Day 5: Ginosar to Ein Porea

As many of you know, I've been studying at Yeshivat Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem for the past 10 months along with Bradley. One of the classes I have during the day is called Intro to Gemara. The Gemara is the explanation, argumentation, and elucidation of the Mishna, which is the Oral Torah derived from the written text of what many (non-Jews) would call the Old Testament. The first books of the Gemara deals with blessings, or brachot.

In one of the Mishnas it says that the only blessing that takes precedence over the blessing for bread when having a meal is for something really really salty. When, the Gemara asks, would someone eat something so unbelievably salty? Only when eating something so sweet that one would have to heavily counterbalance the flavors. The Gemara then goes on to explain how the only thing that could be that sweet is the fruit of Ginosar, telling of Rabbis who would eat 10,000 fruits without gaining an ounce, or of flies dripping off of the sweet oil on their foreheads.

Anyway, that's where we started.

After the rough day we had yesterday, the walk today was the perfect recipe. We walked all the way to the top of Tiberias from sea level and through the Swiss Forest.





Just an unbelievably quiet, peaceful, and beautiful walk winding down to the beach resort of Ein Porea where we headed back by bus to Tzfat to celebrate Shabbat.



Shavua Tov to all of you and here's hoping that the next week is as exciting as the first one.

-Jeremy