own stint at archeology in England and trying to make sense of the tangle of basalt foundations and floors that had been uncovered.  It was hard to determine which foundations belonged to individual houses, let alone where streets might have been.

The evening was the same as the night we arrived.  Post-Shabbos, Tiberias returns to full steam; all restaurants open, all kiosks in the street fair ready for business.  Dining on the Promenade, overlooking the lake-- it's a privilege being able to contemplate this scene, this locale where world-changing events occurred.