"Ad Hayom" - Wisdom from Adi

Towards the end of the day’s itinerary, after touring the mystical city of Safed and exploring the slope of the Golan Heights and Kibbutz Ayelet HaShachar, and after a quintessential Israeli shopping mall food court lunch, our bus rolled north across twentyish miles of the Golan plateau.  It is beautiful but mostly bare territory wherein we saw the heaviest military presence so far: tanks and artillery, army bases and combat soldiers with Israel’s latest best gun, the TAR-21. Along the way, Julie explained Golan, Part 2: The Yom Kippur War.

   The lead up to the Six Day War had seen Israel digging thousands of graves in public parks across the land to inter the victims of what many knew would be a second Holocaust.  The speed and extent of their victory over so many enemies and the closing of those emergency graves empty left a coat of hubris over the land.  Israel thought it was indestructible and did not consider how its enemies might lick their wounds, bide their time and return stronger.  Julie told us the phrase that Israelis commonly use to describe the mindset of the time: “We were prisoners of the conception.”  Adi, our bus driver, finished her sentence, “…ad ha-yom (still to this day).”

   Adi had captured one of the most important lessons of the day. Like a liturgical refrain, we could add, “Ad HaYom” to so much of what we had seen and learned.  Nearly all Jews present before 1948 took up arms or contributed to the defense of the state or establishment of its institutions; men and women...  Ad HaYom. The famous draining of the Hula Valley swamps removed malaria and allowed settlement and agriculture but disrupted the ecosystem extinguishing species and leaving environmental challenges that remain unsolved…. Ad HaYom.  Abu Mazen (current Palestinian President) was born and raised in Safed until his family had to flee in 1948.  In the 1990s, as Israel and the Palestinians were negotiating, Abu Mazen had asked, as a condition for further talks, that he be allowed to return to his birthplace and tour the city.  The Jewish mayor of Safed, now an all Jewish city, refused.  No Palestinians would be allowed to do such a thing. It goes back to 1974, when a Safed Junior High School group traveled to the town of Maalot. While they slept in a community center, a PLO terrorist cell crossed the border from Lebanon, seized the building and held them hostage. When all was done, nearly 25 of Safed’s young teens were dead. It had been over 20 years, and now a larger, national peace process was unfolding, but such wounds run cut deep and the pain remains strong… Ad HaYom. Here's Adi, reflected in the bus mirrors.

   The trip continues to be great and our itinerary is packed.  With a professional tour guide, a rabbi and a group of incredibly intelligent, cultured people we learn something everywhere.  But we keep our eyes and ears open for the unscheduled and unexpected insights that bespeak the Rabbinic teaching: “Who is wise? The one who learns from all people.” True that… Ad HaYom.