A Fishing Park in Israel

This week, I received a report from Howie in Jerusalem, describing his fishing trip to Dag-Bakfar (A Fish in the Village) fishing park located in the north of Israel. Thank you, Howie for this information and for the great pictures!

Dear Rabbi Eisenkramer,

I am pleased to report back to you about our successful fishing outing this past weekend at Dag-Bakfar Fishing Park in the Yokneam Moshava.

Our ninety-minute drive north from Jerusalem via Highway #6 to Highway #7 went very smoothly. The ninety-minute drive will soon be reduced by at least thirty minutes when the new extension of Highway 6 opens up shortly.

The Dag-Bakfar Fishing Park is located in the Jezreel Valley - עמק יזרעאל. It is a great first time fishing spot for anglers of all ages wishing to enjoy this recreational past time.

The Yokneam Moshav facility offers all the services one needs to catch their first big one. The friendly hosts greet you in the language of your choice. The admission for groups of four can be reduced by visiting their website and downloading a free admission coupon for one member of your group of four.

Our fishing party consisted of three adults and two children. As the only one with previous fishing experience I happily spent most of our five hour visit helping untangle lines, putting fresh bait on the hooks and making sure everyone was happy.

There were about twenty fishermen trying their luck around the lake. Chairs, tables and lots of shaded areas are provided for you. Everyone seemed to have their own gear. I used my regular rods. I did notice that the more successful anglers used 3 meter and 5 meter poles to cast even further into the lake. These longer poles could be rented from the fishing shop at a minimal price.

My son and his friends had a great time. We lost a few large ones when they were being brought in. We were using a ten pound test line. The lake was stocked with some pretty healthy looking Carp and a couple of unknown species to me (I thought I may have seen some cat fish?).

We caught and released our catch. The fish looked clean and easily ready for consumption. You are able to select live fish from a special holding tank and have the Daf-Bakfar staff clean it for you. I did notice some guest’s bring their catch in the recreational park beside the facility.

We had a great time at Dag-Bakfar. It was my first experience at a fishing park in Israel. They cater to all ages and groups. Overnight facilities are available at Dag-Bakfar, reservations are recommended.

I would also suggest scheduling some time to visit the surrounding mountains in עמק יזרעאל Valley of Jezreel. We concluded the day with a jeep ride through Mount Carmel. The road was difficult to navigate but worthwhile. We stopped off at a local Druze Village near Haifa for some local food and headed back south to Jerusalem.

Pictures: Mt. Carmel



Happy fishing,
Shavuah Tov (A Good Week),
Howie in Jerusalem


Dag Bakfar Fishing Park: www.dag-bakfar.com/en/park.shtml
The Jezreel Valey in Israel from Google Maps: CLICK HERE

More Fishing in Israel on The Fly Fishing Rabbi:
1. Fishing in Israel Part 1: Salt Water
2. Fishing in Israel Part 2: Fresh Water
3. Fishing in Israel Part 3: Tackle Shops, Fishing Boats and Highlights

The Cairo Speech and Israel

In Cairo, President Obama reached out to both Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs. He called for a new beginning in the relationship between the US and the Muslim world. He also said that the bond between the US and Israel is unbreakable. President Obama spoke out against any attempts at Holocaust denial. Our President will clearly be a supporter of Israel.

The President also spoke of the suffering of the Palestinian people. He pointed to the expansion of the settlements in the West Bank as a major roadblock in striving towards peace. President Obama called for the Palestinians to renounce violence and terror and for Israel to stop all settlement construction, with the goal of creating two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace.

President Obama’s goals of the end of Palestinian violence and Israeli settlement construction are positions that are shared by the majority of American Jews, including the leadership of the Reform Movement. I too believe that the solution to the conflict is to stop the violence and the settlements and work towards two independent states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side. The problem is that there is little to no chance of either the renunciation of Palestinian violence or the cessation of Israeli settlements at this time.

The West Bank and Gaza Strip are currently independent of each other, with the Palestinian Authority ruling the West Bank and Hamas leading Gaza. Hamas, a terrorist organization that uses suicide bombers, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and its charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. In addition, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which holds a more moderate position towards Israel, cannot get along and there are occasional outbreaks of violence between Palestinians. I cannot see Hamas renouncing violence and coming to the Peace table.

At the same time, the chances that Israel will freeze the construction of Settlements in the West Bank is slim with the recent election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel. Netanyahu takes a hard line towards the Palestinians and supports the growth of settlements as necessary for Israel’s security.

Clouding the prospects of peace even further is Iran and their drive for nuclear weapons and influence in the Middle East. Iran seems to want to further the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by providing funds and weapons for Hamas and Hezbollah, a terrorist organization in Lebanon which also wishes for the destruction of Israel. With the reelection of Ahmadinejad, Iran seems bent on continuing its hard-line path.

Since Palestinian terror groups will not renounce violence, and Israel will not stop building settlements, what path can we go down in search of Middle East peace? A recent editorial in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, called for the completion of the Separation Fence, a wall being built between Israel and the West Bank.

Construction of the fence began in 2002 after an outbreak of Palestinian violence, with the theory that if the two people could not live together, they needed to be separated with a wall. In some places, the wall is 25 feet high, and includes razor wire and guard posts. Building a barrier between warring peoples is a strategy that worked in Berlin for decades. The separation fence could give Israelis and Palestinians time to “cool off” and perhaps someday it could come down, as did the Berlin Wall.

Begun in 2002, the separation fence today is only 60 percent completed. Since November 2007, almost all work related to the fence has come to a halt. There are many reasons for the stoppage in construction including a lull in terrorism and violence in Israel, making the need for the wall seem less pressing and the meltdown of the global economy and lack of funds. In addition, the gaps in the wall are in disputed areas between Israelis and Palestinians, for example near Jerusalem, so that any new construction may lead to an outbreak of violence.

While I certainly understand the desire not to provoke violence at a time of relative peace, I believe that the long-term solution to the conflict lies in completing the separation fence. With the Palestinians unable for decades to find real leadership and a government that will develop their economy or infrastructure, Israel is best served by separating from the Palestinians. A physical wall is necessary to accomplish this.

President Obama’s speech showed equal support for Israel and the Palestinians and did much to improve America’s image in Arab countries. But to move towards peace, our best bet is separation. I hope that the Israeli government will move forward in completing the security fence.

A 13 year old Rejects Chemotherapy

On May 18th, Coleen Hauser took her son Daniel and fled her Minnesota home. Five months ago Daniel, who is 13 years old was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. This type of cancer responds well to treatment and there is a 90% chance that chemotherapy and radiation will cure him.

Daniel went with his mother for one chemo treatment in February which shrunk his tumor. However, Daniel and his parents refused to see any more doctors. The family believes in natural healing practices. Daniel’s mom had been treating his cancer with herbal supplements, vitamins, ionized water, and other natural alternatives.

When the courts got involved, a judge mandated that Daniel receive chemotherapy. Daniel refused and said: “I'd fight it. I'd punch them and I'd kick them." To avoid the court-ordered chemo, Daniel and his mother fled Minnesota, and supposedly were headed towards Mexico. Thank God, the mother came to her senses and brought her son home. Both parents have now told a judge that they will let Daniel receive his treatments and he began his chemotherapy this week.

It is unbelievable that a mother would flee with her son rather than give him the life-saving treatment he needs. I feel sorry for Daniel, because he is the victim of terrible neglect. What an incredible tragedy this could have been.

While Coleen and Daniel initially rejected chemotherapy, Judaism fully embraces Western Medicine as the most effective way to treat illness. There are no branches of Judaism that I am aware of, including even the most ultra-orthodox, which prohibit visiting a doctor or hospital.
Jews have participated in Western Medicine for centuries as doctors.

One of the greatest scholars in Jewish history, Maimonides, lived in Fostat, Egypt, modern day Cairo, in the 12th Century. Maimondies was a Jewish scholar and he was also a doctor. Maimondies was the court physician to the Grand Vizier and may have even treated Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades. He saw patients all day and into the night hours, writing in a letter to a friend that the sheer number of people exhausted him. Perhaps Dr. Maimonides belonged to an HMO.

Following in the footsteps of Maimonides, Jews have remained involved in medicine as doctors and researchers. The son of Eastern-European Jews, Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine and saved countless lives. The list of Jewish nobel prize winners in the field of medicine is quite long.

Jews have embraced medicine to such a great degree that Jewish mothers used to say to their daughters: “Find yourself a good Jewish doctor.” Today, Jewish mothers say to their daughters: “You’ll become a good Jewish doctor.”

Judaism also teaches that we can help those who are ill through prayer and hope. Religion does have a role to play in healing, by helping to lift the spirit of those who are sick and their loved ones.

During the mishebeiarch, the healing prayer, I always look around the Sanctuary and invite my congregants to share the names of the people in their lives who are ill. I do this because I believe it is helpful to say the name of our loved ones out loud.

Saying that name in the Sanctuary, surrounded by our Jewish community, gives us support and strength. It reminds us that we are not alone and that other people care about us. By saying those names, we lift a burden off ourselves and we reach out with open arms to our Divine Source, asking for help.

Coleen Hauser used religion as a reason to reject chemotherapy for her 13-year-old son. Yet all religions, including Judaism, can be a powerful source of comfort to those who are ill. Today, people are merging religion and technology in unique ways for those in need of healing.

One woman on the website Twitter is named “Pray for Patti.” Her bio says: “My good friend Patti was just diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and she needs your prayers. She is a mother of 2, wife of twenty years and lover of life.” People follow Patti and offer her prayers and good wishes on line everyday.

When our loved ones are ill, they need both medical and spiritual treatment. We should never use religion as a reason to reject medicine. Yet religion, prayer and faith can be powerful supplements to Western Medicine. Or to put it another way, when as a child I asked my dad if he thought prayer worked, he would always say: “Can’t hurt.”

Fly Fishing for Bass

Until last week, I had never tried to catch a bass on a fly rod. As a kid, I used to fish for bass on a Zebco rod with a red and white bobber and night crawlers on three pronged hooks. However, in 1994 that I saw A River Runs Through It. This amazing film introduced me a whole other world of fishing, where you did not stand on the shore but in the water, and you did not plop a worm covered hook in a lake, but rather gracefully cast a small dry fly lightly on the stream. I decided that I would leave behind the bait fishing of my youth and graduate to the higher form of casting a dry fly.

Last week, I realized that I had become a fishing snob and it had not served me well. I took a trip to a river in northern Connecticut that was located in a nature preserve. Walking from the car towards the stream, I went by a small two-acre lake. I glanced into the water from shore and saw a number of tiny bass swimming gleefully towards me. With my nose held high, I walked past the lake and to the stream, a beautiful, wide and fast flowing piece of water.

I spent the next three hours casting and walking up and down that stream and I did not find a single trout. There were signs posted at many points on the river indicating that this was fly fishing only water. Someone had even created a small flat metal cutout of a trout and put it on a tree, as a marker of appreciation for this good fishing spot. Yet here I was in the heart of spring on a cold-water stream and not a single trout was to be found. Finally, I gave up and started walking back to the car.

Passing the small lake once again, I saw the bass swimming eagerly. I stopped and thought to myself: “Why not?” Replacing the red copper john nymph with a brown elk hair caddis fly, I began to cast on the surface of the lake. I quickly discovered that bass are not the most intelligent of fish. One after another, these tiny fish would hit the fly after a few seconds on the surface.

After pulling in a half dozen small ones near the shore and releasing them, I decided to cast out a bit further. The elk hair caddis landed 40 or so feet from the bank, and I gave the fly a little twitch to attract a fish. The fly went down, and I expected to reel in another tiny fish, but this time it was different. The rod bent and the line was tense. I started to reel in and a good size bass leaped out of the water. The fish fought well but finally I held him in my hands. I had caught a two-pound smallmouth bass.



Picture: The bass in hand.

The bass was not a pretty as a trout. It lacked the pink shine of a rainbow or the beautiful dark spots of a brown trout. But as I stood there for a moment with the good size fish in my hand, I felt that same sense of excitement, joy and appreciation for the beauty of nature as with any trout. Then I released the fish back into the lake and walked back to the car feeling content.

On my drive home from the lake, it occurred to me that my fish snobbery had prevented me from a fine pastime, casting a fly rod for bass. Especially in the summer, when water temperatures rise too high for trout, I will now search out a good bass lake. I also discovered that being a snob makes sense when drinking fine wine or eating French cheese. When it comes to fishing however, any time that we are able to spend in a river, lake or ocean, fishing for trout, bass or any kind of fish, is time well spent.