The story of "Kfar Kedem" - The village of ancient times.
Last week I went to visit an old friend who is not quite healthy in the last couple of years. I told him about my Blog and asked his permission to write about him and his life project, Kfar Kedem – the Village of ancient times.
Menachem Goldberg is a religious Zionist Jewish man who lives with his large family in a tranquil, green village nestled in the lower Galilee hills. The name of the village is Hoshaya.
He was born in Israel in 1961, and as an Israeli, served in the Israel Defense Forces. Following his army service he studied to be a licensed tour guide, and then went off to travel around the world. When he came back to Israel and married, he searched for a place to raise his family and chose to settle in Hoshaya.
Menachem’s dream, even before he moved with his family to Hoshaya, was to create a site where visitors could relive the way of life of the Jewish ancestors in the Galilee. Here, in sight of ancient Siphoris the seat of the high Jewish leadership, the Sanhedrin, its sages, and its leader, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, redactor of the Mishnah, the dream became ever more compelling. He began to recreate the daily lifestyle of the Jewish ancient sages – how they lived by working the land and studying the wisdom of the Bible.
When you arrive to “kfar Kedem” you first dress like the people use to dress in 2000 years ago. This immediately puts you in the right state of mind. Then you get involved in hands-on activities, you take in the scents that Jacob smelled tending Laban’s flocks. Hear the words of the prophets as you thresh grain, you make cheese, spin wool, press oil from fresh olives and wine from fresh grapes. All the activities are accompanied by teaching and takes couple of hours.
This is maybe the right place to explain what is a religious Zionist in comparison with a ‘Haredi’ or ‘Hasidic’ religious Jewish person. To explain this, we need to explain Zionism first.
Zionism is both an ideology and nationalist movement among the Jewish people, that espouses the re-establishment of and support for a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (roughly corresponding to Canaan, the Holy Land, or the region of Palestine). Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a response to assimilation of many Jews into the modern western societies where they lived. The term "Zionism" is derived from the word Zion, referring to Jerusalem.
Theodor Herzl, the ideological father of Zionism, considered Antisemitism to be an eternal feature of all societies in which Jews lived as minorities, and that only a separation could allow Jews to escape eternal persecution. "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people, then we will do the rest" he proclaimed exposing his plan.
Major aspects of the Zionist idea are represented in the Israeli Declaration of Independence which is the official paper signed by David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime-minister and his government, in May 14th, 1948 : -
“The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.
After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.
Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. “
From the founding of political Zionism in the 1890s, the leaders of conservative orthodox Jews, called ‘Haredi’, voiced objections to its secular orientation, and before the establishment of the State of Israel, the vast majority of Haredi Jews were opposed to Zionism. This was chiefly due to the concern that secular nationalism would replace the Jewish faith and the observance of religion, and the view that it was forbidden for the Jews to re-constitute Jewish rule in the Land of Israel before the arrival of the Messiah. This objection grew even stronger when the first ‘Kibbutzim’ (plural of ‘Kibbutz’) were established with very secular and liberal orientation.
Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. One famous leader of this movement was Rabbi Kook who supported settling the Biblical Land of Israel and defending it from its enemies. The religious Zionists serve in the Israeli army and achieve high ranking positions. They are many times called ‘Followers of Joshua’. It is easy to differentiate between a ‘Haredi’ orthodox and religious Zionist by their dress code. The ‘Haredi’ will always were black suit with white shirt and will cover his head with black ‘Kipah’ (head round cover also called ‘Yarmulka’ by American Jews), while the religious Zionist can were jeans and sandals and his ‘Kipa’ will always be a colored hand-knitted one. Because of their ideology, to settle the Biblical Land of Israel, the religious Zionist formed a political movement after the six day war in 1967, to settle the geographical areas of Judah and Samaria where many of the Old Testament sites are. But the religious Zionists are to be found every where in Israel. Sometimes they live in a community village like Hoshaya.
I very much like “Kefar Kedem”. Menachem’s passion for the Land of Israel is contagious. He is, to me, a live example of the bond, I so much talk about, between our past in this country and the future. The bond between God, the Land of Israel and its people.
Now the place is empty. The donkeys are getting fat from eating and waiting for the tourists to come again… Make sure you visit the place when you visit Israel some time in the future !
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