A Cultural Chavaya

When people say they visited a Druze village or Bedouin tent, what they are really telling you is that they paid a huge sum of money for a meal and a guy in a costume. As someone who has been to several of these tourist traps I was able to better appreciate the uniqueness of this week's siyur.

Our first stop was a town in the Galil, a little north of Haifa, called Julis. There we met with a Druze tour guide who spoke such a mix of Arabic, Hebrew and English that 3 or 4 participants kept up a steady flow of translating phrases back and forth. We visited the burial site of the late spiritual leader Sheikh Aly Faris, and a holy site dedicated to the former leader of the Druze in Israel, Sheikh Amin Tarif. We learned about marriage rituals, death and mourning customs, proper dress code, the symbolism behind the Druze flag and the significance of Amin Tarif and his influence as the leader of the Israeli Druze. They even offered us Arabic coffee and rugalech and borekas from the nearby bakery. We then spent some time walking around the town, through the winding alleyways and steep steps, absorbing our surroundings and quietly observing the people and land around us. Our final stop in Julis was to our tour guide's brother's olive oil press where we got a quick tour and explanation of how the precious oil is made. (Fun fact: his brother had spent several years in England and thus was able to converse fluently in English...with a British accent).

We then took a 10 minute ride over to the neighboring town of Yarka where we visited with students at the local high school. This was by far one of the most remarkable cultural chavayot I have had the privilege to participate in. I don't know if we were more enthusiastic to get the inside scoop on this mysterious culture or for them to meet Americans who had real high school proms. Though their primary language is Arabic, many of them were fluent enough in English or Hebrew for us to get past this language barrier. Because this was a public school, very few of the students had chosen to go down the religious path thus providing us with a profile of their religion from the perspective of secular teens. They all maintained a strong conviction to their Druze identity and the fundamental principles and religious practices of the religion, but they were almost offended by our assumption that they might not have a Facebook. Not only are we all now friends on this networking site, but before we left many of us had exchanged numbers and had been invited up to spend a weekend with them in Yarka. These students were some of the most curious, bubbly and open minded people I have ever met.