A Week in Israel

Israeli breakfast is a cheese lover’s Promised Land.

Jerusalem:  Days 1-3

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At the Jerusalem hotel where I arrived mid-morning after a long flight, there were easily two dozen varieties.  I filled my plate with an array of white, yellow, bleu, hard, soft, semi-soft, creamy splendor.

The dairy smorgasbord helped me realize that dietary restrictions can actually bring pleasure, the way that structure forces a poet to create literary beauty.  Because Kosher rules prohibit meat and dairy foods at the same meal, breakfast in Israel tends to be a meatless affair of fruits and vegetables, breads and pastries, and lots of cheese.

Back for seconds, I spied what I thought was more cheese, in tomatoes.  As it turns out, it was shakshuka, a north African dish of eggs poached in tomato sauce, with generous amounts of paprika.  It’s popular in Israel and becoming so in America, especially in my kitchen.  The savory deliciousness made a fine welcome to the Middle East.  And the dish has become a favorite breakfast I make at home.

A post-flight nap would have been nice, but it was soon time to meet up with the other five women in my travelling group, along with Yehuda, our fantastic tour guide for the next week, and Zvika, our equally fantastic van driver, for a trip into the Ben Shemen Forest and more cheese.

Judi Avrahim Chai is one of those all-too-rare people who glow with contentment in their daily lives.  She and her quieter husband Shapir own the Chai Farm in Mevo Modi’in, where residents have come from five continents to live in a moshav, a cooperative agricultural community where families own their farms—think Little House on the Prairie for Orthodox Jews.

Mrs. Chai gave up a public relations career and modern life in London to make cheese from goat’s milk.  The family keeps the small farm’s livestock under the 50-goat threshold that would trigger government inspections.

“If we go that way, it’s so complicated,” she points out.

Under hair covered with a purple scarf, her face shines as she explains the different ways to make cheese.   She relishes her simple life despite, or perhaps because of, the hard work.  Life here is not for the lazy.  Those in need find help through the moshav’s Livestock Food Empowerment Program, which distributes farm equipment and home appliances so that families can support themselves.

She served us fabulous fresh cheeses, from mild cheddar to tangy labneh, at the long wooden table in her large sunny visitors’ room, with windows looking out to the farm.

Suddenly she exclaimed, “You have to see our shul!”  We couldn’t resist her warm enthusiasm, so back into the van we piled.

Along the way, another middle-aged, pale-skinned, hair-covered woman approached, handing Mrs. Chai a small jar.

“I made you some olives,” she said, in native-sounding English.

“We helped them start their farm,” Mrs. Chai explained as we continued on.

Carlebach Shul is a small synagogue decorated with bright paintings.  One colorful oil-on-canvas depicts Hasidic Jews happily dancing in the air, against a multi-colored background, as though Chagall painted black-garbed floating figures atop a collaboration between Monet and Picasso.

In fact, the painter is Ben Yehuda, one of the moshav’s many talented artists.  The friendly young man enjoys painting pictures of Jewish life and hope.

“Are you the rabbi?” a visitor asked.

“No,” he replied.

“Not yet,” Mrs. Chai smiled.

Our food-focussed first day in Israel continued with dinner on the large comfortable balcony at Brasserie restaurant, above Mary’s Spring in Ein Kerem.  We shared a delicious sampling of creative appetizers:  beef carpaccio with za’atar and rosemary vinaigrette; duck risotto with root vegetables and red wine; calamari with labneh and eggplant cream; mussels with grilled tomatoes and Pernod.  After these, I couldn’t finish the equally fabulous chicken over a generous bed of moist and tender purple sumac I’d ordered as an entrée.

I did enjoy an after-dinner “tea”—a cup of hot water filled with mint leaves alongside a tea bag.  But the minty water was so good I skipped the tea bag and sipped my way into another new culinary habit.  I’m sure the non-alcoholic digestif helped me sleep soundly till it was time for a fabulous cheese-and-shakshuka breakfast and a full day of the highlights of Jerusalem.

The heart of a city is its marketplace.  All classes and races meet, to engage in the buying and selling that sustains life, to taste and smell food and all it means—home, family, pleasure, comfort, culture.

At the Mahane Yehuda Market, they can sample the Middle East from end to end.  Usually friendly and family stall vendors offer olives and olive oils, teas and spices, cheeses of course, and the best rugelach I’ve ever tasted, with its warm chocolate enlivened by the slightly salty pastry.

Here’s where we first started to realize that the young and extroverted Yehuda must know everyone in Jerusalem, greeting acquaintances everywhere we went with a warm smile and “Shalom!”

From this common city element, we went on to explore what is uniquely Jerusalem.  Walking through the Old City, with its hot dusty streets and uneven narrow alleys, its limestone walls and arches, feels like stepping into an adult-size Bible pop-up book.

The Wailing Wall is a section of the retaining wall on the western side of the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple stood until 70 A.D.  King Herod built the wall in 20 B.C. during an expansion of the Temple.  It is a holy site for Jews.

While people of all religions are free to visit the Wall, there are segregated sections for men and women.  I walked across the plaza of the women’s section and found a small opening where I could reach up and touch the crowded wall without disturbing any of the hundreds gathered.  Then following the custom, I backed away.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has the cavernous feel typical of cathedrals, with myriad rooms reached through archways.  The Church was originally built in 335 on the site of a temple to Venus, then demolished in 1009, and rebuilt in 1048.  It feels grittier than its more recent sisters like St. Peter’s.

But it houses the history without which no other church would exist.  Here are the spots where Jesus was crucified, wrapped for burial, and entombed and resurrected.  Paintings on the wall depict these events as throngs of modestly dressed visitors wait in long lines, some to kneel and pray, some to snap selfies.

“So this is Golgotha,” I remarked to Yehuda.

“Very good,” he answered.

Lunch at the crowded Abu Shukri Restaurant in the Muslim Quarter was a feast of my favorite Middle Eastern small plates.  Our shared spread of fresh hummus, baba, tahini, labneh, falafel, pita, and—surprisingly—French fries, covered our long wooden table from end to end.  A poster exhorted us to “Visit Palestine”.  Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to do so, but we loved fueling up on its tangy foods for the afternoon ahead.

Just outside the Old City wall is the City of David, an active excavation site.  Archeologists have uncovered ancient relics ranging from coins and official seals to a bathroom.  They believe they may have located the site of King David’s palace.  The visitors’ center is a temporary structure made of wood, so it can be moved to accommodate new digs made necessary by new hypotheses.

And it’s where we first heard the Muslim call to prayer as we gathered after a hot afternoon of possibly walking in the King’s footsteps to await Zvika, who was stuck in modern-day rush-hour traffic.

The value of history lies in the lessons it provides for the present.  Chef Moshe Basson of The Eucalyptus restaurant applies this principle through cuisine, reviving antique recipes to craft the seven species of Israel—wheat, barley, figs, dates, pomegranate, olives, and grapes — into modern fare, which we enjoyed over dinner.

My favorite of the soup trio—served in espresso cups—was the Jerusalem artichoke, with its savory almond cream base.  A standout appetizer is the chicken-stuffed figs, the mild savory meat blending into the rich sweetness of the fruit.

Once we were as full as the figs, Chef Basson beckoned us outside.  “I’m going to make fun of you!” he teased.  Intrigued, we followed him out of the dark dining room, past its small bar, and up to a large open patio area, still warm in the evening air.

Over a large upside-down cooking pot atop a rimmed stainless-steel platter, the blue-jeaned chef looked up toward the clear sky, brought his hands together, and said a brief prayer.  Then he asked one of the women in our group to lift the pot.  Out tumbled Maklubah, chicken drummies cooked with rice, vegetables, saffron, and non-dairy almond “yogurt”.

Back inside at our large round table, it tasted even better than it looked, the moist saffron-y rice clinging to the fork-tender chicken.

After dinner, we took a short walk to the Tower of David for its Night Spectacular, a 45-minute pageant of images from Jerusalem’s history projected onto stone walls.  Like Plato’s cave-dwellers, we watched colorful scenes like the Babylonian Exile, the Destruction of the Second Temple, and Suleiman at the City Gate, millennia of battles for Jerusalem the only reality.

The sad theme of violent conflict continued in the morning, though green trees stood tall testament to goodness and hope.  Outside Jerusalem’s holocaust museum Yad Vashem, the Garden of the Righteous honors those who risked and often gave their lives to protect others.

Inside, the largely underground museum houses items stolen from victims and later recovered.  Boots and shoes, baby cradles and children’s toys, silver menorahs and family photographs fill rooms with sad memorabilia.

Displays in other rooms show some of the details of how these victims were imprisoned and murdered.  The Arbeit Macht Frei gate from Auschwitz is a replica, but the battered sign from the Treblinka rail station is genuine.  An ash-colored scale model shows the figure of a woman on a pallet being shoved into an oven; atop the woman’s body is that of a small child.

The gas canisters remind visitors that atrocities like these couldn’t happen in an airless cultural vacuum.

Other rooms document the long years of anti-Semitic propaganda that poisoned the social climate:  Cartoons depict Jews as big-eyed, hook-nosed bugs taking over the world.  Deutschmarks are printed with the complaint:  “The Jew has taken our gold, silver and fat and left us this garbage.”  Even a family board game is a tool of anti-Semitic propaganda; the winner of Juden Raus is the first to “deport” six Jews by landing on spaces marking Jewish businesses and capturing their owners.

When one emerges from this underground horror, much-needed green beauty returns via a panoramic view of the hills of Jerusalem, the city not only of the past in the Judeo-Christian tradition but also of the future.

After Yehuda favorably resolved a lunch-long question over whether our entry to the Israel Museum had been covered, we unfortunately didn’t have time to explore its extensive art collection.

But we did see its magnificent scale model of ancient Jerusalem.  From above, it’s easy to imagine how the Temple Mount dominated the cityscape.  I gazed at the precisely detailed replica of the Second Temple and its large open courtyard areas and golden doors, behind it the Western Wall we’d seen the day before.

“So that’s where Jesus overturned the tables and threw out the money-changers,” I said to Yehuda.

“Very good,” he responded, and I realized that phrase must be tour-guide for “Duh.”

Next we moved on to another of the Museum’s unique holdings.  The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves during 1947-56.  Today they’re on display in a dim room in the two-thirds underground Shrine of the Book and rotated every three to six months to protect them from degradation.  Even if I could read Hebrew, the torn pieces of papyrus are so thin, and the room so dark, I doubt I could have made any of it out.  But even though they look more like scraps than scrolls, it was fascinating to see something so old and so significant.

Jordan Valley:  Days 3-4

From the Scrolls, we headed to the Dead Sea itself.  I happily discovered a balcony with a partial view of the Dead Sea off my large hotel room, where I quickly changed into my swimsuit.

The Dead Sea is a mineral-laden lake at the lowest point on earth.

I waded in carefully, to avoid splashing others with the salty water.  We’d been warned repeatedly about how much it could sting—“Don’t shave!”  But a small bug bite didn’t bother me at all; I loved every second of it.

Our feet bobbed up, and the salt propped us up at the shoulders, and we sank in the middle.  It’s like being on a pool raft—without the raft.  We floated and chatted, two concentric circles of feet and heads.  An hour or so later, when I dressed for dinner, my skin felt as though I’d just had a spa scrub.

Dinner at the hotel was a Vegas-style buffet of meat and fish, with Israeli salads on the side.  My plan was to start with salad and then tuck into the entrees, but the fresh fruits, grilled veggies, and couscouses of the salad side were so scrumptious that I indulged in seconds instead.

At 9am, the sun shone hot and strong on the open-air Jeep we rode through the Jordan Valley Desert.  “You’re lucky; today it’s only going to be 46 degrees” Celsius, said Ali, our bare-footed Bedouin guide for the morning.  “Last week, it was 52.”

The creamy white to light brown sand, salt, and stone seemed barren at first, but Ali showed us how much life was in the desert, though it’s not for the faint of heart.  He pointed to a raised flat sandy area where families often camp, calling it a 5,000,000-star hotel.

From the flat sand grows nebit, a short green plant that blooms with several small pockets.  Ali grabbed a fistful and crushed it between his palms, releasing a clear bitter fluid that, he said, will keep a dehydrated person lost in the desert alive for a few hours.

He mentioned that the biggest threat to new babies is scorpion bites, so a mother will capture a yellow scorpion — the most lethal — kill it, dry it by the fire, grind it to a powder, and feed a little powder to her baby each day for a couple of weeks as a rudimentary inoculation.

His survival tips sometimes came with a dash of gallows humor.

Q: “If someone is missing from the group, how will we find her?”

A: “In a few hours, we’ll see birds circling.”

Q: “If it’s dark and you see an animal, how do you whether it will kill you?”

A: “If you see one eye, you’re safe; all the safe animals have eyes on the sides of their heads. If you see two eyes, they might be the last thing you see.”

Q: “How do we get the Jeep down a steep sandy hill?”

A: “Ride the break and cry ‘Allah! Allah!’”

We gripped the sides as this one came with a demonstration.

A few hours later, we soared high in a cable car as views of the pale blue Dead Sea and the golden yellow Judean Desert grew distant.  We passed the Snake Path stairs and the Roman ramp and then reached Masada.

Much of King Herod’s mountain-top fortress remains standing, though crumbling in the driest air I’ve ever felt.  The ruins of structures from a synagogue to storage rooms whisper the quotidian stories of those who lived and died there.  The soft blue of the chipped mosaic floors enlivens the rusty tan of the broken stone walls.

Roman rule had its advantages for vassal kings like Herod, but it was offensive to most Jews.  After occupying Israel in 63 B.C., Rome took over the appointment of high priests, not surprisingly selecting men loyal to the Republic.

Matters worsened in 35 A.D. when Caligula declared himself a deity and demanded that his statue be placed in every temple throughout the Empire.  And all along, like all too-big governments, Rome imposed too-high taxes, and worsened them by letting tax collectors keep whatever they could seize beyond the annual quota they sent to Rome.

In 66 A.D., the procurator Flavius crossed the thin line between confiscatory  taxation and outright theft when he stole vast amounts of silver from the Second Temple.  This sparked the Jewish revolt, an uprising that brought four years of Roman retaliation.  At the same time, a group of Jewish rebels overcame the Roman garrison at Masada and settled there.

In 70 A.D., Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and more Jews fled to Masada.  Three or four years later, a Roman legion surrounded the mountain, built the ramp to attack the fortress, and laid siege.

According to legend, the Jews chose death over slavery.  Every man was required to slit the throats of his own wife and children and then be similarly killed by another man or kill himself.  When the Romans ultimately breached the fortress, they found only two women and five children alive.

More than 2,000 years later, Israel remains the world’s most contested land.

As we rode north through the West Bank, colorful laundry waved from the decrepit shanties that sadly symbolize the generations-long refugee status of Palestinians.  Though it would have been legal, if not wise, for our group of Americans to explore one of the villages, it would have been neither for Yehuda and Zvika, Israeli Jews forbidden to enter parts of their own country.  Yehuda explained that when he guides groups who want to see a Palestinian area, like Bethlehem, he has to escort them to the perimeter and turn them over to a Palestinian guide who will give them the tour and then return them to him.

We did get out of the van for about three minutes in a barren area.  The sky was clear blue and dotted with puffy white clouds.

A purple rim topped the desert brown mountains in the distance.  The dry River bed marked the border with Jordan.  The sand was russet in the hot sun.  Yellow grain grew tall.

And in the foreground, a barbed-wire, chain-link fence, with rust-colored supports, marred the spectacular view; signs warned of electrocution in three languages.  History moves on, but human nature doesn’t change.

But human nature isn’t all bad.  Back in the van, we talked about how much we enjoyed travelling with such a congenial group of women.  Riding shot-gun, Yehuda piped in that he and Zvika had earlier said the same thing about us, that they’d been touring together for years and never seen a group of women get along so smoothly.  It helped that we were all experienced international travellers and know how to roll with the frustrations that are the price of exploring unfamiliar cultures.

We approached a checkpoint.  To our right, armed guards searched a stopped car as a blue-jeaned man and two head-scarved women stood watching.  Yehuda flashed his tour-guide badge to the officer in a booth, who waved us through and on to our next destination.

Galilee:  Days 4-5

Shabbat candles glowed atop the wooden table.  A young woman welcomed us with cups of fruit juice.  The manager smiled as he greeted us.  Through the large-pane, floor-to-ceiling windows of the reception area, we could see past the well-tended green trees and grass toward the Sea of Galilee.

No, we weren’t checking into a luxury resort; we were on a kibbutz.

Established early in the 20^th century, kibbutzim are Zionist farms organized around collectivist principles, including common ownership of land and houses, equal pay to each family, cradle-to-grave care, and direct democracy.  Since such a model can’t produce sufficient economic growth to sustain itself, by the mid-1980s kibbutzim were some 70-billion shekels in debt to Israeli banks.

One solution was to attract tourist money by opening hotels, which offer simple sleeping rooms, restaurants and bars, and even swimming pools and spa treatments.  Instead of the theatrical luxury of five-star resorts, they offer pastoral scenery.  Warmth and friendliness take the place of invisible service.

My simple but passably clean room featured a large balcony facing the Sea of Galilee.  I left its door open to enjoy the fresh air as I slept soundly till morning.

Cockadoodledoo!!  I jumped out of bed.  A large peacock crowed and strutted across the balcony.  I grabbed my phone and ran out just as he thrust his magnificent blue-green feathers straight back and flew to the next balcony.

After a simple but scrumptious breakfast of rugelach, dates, and of course cheese in the kibbutz’s large common dining room overlooking the Sea of Galilee, we travelled to Kibbutz Kinneret and its Tmarim Plus, a bare-bones shop where customers support the kibbutz by purchasing items from wine to kitchen kitsch.

But the kibbutz is best-known for the dates it’s been growing since 1933.  Dates are one my favorite fruits, and having them as a kind of breakfast dessert has become a third culinary habit I formed in Israel.  But even I couldn’t taste all the varieties available to sample, let alone the date syrups, spreads, and sauces.

Also along the Sea of Galilee, the Yigal Alon Museum houses the “Ancient Galilee Boat”, a simple brown wooden fishing vessel of the type used by Jesus’s disciples and authenticated to the first centuries and optimistically nicknamed “The Jesus Boat”.

“If only it had Jesus’s name on it, it would be a home run!” exclaimed an excited young visitor amid a display of colorful depictions of gospel stories in Galilee.

From the remains of a boat that Jesus probably never touched, we went to the ruins of synagogue where He almost certainly taught.

The Magdala Center is a Catholic retreat center being built in what is believed to the home town of Mary Magdalene, in the Galilee region where Jesus spend most of His public ministry.

During a routine salvage dig, archeologists struck a stone bench.  They ultimately concluded it was part of a first-century synagogue, one of only seven from the Second Temple period known to exist and the first to be discovered in Galilee.

As the dig continued, archeologists discovered the Magdala Stone, a rectangular piece of limestone carved with several images, including a candelabra that likely represents the menorah in the Second Temple.  A dusky-blue rosette-and-meander pattern is easily discernible in the mosaic floor, and the deep red of a small section of frescoed wall seems barely faded.

In the immediate area around the synagogue are a fisherman’s neighborhood, complete with hooks and other equipment, the marketplace, with pools most likely used to hold fresh fish for sale, coins, pottery, three ritual baths fed by natural spring water below, and what’s been dubbed the House of Dice, probably a large private home where a pair of dice were discovered.

After a light lunch in the small snack area, dotted with roped-off mosaic flooring, we were off to explore another site and story of the collision of religions.

For a brief afternoon, it seemed we were visiting not ancient Israel but medieval England.  The Crusader Fortress is the second-most prominent building in Old Akko, next to the mosque.  Built by the Hospitaller Order of Knights, who provided medical care to pilgrims visiting the holy land in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, it later served as an Ottoman fortress during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Today it is remarkably well-restored, even down to the latrines.  The large pillared halls, heraldric banners, pointed-fifth archways, and colorful cartoonish art brought us back to crusader times.  Then after strolling through the escape tunnels, we popped into the Turkish Bazaar, awash in head-scarved women shopping at market stalls, and off to dinner.

Uri Jeremias stood under the golden fabric dome with his flowing white beard, looking like a Biblical patriarch in a Bedouin tent.  Here in the 400-year-old Ottoman building that houses his Turkish restaurant, Uri Buri, across the street from the Mediterranean Sea in Akko, Chef Jeremias is something of a prophet of fish.

The former fisherman with no formal culinary training develops all the recipes for his restaurant.  He taught himself to cook for his fellow fisherman and keeps the same attitude today:  “I’m cooking for friends and not for clients.”

His creations can be surprising, like the wasabi sorbet that tops his tangy salmon sashimi.  Wasabi is too strong for some, he notes, so, “I tried to make it more friendly to humankind.”

Fortunately, he encourages small plates, and the chef’s tasting menu offers plenty of variety.

The amberjack soup, based on coconut milk, with ginger, curry, basil, coriander, and lime highlights Jeremias’s quest for the “natural fusion” in non-intuitive ingredient combinations.  The sea bass in a cauldron, also with a coconut-milk base, blends apples and chiles.  The redrock is served with wild endive, picked by Bedouins.

For dessert, there are house-made ice creams, in flavors from halva to passion fruit.

“Nobody comes here because he’s hungry,” says Jeremias.  “People come because they want to try something new.”

I’m pretty sure no one ever leaves hungry either.  Ready for a nap seems more likely.  Which one could do down the block at the luxury Effendi Hotel, which Jeremias opened in 2012, with 12 sleeping rooms, a wine cellar, and a spa and hammam.

We however had morning plans to visit the Baha’i Gardens in Haifa, and so off we were to that port city.  But not before taking a few moments to savor the sunset over the Mediterranean Sea, as we heard the Muslim call to prayer for the first time since Jerusalem.

Haifa:  Days 5-6

We arrived in Haifa early enough for an evening stroll.  German Templers established the city as the first of seven colonies during the 19th century.  They believed that living in the Holy Land would hasten the second coming of Christ.  Families lived in two-storey chiseled-limestone houses with red-tiled roofs and black-iron balconies, labored in early industrial workshops, and built transportation to other areas, turning Haifa into a modern city.

Christ didn’t come, but Kaiser Wilhelm II did.  In 1898, he sailed into the bay on the first official visit of a German king in more than 600 years.

Matters went downhill within a few decades.  Many Templers sided with the surging German nationalism of the 1930s.  The British deported them as nationals of an enemy country during World War II.

Seventy years later, as we walked along what is now Ben Gurion Boulevard, Templer buildings converted into bars, cafes, and restaurants teemed with travellers and locals.

Back in my small room, I donned the fresh white bathrobe and plastic-wrapped slippers, and opened the generous window to continue enjoying the atmosphere of Ben Gurion Boulevard below.

I enjoyed a similar view at breakfast, as the second-floor restaurant offered several outside tables on a balcony overlooking the Boulevard.

I did have one brief moment of panic—when I saw a sign reading “Not in use on Saturdays” covering the cappuccino machine.  I pointed out to a friendly waiter that it was Sunday.  He countered that it was Shavaot but pleasantly offered to prepare a cup for me.

The day’s first crisis thus resolved, I carried my bounty onto the balcony and savored the warm bright morning and the bustle below along with my array of soft cheeses and sweet dates.

The golden-domed Baha’i Gardens dominates Haifa the way the Duomo di Santa Maria del Fiore dominates Florence.  Baha’i is a monotheistic religion founded in 19^th-century Persia.  Followers built the gardens in Haifa as well as in Akko to surround the burial places of the religion’s two prophets.  The tranquility of the gardens is intended to help followers prepare themselves to visit these shrines.

I’m sure it works.  The hanging gardens surround a staircase of 19 terraces extending up the northern slope of Mount Carmel to the shrine.  From above, visitors can enjoy panoramic views of Haifa, the Galilee Hills, and the Mediterranean Sea.  Gravelled paths weave through impeccably manicured green grass and 450 varieties of colorful trees, hedges, and flowers.

At least, that’s how it looked from the outside.  We never got past the iron gates.  Unfortunately, one thing that Baha’i shares with Judaism is that the day when our tour group was scheduled to visit the Gardens was a holiday, meaning the Gardens were closed.  This left us with some open time.

About an hour before we reached Tel Aviv, Zvika pulled in to the non-Kosher Amphorae Winery.  It wasn’t on our agenda, but knowing of our interest in wine, he delighted us with a side stop.

The winery building looks almost Tuscan, with its stone walls and red-tiled roof, surrounded by green trees and shrubs at the foot of the Carmel Ridge.

The tasting room was full, and since we didn’t have a reservation, they weren’t able to seat us at a table.  But Riva Ilyaev, the Visitors’ Center manager whose quiet charm and warm graciousness matches the setting, cheerfully served us standing in the bar area, pouring several samples of wine and even placing a plate of cheese and crackers at the edge of a case displaying corks and bottles.

The hit of the afternoon was the Cabernet Sauvignon from the winery’s Makura collection. Fruity and intense, it was the best Cab I’ve ever tasted and a welcome treat before heading on to Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv:  Days 6-7

The morning sun glistened off the dozens of bottles of Veuve Cliquot in the open-air bar nestled under a billowing green ficus tree.  A handful of designer-clad visitors walked on patterned tile in and out of bistros and boutiques, but the old train station was refreshingly uncrowded.

HaTachana is a Turkish-era station renovated into a 49-acre attraction featuring art and history exhibits as well as luxury shopping and dining.  With its well-heeled visitors, hot-climate earth-toned architecture, and open concept, it feels a bit like Newport Beach’s Fashion Island.

Once a stop on the first piece of railroad in the Middle East, it’s now a fine embarkation point to the rare charms of Jaffa.  In that storied section of Tel Aviv, Jonah boarded a ship for his eventful voyage and St. Peter raised Tabitha from the dead.

Today the central point is the Clock Tower, completed in 1906 to mark the 30^th anniversary of the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.  All three major religions coexist in Jaffa, but the Turkish Muslim influence predominates.

A prime attraction is the Jaffa Flea Market, the area’s only surviving 19^th-century souk, but Flea Market doesn’t convey the range of quality shopping available in Old Jaffa.  At Liat Azar, one of many small modern boutiques tucked in old buildings along the area’s cobblestone side streets, the young designer-proprietress hustled about in Tory Burch flip-flops to show us her one-of-a-kind hand-sewn lightweight sweaters and wraps.

Though it was still early in the day, the sun was hot, and we took refuge in the Market House hotel in the northeastern part of the Flea Market area, sinking into leather seats in its cozy but comfy lobby, lined with shelves of books, wines, and fruit bowls.

Like many luxury hotels, the Market maintains its own art collection, with colorful drawings, photographs, and silkscreens depicting life in new and Old Jaffa.   Artist Yaarn Zach’s untitled red, green, and blue minimalist line sketch shows a tank-topped and tee-shirted couple sitting below a pointed-fifth window.  But the most intriguing display is the ruins of an 8^th-century Byzantine chapel visible through clear panels on the lobby floor.

A hotel manager quickly and cheerfully gave us bottles of water, and we sat and sipped amid this blend of old and new.  Soon we felt revived for more sight-seeing and a quick stroll through the Carmel Market, where I bought the freshest za’atar I’ve ever tasted.  And then it was time to pack for our long flight home after dinner.

Using one hand, Dr. Shakshuka cracked eggs with the dexterity of a surgeon.  He prepared his signature dish, standing over a large cast-iron skillet on a gas flame in the kitchen of his namesake Jaffa restaurant.  Though the restaurant is Kosher, Dr. Shakshuka is quite the ham, and he reveled in showing our group of foodies how he separated out the eggs within the sizzling red blend of tomatoes and other veggies, generous amounts of paprika and other spices.

Once again, Zvika had come through with this special opportunity to watch Dr. Shakshuka prepare our dish.  He’s a friend of the chef’s and, knowing our love of food, asked whether he’d like to do something special for us.

Once he was satisfied with his creation, we followed him back out into the dining room.  Old pots and kettles hung from rafters, and our long table was covered with brown butcher paper featuring colorful caricatures of the Doctor himself.

Though his English was limited, his love of food and of preparing and sharing it shined through.  “I’m not one of these thin chefs,” he pointed out unnecessarily through Yehuda.

While the Muslim call to prayer sounded through Jaffa, Dr. Shakshuka beamed at the head of the table as we tucked in to his signature dish.