For those of you who follow this blog on a semi-regular basis, you know that one of my favorite types of postings, are those about trips of mine around Israel.
One place I haven't been to in a long time, is "Sebastia" (the Roman name for the Shomron). It used to be a much more popular location for family trips and hikes -- there's an old Turkish train station, Roman columns, ruins of a Roman amphitheatre (extra credit for those who can name the locations of ALL the Roman Amphitheatres in Israel).
(Palestinian Grafiti on ancient stone columns; thanks guys!)
In fact, the entire modern day settlement movement -- of building Jewish communities in the Shomron was actualized in Sebastia at a mass rally which led to the building of Elon Moreh (the first settlement in the Shomron).
Unfortunately, since the Disengagement from Gaza and the Northern Shomron, Israelis are not allowed to visit Sebastia without special IDF permission and escort (it used to be that you could drive there since its minutes away from Shavei Shomron, a nice-sized community). Double-unfortunately, I was unable to go on this particular tiyul this past chol hamoed due to Tesseract-type reasons, but a good friend of mine, BoneCrusher, went there instead and took lots of pictures and blogged about it.
He gets his blog-name from a guest appearance in my post about "What's in a Jewish Handshake", and he accompanied me on our wonderful night-time excursion to Kever Yehoshua.
His blogging style is very different than mine, but the information and pictures make it more than worthwhile to receive an official Muqata hat-tip.
See it all here:…The Trip to Sebastia.
Jameel.
Wow! Top billing!
ReplyDeleteI'm soooo not worthy.
"you know that one of my favorite types of postings, are those about trips of mine around Israel."
ReplyDeletemy favorite also. so stop taking these 3 day jaunts to america and instead do some old-fashioned tiyyulim.
Hey, some of us would prefer a couple 3-day jaunts to America, okay?
ReplyDeleteWhat's with the color changing? You sick or something? :)
what happened to the yellow face? Are you moldy that you turned green?
ReplyDeleteI thought you and your family had yellow smiley faces for heads. Who are those orange and green headed people in your photos?
ReplyDeleteFern, Ezzie and Rafi -
ReplyDeleteThese aren't my pics -- they are BoneCrusher's!!!
I look a healthy shade of yellow
;-)
I also thought there was something wrong when I noticed that your yellow complexion had changed.
ReplyDeleteI recognized BoneCrusher's orange head, but who's the green guy?
Btw, are you related to the Simpsons?
Lurker - you'll have to ask the BoneCrusher...his pix, not mine :)
ReplyDeletegreat pictures! the tiyul posts are always enjoyable :)
ReplyDeletewhy is it that 90% of the comments on posts with photos of your self/family are about the skin color/obnoxiously smily look?
ReplyDeleteo and ya, post more bout tiyulim please. thanks in advance
I want to know what Rashi said about steroids. ;)
ReplyDeleteI hate it that we don't have access to place we should.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the photos- it's probably the closest I'll get.
damn I missed that tiyul.. we went hiking to kesalon by mevaseret.
ReplyDeleteI was at sabastia about 3 years ago back when I lived in tapuach.
Who needs tiyulim ? just ask jameel about the genius that missed the bus stop and messed up his lunch break ;) I still feel bad about that especialy since your sick now (my fault ?)
Jack,
ReplyDeleteHe aint on steroids.. you should see the males in my family (before my dad got his cholent belly lol) we are very tall and broad shoulderd. It would take a bit of weight lifting and i'd knock bonecrushes out ;)
I'm just glad that Bonecrusher is on our side...
ReplyDelete