We have a midnight flight out of Ben Gurion, but we have to leave our apartment by 10 AM and there is apparently nowhere to store one’s luggage in this security conscious country. In the end we decide to rent a car for the day and visit some out-of-the-way places that we would otherwise not get to see. We start out by going to Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace), a joint Arab-Israeli village 20 km from Jerusalem that is dedicated to peaceful coexistence. They run a variety of programs promoting understanding and peace and operate a joint Hebrew-Arabic bilingual school. They aren’t really set up for the random visitor and this morning they have received news that there has been a deadly confrontation between the aid flotilla to the Gaza and the Israeli navy, so the place is in turmoil as they decide what their response should be. We wander about for a time, see the peace sanctuary and then head back to the road to visit the Latrun Trappist monastery where the monks make a wide variety of fine wines, take a vow of silence and have a beautiful church.
After leaving the monastery we head for Neot Kedumim, a large Biblical Landscape Reserve that has hiking trails through plantings of all the species mentioned in the bible. The path we take has extensive archeological remains of a large village that was occupied from the era of the Second Temple through Byzantine times. Cisterns, wine and olive presses, mikvahs and a variety of other structures can be seen. Hebrew and English labels identify the plants along the trail and quotes from the bible provide the biblical context. After a very hot hour walking the trail we relax in the café drinking iced coffee. Since it is still too early to head for the airport I ask a man at the next table (who trains group leaders of tours of the Reserve) if he could suggest something else of interest in the area. We also chat about the construction of the reserve (it took 25 years of hard work, tons of top soil and careful design to finish it) and he suggests we head to the new city of Modi’im. “If you have seen the monuments and Jerusalem, you should see Modi’im – an example of a totally new city, built from scratch”. What a great piece of advice! This place is definitely not on the standard tourist itinerary, but it should be. After seeing a lot of rather ugly Israeli cities, the views of this one as we approach it are breathtakingly beautiful. Construction of Modi’im was begun in 1993 and the entire city was planned by Moshe Safdie, a world-famous architect (digression: his daughter was in a preschool with our daughter, Sarah and no one at the preschool realized who he was when he volunteered to help redesign one of the play rooms!). Each neighborhood has a distinctive architectural motif and city has a golden-white gleam in the afternoon sun. Modi’im has about 60,000 residents and will eventually house as many as 250,000. I don’t think the accompanying photos do justice to how striking it is. The only thing I noted that seemed to be missing was small shops in the neighborhoods, but perhaps such businesses are facing interior courtyards rather than the busy streets.
Apartment blocks in Modi'im
Modi'im from distance
Apartment blocks in Modi'im
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