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Passover at the Red Sea
JERRY’S PLACE |\
by Hadassah Bat Haim
The Red Sea coast, much nearer
to the ancient Land of Goshen
than to Tel Aviv, is not much
different to look at now than it was
when the first Israelites set foot on
it more than three and a half
thousand years ago. Then Moses
led his oppressed and exploited
people away from the vjrath of the
Pharoah, through th|e miracu
lously parted water,! to this
inhospitable shore. !
To a rabble of slaves, household
servants, scribes, laborers and
farm hands, dragging along their
frightened women and children,
totally unused to fending for
themselves, the grim rocks and
sand-swept plains must have been
very discouraging. There were
about six thousand of them
altogether including the elderly,
the halt and the sick. Almost
impossible to see in them the
promise of the great nation they
were to become.
This year, as every year since the
Six Day War gave modern Israel
access to the route of their
ancestors, the same number or
more, present day Israelis walk
over the same ground. All along
the edge of the Red Sea tents and
improvised shelters house,
temporarily, the descendants of
these historical trekkers, who are
celebrating the arrival of their
forefathers to that very area.
Some camping outfits are so
sophisticated and the field kitchens
so comprehensive that the festive
meal is as elaborate as it would be
in a five story hotel. Some travelers
make do with their sleeping bags
and a packet of matzo in their
rucksacks.
Our own tents are pitched two 1
meters from the calm, shining
water. This is a great advantage for
the dishwasher (me) as the plates
and cutlery can be scoured with
sand and rinsed off in the sea.
Dinner, netted by local fishermen
less than an hour ago, is grilling
over charcoal. We should really be
eating the quail that sustained the
Children of Israel through their
forty years of wandering but ovir
the last three milennia and more
particulary over the last fifty years
these have been almost hunted out
of existence.
However, manna is still
available for anyone who gets up
early and knows where to look.
Just before sunrise it can be
gathered, white, resinous and as
sweet as honey, from the tamarisk
trees that are a feature of the Sinai
no less than they were it the time of
the Exodus.
In our decadent way we have
brought most of our supplies from
the cities in which we live at other
times. One of the kids is cutting up
the bitter herbs on a flat stone
while another is pounding apples
and honey into haroset. Salt water
is not a problem to find as it rolls
gently into all our pots while we are
not looking.
Night comes early in these
regions and by six o’clock the
descending sun is setting fire to the
mountains behind us. For a brief
moment the minerals in the racks
catch the light and reflect back a
bouquet of brilliant blues and
greens. But the predominant color
is red and the flaming peaks,
mirrored in the water, cast a glow
that shimmers all around us and
seems to enclose us in a rosy haze.
No speculation as to where this
stretch of water got its name.
Then suddenly it is dark. The
mountains loom black and
sinister, but the stars which seem to
hang lower here than in town are
brighter than diamonds. The
moon throws a gleaming path that
stretches from our camps to the
camps of the watching Egyptians
on the other side.
We lay out six white towels tidily
on the sand, weighted down at the
corners by bottles of wine. Our
neighbors, half a mile down the
beach, have a starched white linen
table cloth and the electric light'
connected with their car, shines on >
crystal and silver. We like to think !
that our more modest feast is
nearer to those first meals that the
Israelites ate, giving thanks for the
miracles that got them so far.
Their bowls were wood and
clay and ours are plastic and paper
and their wine came, goat-
flavored, out of skin containers,
but our food is less simple.
However, we have not brought, as
some campers have, a battery
operated icebox. We have not even
brought chairs, so we arrange
heaps of sand into couches and
cover then with blankets, then we
re able to recline as luxuriously as
Roman senators.
One condition we share with our
more elegant friends and our
ancestors—sand in everything. In
the wine, in the salad, in our hair
and our clothes, even ip the hot
wax of the candles we have instead
of the old oil lamps.
The familiar story has a sharper
significance down here in the
desert. Egypt is not much more
than a stones throw away. The
children ask the questions to which
we all know the answers and we
listen as though it were all new.
Those dangers are past. We are
free, in our own land but the
struggle is not yet over. The old
heros and sages are very close to us
and when we fill an earthenware
beaker for Elijah no one would be
surprised to see him charging up to
drink it. Chariot, six white horses
and everything.
We move over to the driftwood
and debris bonfire and before we
have finished our singing the
neighbors come around to join us.
The coffee is sprinkled with ashes
but good. We wonder how our
predecessors managed without it. ’
A couple of Bedouin float silently
out of the darkness and accept a
cup each. This is the way our
progenitors looked. Lean and
swarthy, wrapped in voluminous
folds and hooded to keep out the
chill of the desert night.
The kids want to know why we
can’t stay down here forever. They
would willingly give up lessons and
washing and sleeping in beds. But
the rest of us could not sustain a
long sojourn in the wilderness.
We follow the trail probably
marked out by Moses, Aaron and
Joshua as we speed to urban
complexity in a few hours, over the
way that once took forty years. We
come back to telephones and T.V.
dinners but we remember the
stillness we have left behind.
(In Cheshire Square)
open 7 days week
Lunch 11:30 a.m-2:30 p.m.
Dinner 6:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m.
Passover Greetings
compliments
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9 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 21, 1978