Here’s a Friday morning outing you’ve probably never considered: A trip to the dump. But not just any dump. The Hiria dump – an 80-meter high blight on the landscape that no commuter traveling on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway could miss.

Now Hiria is being transformed from its formerly stinky state into the Ariel Sharon National Park (alternatively known as the Ayalon Park). A group of 20 of us recently trekked out to Hiria on an organized excursion. What we learned was a fascinating insight into Israeli history and ecological renewal.

Opened in 1952, the Hiria dump represents over 50 years of Israeli garbage, everything from plastic bottles and organic refuse to the leftovers from countless home renovations – tables, chairs, chunks of walls – plus bicycle tires, electrical cables, old baby carriages, and  much more, all of which have been tastefully fashioned into artistic “found object” mobiles dangling from the roof of Hiria’s funky yet functional visitor’s center (which itself was once a huge compost shed).

The trash kept on piling up until Hiria was finally closed in 1998, after birds flying overhead in search of choice tidbits threatened planes at nearby Ben Gurion Airport. The garbage still flows through Hiria, but now it’s just a transit station. Small trucks dump their contents into a vast sea of refuge where it’s sorted and loaded into larger trucks which ship it all to a new dump located near the southern Israeli city of Beersheva.

Hiria, nevertheless, remains an imposing site. At 2000 acres, the dump is three times the size of New York’s Central Park. The garbage that created the Hiria hill now sports green grass and low shrubs, hiding its more tawdry past. Our tour took us to the top of that hill which no longer stinks but does sink. Years of decomposing organic waste have created methane gas which makes the entire grounds unstable. That gas is now being pumped out and sold to a nearby textile factory.

We drove in our mini-bus to the top of Hiria from where our group was treated to what must be the best view in town: a 360-degree panorama of the entire Gush Dan region. That lookout point is at the center of Hiria’s ambitious reclamation plans which envisions a network of bike trails (10 kilometers of which already exist), shaded picnic areas, a small zoo and recreational pond, and a country club with a swimming pool and theater situated at the peak of the soon to be former dump.

Hiria’s planners call the Sharon Park “Israel’s green future” and boast with pride that the site will “prove that an environmental hazard can be turned into a national treasure – one that will radiate to the world Israel’s new green face.”

The park will include recycling plants for tires and building materials and an environmental education center, in addition to the meandering Ayalon and Shapirim streams which wind their way around the outskirts of Hiria before flushing out into the Mediterranean Sea. The new Tel Aviv light rail, currently in the planning stages, will reach the western edge of the park.

Even the carefully tended flower garden near the visitor’s center is part of the reclamation process: a self-sustaining system that treats sewage with the help of bacteria from the roots of the plants and breaks down toxins so that the resulting water can be used for irrigation.

The park is named after former prime minister Ariel Sharon who approved creation of the park in 2003. Thousands of students have already toured the facility; a hike through the park in 2005 attracted 8,000 participants. Hiria’s planners hope that 50,000 visitors a year will visit the park for educational and leisure purposes.

Despite the positive plans, Israel still lags behind the U.S. and Europe in terms of recycling options. Except for bottles, paper and batteries, everything else gets collected into the same bins and is ultimately dumped together.

Construction of Park Sharon is expected to be completed in 2020 although portions are already open.

For more details visit: http://www.tourism.gov.il/Tourism_Euk/Articles/Attractions/The+Hiria+Recycling+Park.htm

To organize your own guided tour of the Hiria dump, visit: http://www.ayalon-park.org.il/Eng/ or call +972-3-739-6633

Jody and I will be married 20 years this summer. We decided to take an early anniversary trip last week. Originally we thought of going to a spa hotel, but all the spas we liked were booked. We opted instead of a day in Tel Aviv. It turned out to be both eye opening and fabulous.

For Jerusalemites, Tel Aviv is truly another world. It is laid back, sophisticated and most of all fun, unlike Jerusalem with its claustrophobic architecture, bubbling religious tensions and pot holed streets.

That’s not to say that I don’t love Jerusalem. Israel’s capital retains a small town feel, it’s filled with archaeological gems, and there is an international sense of pluralism with spiritual and educational opportunities that are unique among the world’s great cities. Still, a trip to Tel Aviv is like a breath of fresh sea air. Maybe it’s the beach or maybe it’s proximity to culture in the most surprising places.

We started our day at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a modern structure with stark architectural lines and a world-class collection of modern art. The impressionist and post impressionist selection contains numerous works from Matisse, Renoir, Cezanne, Pissaro and Chagall. Other departments focus on everything from German Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, Fauvism and Cubism. There is a healthy sprinkling of Picasso and Van Gogh. We particularly enjoyed a retrospective of portraits from Jan Rauchwerger.

The Museum is in a complex that also includes the Tel Aviv Opera and The Cameri Theater, both of which we explored briefly before moving on to our next stop: the old Tel Aviv Port.

What once was a working seaport has been transformed into an engaging shopping and entertainment complex. A large wooden boardwalk affords stunning views of the waves below; all along its expanse are restaurants and bars, many with comfy sofas facing the water to chill out and have a late afternoon drink. The effect is very European – right in the heart of the Middle East. The port has everything from chi-chi designer shops, major chain outlets and even a high-end sex shop for women called "Sisters.”

At night, the Port comes alive with nightclubs and dance facilities. When I went to the Sean Lennon concert, it was at Hanger 11 here at the port.

In the middle of the port is a temporary structure – a unique dance theater built and sponsored by the Batsheva dance troupe. The idea was to bring dance to the masses at a reasonable price. A single piece, called Furo, runs in a continuous loop with the actors swapping in and out every 45 minutes. The audience is free to come and go throughout the evening.

Furo (which means “bathhouse” in Japanese) combines modern dance with Japanese animation by the artist Tabaimo which is projected on three giant screens. The music ranges from electronic blips and beeps to raucous punk rock. Seating is on bleachers rather than formal chairs. The dancers have a relatively limited area to dance, positioned on top of two large speakers on the sides of the hall so as not to interfere with the animation.

We found the dance intriguing but the animation a bit repetitive. But at only NIS 60 ($18) a ticket, it was well worth the cultural diversion. Furo is only playing until mid July (daily 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM), so if you’re interested in attending and you’re in town, act fast.

People dress up to see and be seen at the Tel Aviv Port. I felt a little out of place in my Jerusalem jeans and t-shirt. Not so at our next stop: the Ta’am Ha’Ir food extravaganza.  Billed as the second largest outdoor food festival in the world (after the Windy City’s “Taste of Chicago”), Ta’am Ha’Ir (“Taste of the City”) – now in its 13th year at Ganei Yehoshua near the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds - features hundreds of booths from some of Tel Aviv’s trendiest eateries offering small samplings of their wares for low prices - NIS 20-25 ($6-7) for most dishes.

We expected a genteel environment similar to the Jerusalem Wine Festival at the Israel Museum which also features food booths. But with 800,000 visitors projected over 4 days, the festival is more like a circus sideshow. Each booth has its own barkers who scream out increasingly insistent entreaties on megaphones, like at the shuk on a Friday afternoon. Pulsating trance music from several large stages (dairy manufacturer Tnuva, pop radio station Galgalatz and the state lottery system were all represented) plus crowds jostling elbow to elbow give the surroundings the feel of a mega dance club. This is a high energy event.

This being Tel Aviv, the vast majority of the stands were not kosher. We saw lots of shrimp, pork and cheeseburgers being consumed.

Participating restaurants include Manta Ray, Minna Tomei, The Red Chinese, Pasta Mia, Papagaio, Odeon, White Hall, Poyke, Brewhouse, La Goffre, Andre Ice-cream, Yogo, Dim Sum, Maya Taco Bar, Sheinkin Juices and Binyamina Winery.

We split a delicious gnocchi soaked in oil and pesto sauce from a dairy pasta restaurant and a vegetarian samosa from an Indian establishment. We finished our meal with a Belgian waffle covered in whip cream, maple sauce and – to our horror – Nutella chocolate sauce. Israelis do love their chocolate sauce. We were stuffed and not a little bit queasy as we stumbled back to the car.

As we drove back up the hill to Jerusalem after a satisfying anniversary date, we felt a tinge of sadness to be leaving the buzz of Israel’s lively metropolis. We still prefer Jerusalem – it’s a great place to raise a family and the sense of community can’t be beat. The good news: Tel Aviv is only an hour away. We can visit as often as we like. And we plan to do so.

Fight the establishment. That was the implicit message my wife Jody and I gleaned this Shavuot from our attendance at a fiery lecture and our participation in a controversial minyan.

First the lecture. Shavuot is the holiday that commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. The emphasis on the Torah as the central motif of the yom tov has led to a custom of studying all night. Jerusalem probably has more learning opportunities than any other city in the world, in every language imaginable.

For the past few years, we have attended David Hartman’s class at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and training school in Jerusalem (which also happens to be where our 16-year-old son Amir goes to high school). David Hartman, who is Orthodox, typically spends the first half of his lecture railing against iniquities and injustice he perceives in modern Israeli society, with the brunt of his criticism aimed squarely at the religious world of which he is a member.

This year, he chose to expound on the famous Talmudic story of Tanur shel Achnai (Achnai’s oven) that includes the phrase lo b’shamayim hi – translated as “it is not in heaven” - found in the Babylonian Talmud Baba Metzia 59b and based on a biblical verse in Deuteronomy 30:12. The story is long and involved but the upshot is that there is a disagreement between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Gamliel over a particular interpretation of the Torah.

Rabbi Eliezer calls for several miracles to appear if the heavens agree with him. A tree magically jumps 100 cubits, a river runs backwards, and ultimately a voice booms out of heaven to declare that Rabbi Eliezer is correct. Rabbi Gamliel responds: never mind all that, the Torah is “no longer in heaven.” Rather, it is up to the learned men and women in this world to which it was entrusted to rule on issues of halacha.

That principle led Rabbi Hartman to declare in his lecture that not only is decision making on religious law no longer dictated from heaven, but history itself is not and cannot be controlled by God.

Hartman recounted how, after the 1967 Six Day War, many of his peers saw “God’s finger” in Israel’s striking defeat of its enemies. One Rabbi put it this way: in a crucial battle against Egypt, Elijah the Prophet appeared in the midst of the Israeli army dressed in white with a long beard and blowing a shofar. The result: the Egyptians recognized that God was with the Israelis and simply “ran away.”

But how could it be that the same God who was allegedly so omnipresent in 1967 was cruelly absent during the years of the Holocaust and many other incidences of Jewish hardship? Is our God really so capricious, Hartman asked. A man who’s had a life of plenty may remark that “God has been good to me.” Does that mean that God is “less good” to a family suffering in poverty? History winds its own past, based on the actions of man not God, Hartman emphasized.

Yet, the idea that God actively takes a part in history has taken root across Orthodoxy today, strangling rabbinic innovation, Hartman said. If God is dictating events, the thinking goes, then what right do we as humans have to change Jewish law even when it is clearly unjust? Hartman cited several pressing problems - recalcitrant husbands who refuse to give their wives a get, a divorce degree, and agunot, literally “chained women,” who cannot remarry according to Jewish law because their husbands have gone missing.

Hartman saved his most stinging vitriol for the controversy du jure where in recent weeks an ultra-Orthodox Rabbinic court has retroactively annulled hundreds of thousands of conversions to Judaism going back as far as 1999, insensitive to the suffering caused.

The implicit message: we must continue to fight the establishment. We cannot cede control over such important matters to those who do not interpret lo b’shamayim hi and God’s role in history as Hartman says we must.

After such a combative lecture, it’s not surprising that our evening ended with another example of fighting the establishment.

A further custom of Shavuot is to pray at the Kotel, the Western Wall, as the sun rises. At 4:00 AM, the streets are filled with thousands of people of all religious stripes and colors making their way towards the Old City. It’s exhilarating to participate in the march. However Jody and I overslept by half an hour and there were only women, children and tourists on the streets as we made our way, bleary eyed, towards our destination: the egalitarian minyan which comprises Conservative, Reform and liberal-leaning Orthodox Jews.

This minyan, where men and women pray together and where women lead the tefiilah, has been no stranger to controversy. The group tried for years to pray at the Western Wall, indiscreetly in the back of the plaza. The keepers of the Kotel were not pleased, however, and tried to scare off the minyan’s participants.

I was amongst the group one year and saw first hand the baseless hatred between Jews. Dirty diapers, garbage and bags of chocolate milk were hurled at us indiscriminately. The police were called in to create a separation barrier before we were whisked away for our own protection.

The minyan eventually settled for a government-sponsored compromise to be relocated outside the main Kotel area to the southern extension of the wall known as Robinson’s Arch. The new location is quite picturesque, located amidst archaeological excavations and the nearby Davidson Center, and actually offers a more fulfilling prayer experience than the overcrowded central plaza.
 
I commend the egalitarian minyan for sticking to its guns and fighting the religious establishment as bravely as it did for so many years. As I see it, the Western Wall should belong to all of the Jewish people, and the egalitarian minyan’s strive to change the status quo is a welcome modern extension of the concept of lo b’shamayim hi.

There is still much to be done. There are times when modern Jews seem to be losing the battle. That’s why we must do our part with steadfast conviction. Jody and I will continue to attend both the Hartman Institute for late evening learning and the egalitarian minyan for early morning prayers, as we fight the establishment in our own quiet way.

We were walking home from a friend’s house after lunch on Shavuot a couple of years back. It had been a blazingly hot day, a real Jerusalem sharav, but at one point we were sure we felt a slight drizzle. As we entered the courtyard to our apartment complex, we felt it again.

Then we noticed them: a group of 9 to 12-years olds huddled together in what I can only describe as a “scheming posture.” In the center was one child with an enormous water pistol.

That’s when we remembered. The holiday of Shavuot as it’s observed in Israel is also known as “Yom HaMayim” – Water Day.

“Run for it!” I yelled as we scampered towards our apartment before a stream of water headed our way.

We avoided any serious soaking….this time. But the battle had only just begun.

The doorbell rang. Two of then eight-year-old Aviv’s friends were outside. “Can we use your terrace?” one of them asked.

Before I could think if this was a good or a bad thing for the Jews, Aviv had already ushered them inside.

Now, we live in an upstairs apartment that has several inside levels; the sought-after terrace is actually three stories above ground level, giving anyone standing on it an unparalleled strategic advantage over enemies in the courtyard below. It truly is the high ground in the battle for Yom HaMayim supremacy.

Aviv and his friends surveyed the scene from the terrace, then headed downstairs to our kitchen where they raided our collection of plastic water bottles that were waiting for recycling. They filled up three then resumed their positions. When the first volley of water was launched, the hapless soldiers below didn’t know what hit them.

What are the origins for this uniquely Israeli holiday custom? No one I asked could give me a definitive answer and the Internet wasn’t much help either.

Perhaps it has something to do with the parting of the waters of the Red Sea as the Jews left Egypt in preparation for receiving the Torah, the main event which Shavuot commemorates.

Or maybe it’s more related to the symbolism surrounding Moses, who was rescued from the waters of the Nile and raised in Pharaoh’s palace.

My friend Yuval claims it’s originally a North African custom that was elevated in importance when the country’s secular founders were trying to emphasize the agricultural nature of the holiday.

Or maybe it’s because Shavuot usually falls at the beginning of the summer and it’s just plain hot.

It wasn’t long before there was another knock on the door. This time it was Merav’s friends. More recruits for the Blum brigade. They too headed for the kitchen, but they were more interested in our supply of small plastic sandwich bags.

“Can you tie this for me?” asked Daniella, one of the youngsters, holding a filled bag. She and her friend Dara were building a not insignificant stockpile of water bombs. After the tenth bag, I told them to hold off, there might be other kids coming who’d want.

Which there were…in droves.

Over the course of the next half hour, no fewer than two dozen pre-teens, most part of a loose collection of friends of Merav and Aviv but others complete strangers, entered our kitchen, refilled their bottles and guns or built their own bombs, and headed for the terrace.

At one point, I don’t think there was anyone even left in the courtyard.

Naturally, all of this created no small amount of mess. Puddles of water formed around the kitchen sink and the water tap in the entry-level guest bathroom. A small river of mud and twigs snaked from the front door to the terrace.

My wife Jody pulled me aside. “I think that’s enough,” she said.

But the kid inside of me had other ideas. “Why don’t we just let them have fun?” I asked Jody. ‘Yom HaMayim is only once a year.”

Jody’s eyes surveyed the accumulating devastation that was taking over our living room.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be responsible for cleaning up. Just sit back and enjoy.”

“I think I’ll enjoy it more if I don’t look,” Jody said with a smile and promptly closed herself off in a secure room while the Yom HaMayim battle continued unabated outside.

For the next hour, I helped the combatants keep the supply lines open. I made sure no one slipped or got hurt. We provided drinks and cut up watermelon.

Eventually the battle wore down. The plastic bag supply ran out. Several girls were wrapped in towels as they shivered. I actually managed to get a few kids – led by Aviv, Merav, Dara and Daniella – to help clean up the garbage below.

As I squeegee-d the water towards the terrace drain, one of the kids asked me, her eyes glazed with drops of water and appreciation, “Is your house open like this every year?”

“It is now,” I replied.

As Jody emerged from her room, I said “next year, we have to be better prepared. We need to stock up on plastic bags and save up the recycling for several weeks.

“Or maybe,” Jody said, as she surveyed the damage, “We’ll just lock the doors and pretend to not be home.”

-------------------------

From the entire Blum family, we wish you a joyous - and dry - Shavuot.