EMAN -EL
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U are!
Please join us for a special Shabbat Service to
welcome prospective members on Friday,
August 1 9th at 8:15 p.m.
TEMPLE EMANU-EL
14450 West Ten Mile, Oak Park, MI • (810) 967-4020
•Rabbi Lane Steinger, Rabbi Amy B. Brodsky, Rabbi Emeritus Milton Rosenbaum,
Cantor Emeritus Norman Rose, Temple Educator Ira J. Wise, R.J.E.
Temple Administrator Beth A. Robinson, Temple President Sharon Jaffe
neon SPORT
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sal
Life In The Valley
Remains Uncertain
INA FRIEDMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
I
he Jordanians call
V,r7,77.?
it the Ghor, the •
"valley." The Is-
raelis call it the
Arava, the "plain." For
both it is a 160-kilome-
ter stretch of mostly flat
desert landscape that
extends from the Dead
Sea to the Red Sea (part
of the Great Rift Valley
running from Syria to
East Africa). For 44
years, the two countries
have peacefully shared
this valley-plain, and
the border between
them runs exactly ...
well, that's the problem.
There are various
versions of where that
border lies. Over the
years, it has crept topo-
graphically westward into Israel by the World Movement for Re-
and been moved geographically form Judaism (in 1983), where
eastward into Jordan. Now, the Iddo Zevulun, the treasurer, ex-
two countries will have to decide plains the history of this "wan-
precisely where to locate it. And dering frontier."
In the 1920s, during the
until they do, the 4,000 Israelis
British
Mandate, the midpoint in
who have settled in the Arava —
almost all of them members of the valley and the Arava River
the 10 kibbutzim and nine were one and the same," he says.
moshavim in the area — will be "But from then on, the river bed
living under a cloud of uncer- has been inching westward, into
Israel. And to compensate for
tainty.
"No one actually knows where that drift, in the early 1970s the
the border is," explains Jonathan government moved the border
Cohen, the technical manager of fence further eastward. The Jor-
Yahel, a kibbutz of 30 families es- danians didn't protest then. But
tablished by the World Move- they didn't forget, either. And
ment for Reform Judaism in now the issue is on the table."
It must be explained, of course,
1977. "Rumor has it that it's at
the lowest point in the valley. Ru- that the Arava River is not actu-
mor has it that it's in the dead ally a river at all but, for most of
center of the valley. But rumor the year, a parched river bed
also has it that it follows the (wadi). It fills only briefly in the
course of the Arava River, which winter, when rain falling in the
runs to the west of our fields, date Jordanian highlands — the bib-
groves, and fish ponds — and lical mountains of Edom — send
flash floods roaring through its
that means we'll lose them."
"All our fields lie over the riv- course. So powerful is the flow
er," echoes Nurit Golan of Iddan, during these times that the
a moshav of 33 families in the wadi's western bank is eaten
northern Arava, as she points to away. Thus the progress of the
the swatch of green on opposite river-border steadily westward.
This, however, is the least of
side of a deep, wide depression.
"If this is the border, then we've the violence that Nature has vis-
ited on the area. Still given to
been farming in Jordan."
The story repeats itself all the earthquakes and tremors, the Ar-
way down the valley, though ava is the product of the geolog-
some settlements stand to lose ical cataclysm that ripped the
less than others. In Ketura, a mountains apart and created the
kibbutz that established in 1973 deep Rift Valley between them.
The result is a feast for the
by Israeli Scouts and Americans
from Young Judaea (which now eyes: a pink, purple, and choco-
boasts a population of 250), farm late-and cream colored landscape
manager Od. Levine explains strewn with pebbles and boul-
that "The Arava River changes ders, scrub and tamarisk trees.
its course; sometimes it's on our What's more, the heavenly hav-
side of the border, sometimes on oc continues.
Each year flash floods carve
the other." In short, Ketura may
new
sculptures out of soft-rock
lose some of its fields. As may
Lotan, another kibbutz founded outcroppings on the valley floor,
-
•
•