THE LONG ROAD HOME

Every year, thousands of Israelis walk the Israel National Trail, which starts at Kibbutz Dan in the north and goes south all the way to the Taba border crossing near Eilat. It includes historical sites and extraordinary natural phenomena. * As in every corner of the world, here too, the Rebbe’s shluchim wait for them and graciously offer full room and board, combined with spiritual comforts. * We spoke with three shluchim or, as those who help the hikers are called, Trail Angels: Nitzan Grizi, at the start of the trail in the north, R’ Shneur Zalman Kurtz in Meitar in the middle of the trail, and Rav Moshe Blau, in the Arava region in the south. * The three tell of the hikers and the hafatzas ha’maayanos that is done with them.

24-year-old Doron finished his army service. He was standing near the historic Beit Ussishkin, a nature and history museum situated on the Tel Dan kibbutz which is in the Upper Galil. He stood with a large pack on his shoulder weighing 18 kilograms (over 39 pounds), wearing hiking boots, and holding a symbolic walking stick. He gave another look at the magical views all around him. He filled his lungs with fresh air, blew it out in a long breath, and took his first step towards the Israel National Trail. Before him were over a thousand kilometers (over 600 miles), which he planned on traversing by foot over the next two or three months, depending on his energy levels.

In the days that followed, Doron passed Tel Chai, Nachal Dishon, Mount Miron, and would continue through the Galil Mountains from Nachal Amud towards Teveria Ilit, walking along the Jordan River to Mount Tavor, to Mishad and Tzippori, detouring the Carmel Mountain trails called Finger Cave (Me’arat Etzba) and the Blue Trail (Har Chorshan), continuing to Hadera and on to Netanya and then Tel Aviv.

After a brief rest, he began the section of the trail that leads from the center of the country, passing by the Yarkon River Source to Mitzpeh Modi’in, proceeding towards Shaar HaGai and on to the Sataf area of the Jerusalem Hills heading into Yerushalayim. From there he headed south in the direction of Beit Guvrin and Tel Keshet. The further south that he went, the scenery transitioned from green to brown, to mountains and sand dunes. He reached Mount Amasa and the Arad Park, and from there hiked to the “Big Crater” and Maale Tzin, continuing toward the Arava region, passing Sapir and Shizafon until he reached the Shechoret (Black) Canyon and then Ein Netafim in the Eilat mountains. From there, he trekked to the final destination of the border crossing at Taba.

It really and truly is a “land of streams of water, springs and chasms,” “the land that the eyes of Hashem are upon it,” to which Avraham Avinu was sent when he was told to “go forth from your land and birthplace, and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.” This is the land that was promised to his children with a binding divine oath, and this is the land to which Moshe did not enter, but only gazed upon from a distance, with love and yearning that we cannot even begin to imagine.

Each year, thousands of young people walk the Israel Trail, from north to south, treading on a lot more than “four cubits” of Eretz Yisroel, and the shluchim of the Rebbe await them at various points along their journey. Like Avraham Avinu in his time, they receive these weary travelers with love, food, drink and lodging, before they continue on their journey. And to the extent possible, they will also call out to them “in the name of Hashem, G-d of the world.”

ORIGINS OF THE ISRAEL TRAIL

Before discussing the work done by the shluchim, it might be a good idea to first know a bit about the trail itself.

The Israel Trail is a trail that extends the entire length of the Holy Land (and extends a bit outside of the holy part) and measures 1100 kilometers (680 miles). As mentioned, the trail begins in Kibbutz Dan in the north and ends at the Taba border crossing near Eilat.

The idea to create the trail was born years ago in the mind of the late Avraham Tamir, a journalist and naturalist, who was impressed by the Appalachian Trail in the United States. If such a thing exists in the United States, he thought, why not in Eretz Yisroel which contains every conceivable kind of landscape, from waterfalls to deserts, and all within a much smaller geographic frame. A divine wonder. He presented the concept to Uri Dvir, the chairman of the Israel Trail Committee that oversees hiking trails in Eretz Yisroel, under the auspices of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), and the plan was off and running. The committee began the planning work of mapping off and marking the trail in the beginning of the Eighties, and it was officially inaugurated on Pesach 1995. Over the years, a number of changes were made in the course of the trail.

The trail is continuous, but for the ease and comfort of the hikers it is broken down into sections. The official sectioning is made up of 44 sections, with each one leading to the next based on an average distance of 25 kilometers a day. Based on calculations that have been done over time, each year there are a few hundred hikers who cover the entire distance in one continuous hike. There are those who do it in segments, walking each section as a separate hike, for example aiming to finish one section per day. It seems that professional hikers are able to complete the trip in 46 days, with regular experienced hikers doing it in more like 62-65 days. There are different ways of breaking the trip down into segments. Those who do it at the end of winter tend to travel from south to north, with those doing it at the end of summer, usually going from north to south.

The Israel National Trail was listed by National Geographic as one of the 20 “epic” hikes in the world, and was described by the judges as one that incorporates nature with history, heritage and culture, “The Israel National Trail delves into the grand scale of biblical landscapes as well as the everyday lives of modern Israelis.”

MEET THE TRAIL ANGELS

With increased popularity of the trail among hikers, many activities have formed around the trail on the part of tourist groups and various public bodies, in the interest of promoting the trail and enhancing its standing as the main track of Eretz Yisroel. There are also those who look out for the welfare of the hikers and provide assistance to them. These people are dubbed “trail angels.” Trail angels are good people along the way, families who have agreed to host those hikers who wish to cross the entire length of the country by way of the trail. The trekkers pass through many varied courses, some quite difficult, in villages and forests, streams and nature preserves. Along the way they need rest stops in order to wash their clothes, grab a meal, and mainly to just plain rest.

Sure, they could do that under a tree or under the open skies and even in a makeshift tent (in nice weather), but here’s where those families that host hikers come into the picture. In modern Israeli jargon, they are called “Israeli nice-guys.” We call them Jews with compassion who host guests. Either way, these people who are called “angels” live in yishuvim or towns the length of the trail and offer their homes to hikers for free. Some offer sleeping arrangements and others offer food and drink, attractions and other activities. The common denominator is that it’s all for free. Their names and addresses are listed on the website site run by the SPNI, under the link for “Trail Angels.”

Nitzan Grizi’s family of Tzfas has been hosting hikers of the trail for a long time now. The Grizis are not the only Lubavitchers to provide chesed in this way.

“There is also the family of Rabbi Moshe Blau, a shliach in the Arava region on the way to Eilat that we heard also hosts guests,” says Nitzan. He says that only those who are truly focused end up completing the trail all the way to Eilat. “In the south, unlike the north, there is no water and no trees. Much of the walking is done in arid places under the burning sun. Many who start at Kibbutz Dan don’t end up finishing in Eilat.”

Nitzan is not into publicity seeking. He does everything in a low-key way. He agreed to talk about Trail Angels only because it might encourage other Chabad families to join in.

During an interview that we conducted with Nitzan previously, we met him cooking and talking with two hikers who were staying with him at the time. When we walked in, we interrupted a lively conversation with Alex, an officer recently discharged from the Kfir unit in the IDF who asked, “What did the teachings of Chassidus innovate?” Later that evening he told us that this was the first time that he was talking to a religious person. “I live in Ashdod where there are two neighborhoods of religious Jews and two neighborhoods of immigrants from the CIS, and they have nothing to do with one another.”

Nitzan himself is from a kibbutz called Beit Hashitta. He was given a classic kibbutz education, even though his parents respected Jewish tradition in their home and had much love for the Jewish people and Eretz Yisroel. In the army he served in field intelligence and that is where he began to gain some knowledge of Judaism, through a soldier friend, mainly during the long night watches. After some instances of obvious divine providence, he connected to Chassidus through the shliach Rabbi Yitzchok Yadgar of the yishuv Gan-Ner, and then he went to the Chabad yeshiva in Ramat Aviv.

How did you begin to get involved with being a Trail Angel?

“After we got married, we set up home in the Chabad community in Tzfas, and I went to work as a supervisor in the nature preserve of Mount Miron, for the national park and nature reserves department of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Based on the well-known Chassidic teaching, I had looked for work that involved the ‘toil of your hands’ and not the ‘toil of your head.’ In this line of work, there is a lot of free time, and that is what I wanted for myself, a chance to learn and catch up on what I had missed out over many years. After a short time, I heard about the ‘Israel Trail’ from the many hikers that I met. I would encounter hikers, in winter and summer, sleeping among the bushes or in cave-like carve-outs. I felt sorry for them, until I realized that part of the experience was to not return home until completing the entire course, so I began inviting them to my home.

“From those hikers, I heard about the list of ‘Trail Angels’ posted on the internet, listing all of those families that are prepared to host the hikers of the trail. In those days, we lived in a small home, but that house hosted as many as fifteen hikers at a time. If there is room in the heart, then there is room for everything and every Jew. Those fellows hiking with a small amount of food and some changes of clothing, need a place with a shower, a bed and decent food, and that is what we give them.

“What is unique about this type of outreach is the direct encounter between a Chassidic family and irreligious young folks, including some that hail from kibbutzim that are very distant from a Torah life. What amplifies that encounter is the fact that they are in touring mode and far more open to listening. Some even set out with the intention of meeting up with various cultures across the country, which is why they are even more receptive than if they were back at home.

“We have had all types pass through our home, young and old, religious and not, people who came from every part of Eretz Yisroel, and even some from other countries.”

I asked R’ Nitzan to provide some interesting examples of these direct encounters, and he definitely has interesting stories to share.

“We once had a young man by the name of Dvir from Rosh HaAyin stay with us, who had once won the title of National Tanach Champion. We spoke for hours. He himself serves as a ‘Trail Angel’ in his city, so the conversation revolved mainly around that, but we also spoke a bit about the Rebbe and Chassidus. During that Shabbos we were out on the porch, and he claimed that the view from our porch was of the Kinneret, but I told him that it was of the Golan Mountains.

“He was so confident that he was correct that he agreed to commit with a handshake that if I was correct, he would go to learn for three days in the yeshiva in Ramat Aviv. When we researched it on Motzaei Shabbos, he realized that he had been mistaken. A week later, he kept his promise and went to learn in Ramat Aviv.”

R’ Nitzan shared another episode. “We once hosted a couple, who in the modern vernacular we would call ‘spiritual,’ the type that eat healthily and are ‘searching for themselves.’ They toured many places around the world for two years, and had just decided to return to our homeland. When somebody comes to us on a weekday and has some time, we suggest that they pay a visit to the ‘Tzfas Kabbalah Center’ of R’ Eyal Reiss in the old city. They went there and were very excited by the experience.

“When they returned, my wife saw the husband looking through my s’farim collection for a long time, as though he was searching for something specific. She asked if she could help him, and he asked her if we have a book called the Tanya, since R’ Reiss had cited a quote from there that really touched him deeply. He was handed a Tanya, and he sat for a few hours reading non-stop. Afterward, he asked a number of questions about faith and Judaism, which led us to realize that he had actually understood a thing or two from what he had read.

“Before they left, the man said that his grandfather had told him that his family are son-after-son descendants of the ‘defense counsel of the Jewish people.’ I told him that this was the title of R’ Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev, who was related through the marriage of their offspring with the author of the Tanya which had excited him so much, and perhaps it was no coincidence that his soul is searching for the truth.”

HOSTING GUESTS LIKE AVRAHAM AVINU

From the Grizi home in the north, we headed southward toward the yishuv of Meitar, which is at the southern base of Mount Hebron, northeast of Beer Sheva. The shliach there is R’ Shneur Zalman Kurtz and his wife, who opened their Chabad House two years ago, to those hiking the trail.

R’ Kurtz heard a lot about the trail from passing tourists. “There are people who do the entire trail in one trek, over one and a half or two months, and some do it in stages. For various reasons, some say it is political, the trail does not go through the ‘West Bank’ areas, which are breathtaking in their beauty.

“At a certain point it passes not far from Meitar, so we opened our Chabad House for the hikers, as part of the list of Trail Angels. In the Chabad House they can get light refreshments, a hot shower, clothes washing, and a place to sleep. On Shabbos they are also invited to join the Shabbos meals, and obviously it is all at no cost.

What is the goal of that?

Like Avraham Avinu in his time, who opened his tent for all the passersby, and used that as a means to bring them close to G-d. In my view, this is a prime example of hosting wayfarers in our time. Nowadays, there is practically no such concept of hosting guests of the type that you never met before. When we do take in guests, it is usually relatives, brothers or sisters. Here is an opportunity to do the mitzva in its purest form.

How did the idea develop?

There were many times that I would go to the commercial center of Meitar and meet up with hikers of the trail who were looking for a place to rest and gear up for the continuation of the journey. I realized that here was a wide-open field for outreach operations. I discussed it with R’ Nechemia Wilhelm, the shliach in Bangkok, who deals a lot with Israeli tourists, and he strongly encouraged me to get involved.

The hikers find a warm home waiting for them with us. They always tell us that it reminds them of the Chabad Houses in the Far East.

How do the children relate to this?

First and foremost, they are learning what true hachnasas orchim is all about. The hikers themselves will point out the influence that the children have on them, a positive Jewish influence.

When they are guests for Shabbos, they are obviously invited to the Shabbos meals, so we use the opportunity to have deeper discussions. Quite a few end up taking good resolutions upon themselves. Some tell us that this was their first time meeting “face to face” with authentic “chareidim.” “If only they were all like you,” they say. Even those most ostensibly distant from anything Jewish feel that the Chabad House is their place.

In our guest book, the hikers write very nice things, and there are those that have written that we lit up their lives.

TOURING THE HUMAN LANDSCAPE

We arrived at the next point on the long journey, at the Chabad House in Merkaz Sapir, under the leadership of R’ Moshe Blau and his wife, who oversee all of the yishuvim in the Arava region.

R’ Blau told us how he had just hosted three hikers for Shabbos, who had come from quite a distance, and had about a week of hiking ahead of them to complete the course. Mid-October is the season for completing the north to south trek, with March and April being the time for beginning the trail going from south to north.

Many of those who begin all the way north reach you when they are towards the end of their journey. They must be exhausted…

“Not necessarily. First off, there are those who actually begin in the south, but even those who start in the north, are usually people who are taking time off to tour and have time on their hands. There are those who take long breaks to revive themselves, and to recharge their strength and energy. A lot of them come to us because we are in middle of the desert, where there are very few points of settlement nearby which provide food and drink. They are looking for a shower and a warm bed, after walking for days at a time.”

From what the hikers told us, it seems that with R’ Blau the main action is on Shabbos. R’ Kurtz also told us to check out what was going on at the Chabad House of R’ Blau, “since he hosts 40-50 people at a time. He has a whole floor of accommodations for men and another whole floor for women.”

R’ Blau: “There are weeks like this and weeks like that. There are Shabbasos when we have two or three guests, and some Shabbasos where we can have up to sixty hikers. Over Shabbos, they rest up and come for the meals, with some even coming to shul to daven. During the meals, we sit around the Shabbos table and talk. We have people of every stripe.”

According to R’ Blau, “these are generally young men after the army, without families, who want to experience not only getting to know the country, but also getting to know the people. They really want to get to know the human landscape, and to them that is the added bonus of the hike. Therefore, when they come here and meet observant Jews, Chassidim, they are glad to use the opportunity to deepen their familiarity with the world of Judaism and Chassidus, and obviously we gladly provide them with just that.”

Shluchim operating in a given area usually develop relationships with their mekuravim and guide them through the process of embracing their Judaism. With you, this is not the case, since hikers are here today and gone tomorrow…

R’ Kurtz: “That is true. They are with us only for a short time, usually for one night. There are a few individuals who have been in touch even after they moved on. On occasion, we will even get regards from them. However, our job here is to plant seeds, and apparently there are other shluchim whose job it is to reap the results.”

R’ Grizi: “We try to keep in touch, but it is not simple. However, what has been happening recently is pretty amazing, as there a number of hikers who have taken the initiative to stay in touch. I recently got regards from one of the kibbutzim in the center of the country. Two guys who had been by us got inspired and decided to launch a shiur in their kibbutz. They contacted the shliach in the city near their kibbutz, and he comes every week to the house of one of the guys, and they sit and learn sichos and maamarim.”

In conclusion, what message would you like to share with our readers?

R’ Blau: “I wish to give a shout-out to all of the Chabad Houses that are situated along the route of the trail, to open their doors wide and welcome the trekkers. I think it would be amazing if, in every place they passed through they would encounter Chabad, and not only in Thailand or India.”

R’ Grizi: “Our dream is that all along the Israel National Trail there will be ‘Chabad Angels,’ shluchim who will work with the hikers, so that they will be exposed to Chassidus by us and at every stop along the way. The message we would like to convey is that ‘It is not in the heavens.’ There are those with large homes who could set aside a room or two. It also does not involve any great expense. And as I said, people who are in tourist mode are far more open to listening, making this an unparalleled opportunity to give over material that will be absorbed. Whoever wishes to receive additional information is welcome to contact us and we will be glad to offer guidance based on our experience.”

R’ Kurtz: (Smilingly offers a suggestion for a slogan): Chabad B’Shvil (on the trail of Eretz) Yisroel; Chabad Beshvil (for the sake of the nation) Yisroel.