October 7- Qumran, En Gedi, and the Dead Sea

We said good bye to Jerusalem early this morning heading south and east. As we passed through the tunnel just outside the city, we left behind the relatively green area of the Judean hills and immediately hit the stark, hot, arid Judean Desert. The desert here is flanked by two mountain ranges, the Judean Mountains on the west and the Jordanian range on the east. Moist air from the Mediterranean hits the Judean Mountains, and dumps its precipitation there, leaving the desert on the eastern side. The temperature was well into the 90’s when we made our first stop in Qumran.

Qumran is the site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which are the earliest copies of the Torah, the additional books of the prophets, as well as texts of practices and beliefs of the sect that lived here, the Essenes. They believed that they were the “army of light” and they would at some time in the future defeat the “army of darkness” which was basically the rest of the world. In the mean time, they lived a very ascetic and celibate lifestyle in this communal society. They took ritual baths before their morning and evening meals, and because of this, they had about fifteen mikvahs around the settlement. They had ingenious ways of diverting what little precious water there was using a system of canals. One interesting note is that there is some evidence that John the Baptist spent two years with the Essenes here before he left to become one of Jesus’ disciples.

Just south of Qumran is the oasis of En Gedi. Here we took a great hike up to a series of waterfalls. Jumping into the pools formed by the waterfalls was a great treat as the temperature climbed by mid-day. Even Jeri got into the water and got under the falls. There were quite a few birds, one of which I was able to identify (with Jonathan’s help) as a Tristram grackle. This is the only known habitat for this bird. Ibexes and rock hyraxes were also plentiful. They seem to have little or no fear of humans, since they both allow for close-up photography. The ibex was nearly hunted to extinction earlier in the last century, but due to a very effective protection program by the Israeli government, they have rebounded very successfully.

Our final stop for the evening was the Hod Dead Sea Hotel. The beautiful blue green waters of the Dead Sea must have been tantalizing for early settlers in this area since there was an abundance of water, but all of which was poisonous with a salinity of 33%. The river has receded by about 1 meter per year for about the past 100 years due to damming of the Jordan River, its major tributary, by Israel further north near the Sea of Galilee. After settling in to our hotel, we bought some mud (a hot item here) and went down to the beach. Here we proceeded to smear the mud over ourselves, allowing it to dry, at which time we looked like giant pygmies sans blowguns, and then waded into the Dead Sea to rinse off. The water was very warm, about 90 degrees, and due to its very high specific gravity, the buoyancy was incredible. Dave and I agreed we could have used water like this when we played water polo. After the mud bath and the immersion in the salty water, our skin felt as smooth as a baby’s behind!