Tiyul

Tiyul.

Tiyul -- its simple meaning, its pshat. “A walk, trip, hike, excursion, tour, outing, drive.”

Tiyul – its deeper meaning, its gestalt, its drash. Consider a linguistic root – natal. “To take, to lift.” The sense of ownership implied.

Let me take you on a tiyul, and we are just learning.

A chamseen, desert heat weave, has come. Back, for a moment, from its brief winter vacation. Our shorts are likewise back from their brief winter vacation on the top shelf.

Tu B’shvat, the blossoming of the trees – they’ve rung our doorbell for weeks. We’ve listened with half an ear. But the chamseen knocks wildly, and we can’t ignore its plea to come outside.

Ah, but it’s a school day. Not a problem...when your kids get out at 1:30 pm! Plenty of time for a tiyul.

T-shirts, water bottles, pita sandwiches, a mix of pretzels and raisins, sunglasses and sunscreen in hand, and we’re off. Destination – the Castel, gorgeous mountain and outlook, site of a decisive battle of the War of Independence.

We drive east. The meadows, the rolling hills – they are as verdant as they will ever be. We relish the bounty of the winter’s rains. Patches of wildflowers grace the landscape. The thin cows of Joseph’s dream graze in packs, fearing no sacrifice these days. The road is awesome, but short – like Israel itself.

We get on route 1, the lifeline of modern Israel, connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. 50 kilometers, 3500 feet, and a million miles away from each other.

The passage is proud. The trees of the JNF forest stand resplendently on all sides – embodying the souls of Israelis past and present, and the renewed self-confidence of the Jewish people.

We arrive at the Castel. The kids are already complaining. “I am bored!” Those decisively non-magical words, the bane of parents’ existence.

The Castel doesn’t cooperate, at least at first. “It’s just a hill. I’m tired. I don’t want to walk up.” But, yes, as if on cue, like so many other sites in Israel, the Castel speaks for itself. There’s a partially destroyed house at the top, an exclamation point from a different – or is it? – era. Its stone is weathered and beaten, grass sprouting out. But one with the land, it cannot be denied.

Coby races up. Adina picks up her slaggard pace. The house of the mukhtar (head of the village) is surrounded by an intricate series of trenches, a maze of delight for the children. We tell them of the battle that raged here 62 years ago. Battle -- the subtext of most sites in the land of Israel. The message of power, of kill or be killed – so dominant in the known time of the land.

Rattled, we are also stilled, rejoicing in our portion -- as we see the kids grasp, take and lift the land we have travelled so far in distance and in time to live in.

Tiyul.