The Discalced Carmelites: Part Two

Dust in the Wind

Gidon’s friend—and by now, mine—Yudit was standing with me on top of some thirty levels and six thousand years of human activity. That’s a lot of pottery. Briefly, I think to myself that my life will one day also be an archeological layer, and I wonder what a future archeologist will think of my fidget spinner.

We were also standing at the exact spot where Armageddon—the battle said to usher in the End Times—is supposed to take place. Nobody knows when, but if you read the paper, it feels soon, no?

For Gidon, enjoying the visit with Yudit as he was, the hike up the hill was too much. He waited patiently at the bottom, in the Megiddo National Park gift shop and snack bar.

I cannot be the only person to notice—and admire, really—the planning involved in putting a snack bar and gift shop at Armageddon. It makes sense. If you survive the End Times, you’re going to want a snack and a map, amiright?

If you’re wondering, “Armageddon” is a mispronunciation of Har Megiddo. Har means “mountain” in Hebrew, and Megiddo is the place. Har Megiddo became “Armageddon.” Around here, we just say Megiddo.

After taking in the requisite maps, relics, and models, we headed to Kibbutz Hazorea—where Gidon went when he first arrived in Israel in 1959. He lived there for seven years and still has friends there.

It was quiet on the kibbutz, but for context, kibbutzim are always quiet—it’s a thing. We found Batsheva and Yonatan’s home. As we walked up the pathway, Yudit explained that word of Yonatan’s death had been “much exaggerated.” But he had had a stroke.

If the visit felt mournful to me, I can only imagine how it felt for Gidon and Yudit. Yonatan sat in a wheelchair, one hand curled inward, one eye half-shut, smiling drowsily. Batsheva, who struck me as a sourpuss on a good day, promptly chided Yudit for not being in more frequent touch. But it got worse. Minutes later, she snapped at Yonatan: “Say something! Don’t just sit there smiling!” She gripped his chin and turned his head toward Yudit. Oof. It was painful to witness. Batsheva was clearly struggling.

The walls inside their apartment were cracked peach-colored plaster straight out of the 1950s, scattered with the equipment Yonatan needed to shower, use the toilet, and get to the dining table.

A Filipino caregiver sat at the dining table, stoic, texting. Caregivers from India, Nepal, and the Philippines are a common sight in Israel. It’s a mini-economy—part of the social security package once you reach a certain age or become disabled. But every time I see these caregivers, I feel one thousand shades of weird. They’ve left their families to care for ours. They send money home to children they don’t see growing up. It’s an exploitative model, yet a part of reality in Israel—and, I imagine, in many other parts of the world.

Yudit, thankfully, is adept at reading the room. After clocking a sufficient amount of sadness and tension, she prepared the way for us to make an exit. The three of us stepped into the warm sun where the sleepy kibbutz blossomed into summer—a stark contrast to the dim, heavy living room we’d just left. I wondered how Gidon and Yudit felt, seeing Yonatan in such a state. They didn’t say anything, and I didn’t ask.

If Megiddo, down in the valley, is a hill of archaeological pay dirt, our next destination was a panoramic postcard on steroids. Muhraqa—atop the Carmel Mountains, 1,700 feet above sea level—offered incredible perspective, literally and figuratively.

I won’t lie—we got pretty lost and argued in the car as we wound our way up the mountain through numerous Druze villages, past wandering cattle and sheep. But finally, we arrived at the home of the Discalced Carmelites. Like me, you may immediately look up “discalced,” because what in Elijah’s name is that? It means shoeless. For those monks, going without footwear was a mark of their devotion or whatever. Who knows.

At Muhraqa—once the site of the “cult of Elijah”—a small pamphlet explained how Elijah gave a fiery speech there, laying into the locals for worshiping Baal, of all gods. Then he sacrificed a bull to prove his point. Yikes. Looking just a few degrees eastward, I could see where we had just been—Megiddo. I imagined that if I stood there 3,500 years ago, I would have seen the dust rising from the chariots of Pharaoh Thutmose III as he bore down on the Canaanite tribes in the Jezreel Valley. I bet he and his army would have appreciated a snack bar.

So much history. And so many layers. Time collapses and expands all around us, rising as dust and pollen with the turn of every season.

Quietly, Gidon and Yudit looked out over the Jezreel Valley. Together, they pointed to landmarks: Kibbutz Hazorea, where a once-hale Yonatan now sits in a wheelchair, to Yokn’aam, Mount Tabor, the Gilboa Mountains—even the hill where Gidon and I live. There they were, two old friends whose lives have traversed their own valleys, stirring up dust in their wake, leaving behind their own layers for the rest of us to make of what we will.