Having committed some years ago to attend an academic conference in the country during what has now become a quite complicated moment in the nation's history, I nevertheless scheduled in some time to explore around before my professional obligations kicked in. I wandered across a goodly chunk of the country, which to be honest did not take a very long time because it's not a very big country in tranquil times, and the constricted safe-travel boundaries of the current era further shrink the area available to a visitor.
But even within this narrowed frame, I found ways to get myself up a little higher, as is my wont. Mt. Carmel National Park is small but offers a green oasis with some good rock-scrambly trails high above the northern city of Haifa. This escape was among my favorite places in Israel.
I also scaled the storied heights of Masada, which gained ancient fame as a mountaintop fortress.
The steep Roman Ramp on the west side makes for a more challenging approach than the more meandering Snake Path on the eastern side, but neither side ends up asking much of the lungs: all the ruins of palace, cistern, and dovecote up on its plateau sit at only about 190 feet above sea level--the formidable plunge down the east side is to the shores of the Dead Sea.
Is it blasphemy to say that my main response, after my exploration of this country, was: "This is what everyone's been fighting over for 4000 years? This unspectacular cross-breed of New Jersey and Nevada?" There are, of course, many sites of deep historical and spiritual significance to many traditions. The archeology is richly layered, recording centuries of conquest and overrun from one direction or another. But I suppose I am left with the realization that I don't ascribe meaningfulness to any particular intersection of latitude and longitude, or think that any place is marked as significant because some event happened there. It seems that I prefer my sublime as a fully scalar phenomenon: just make me feel tiny (as does a good peak or cliff) and I will bow down in worship. The more human the timescale, the less holy it feels to me and the more like just another roadside attraction.
* In an interesting resonance: I saw at Everest a monument with a rock from the Dead Sea, and now have seen the corresponding monument at the Dead Sea with a rock from Everest.