BIKAT HA JARDEN - JORDAN VALLEY

The hills of the Jordan Valley are shaped beautifully, some round and soft, others sharp and ragged. They look barren from afar. But they are not bare of vegetation at all. If you leave your car and start getting in touch with them by walking around, like we did this Shabat, they reveal all their little wonders. The flowers are braving the winds and the rocky earth, and are low on the ground. They create islands of colors which mix with the silence in the air, disrupted only here and there with the shriek of a bird of prey.

The valley starts where the Jordan comes out of the Lake of Galilee till to where it flows into the Dead Sea, on a stretch of about 100 kilometers. As you follow it south, it will get more and more arid and become a desert, but further north it is very fertile, and the fields and fruit and palm gardens can be seen from up in the hills. The whole area lies well below sea level, the deepest point is at the Dead Sea.

The land seems peaceful under the wide sky. But if you listen you can hear the whispers of its history and its suffering, and the tales about the many different rulers,  people, cultures, and political disputes over thousands of years - stories are told from Biblical times till modern reality. Physical and spiritual evidence is to be found everywhere. But the land remained true to itself, patient and beautiful, carrying the seeds of flowers, trees and plants in its earth, waiting for the rains to sprout them forward - as it always did...

Photos by Uri Eshkar - click on them for enlargement.