Kadita

I spent my worst hair-day ever in Kadita.

Thankfully, I was not the only one with coiffure issues.

How do you dress up for a place like Kadita? That's a riddle. This secluded hilltop community looks like nothing else in Israel, to say nothing of the greater Middle East. It's peaceful in the deepest sense of the word.

Kadita should really require nothing in the way of attire. About thirty years ago, a few hippies came and built homes with their own hands on the foothills of Mt. Meron. Their cummnity was never recognized by the state. It is only due to the nearby tomb of Mishnaic sage Rabbi Tarfon that a road even leads there. It's not a very good road.

While driving on it we met a local Druze man who was picking wild dill in the pastures. I believe a secret garden of wild dill deserves for me to comb my hair and put on a nice shirt.

But what Kadita really requires today is a yarmoulka. Much of the community turned religious over the years. We were fortunate enough to be invited into the home of Eliran and Elinor, two devotees of hassidic rabbi Nachman of Breslau. They made us good coffee, gave us some homemade olive oil and boiled eggs from their henhouse for a picnic lunch we planned.


We got to play with their kids, Michael, Noya and Avinoam, in the pleasant winter air. We also heard two very special life stories, though seperately. In Religious Jewish society it would be inacceptible for a man to even speak with a woman not of his family. I stayed in with Eliran and flipped through the photo album of his secular days. Meanwhile, elinor took Itka out, showed her the chickens and introduced her to her nother in law.

Then we were out to roam the hillsides. Itka looks great in rural surroundings,

but she's an unrequited animal lover.


As for me, I felt a natural longing for the grassy knolls and stone fences of Scotland and Ireland. If not for Eliran's overgrown sideburns and timidness towards Itka, I could believe that we've been transported there. Turns out we haven't. Israel is Israel, for better or worse. It offers us gracious Celtic pastures on which to sit and enjoy glatt kosher eggs.