Brushing away the lockdown cobwebs

How refreshing to brush away the lockdown cobwebs with a drive through the wide open desert all the way to the rugged red Eilat mountains that give way to narrow strip of coast.

Infections here have declined drastically and as a result we are no longer confined to within one kilometre of our homes. We decided to take a day off to drive down to Israel's southern tip, the port and resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea. We have been missing both the sea and the desert so much during lockdown.

The Red Sea's waters are wonderfully turquoise and clear. There are beaches with corals in the shallows where you can snorkel but even just standing on the jetty over the water you can look down and see schools of fish in a rainbow of colours from matt purples and yellows to iridescent metallics to monochrome rainbow stripes. We even got lucky enough to glimpse a sea turtle.

Normally the bay is full of pleasure craft, but the sea was quiet, a solitary cargo ship docked in the port. In the stillness of lockdown many sea creatures have felt comfortable edging closer to the shoreline with giant manta rays and other larger species sighted by locals.

From Israel's narrow strip of Red Sea coast you can wave over to Eilat's twin, the Jordanian resort and port town of Aqaba. Somewhere out in the desert mountains south of there across the bay you can glimpse the northern tip of Saudi Arabia. Out to the south-west the coast continues over the border in to Egypt's Sinai desert.

It's good to look out at neighbouring countries and feel a little connection to the wider world, even if it is only our small corner of it. To stand at a northern tip of the Red Sea and in my mind's eye see how it continues on south down to Bab Al Mandeb, the Horn of Africa and Yemen. To wonder which of the sea creatures swimming in the bay might have travelled that distance. In these strange times this is the closest we are likely to come to international travel for quite some time.

Once upon a time Eilat sustained itself from copper mining (probably the original King Solomon's Mines) and the port, but in recent decades the town's chief industry is tourism with a skyline of glittering hotels by the waterfront and a cluster of older guesthouses back in the old town centre popular with students and backpackers.

Right now all of them from the fanciest to the most basic are dark, just the odd light on where lone security guards still sit at deserted reception desks. The hotel district is like a ghost town, eerily silent and unlit, like old ships abandoned out to sea. The pleasure yachts and glass bottomed boats rest draped in tarps tied to the moorings of silent quays. My heart aches for all the local residents who's livelihoods depend on tourism.

As always we pray for better days for everyone and look forward to the day when we can once again welcome visitors from around the world.

Israel and the school quandary

It's a mistake comparing countries on this matter. Israel has about double the number of children per capita than other Western countries. Average class sizes are bigger, physical classroom are smaller and more crowded.

Schools being closed is much more disruptive to our economy because simply we have more young kids per capita so more people who have to stay home or try to WFH with little kids under foot. We also just in general have a younger population with more families of childbearing age.

This is part of what makes our country so dynamic and innovative, but in the case of covid it may make our school system something of an Achilles heel.

The parameters are simply very different for Israel than the UK or Sweden or the US or the Netherlands or any other Western country many of us naturally compare Israel to.

Maybe opening schools in the US and UK for example has gone for the most part relatively smoothly, especially primary schools.

That doesn't necessarily mean that having the same policy in Israel will yield the same result. It doesn't mean that enacting the same policies and safeguards will work the same way.

We need to be making our own model based on our own demographics, climate and resources not just saying "but in the US/UK/Sweden/Germany" etc.

Many of the schools here closed in September not because of the lockdown, but well before, due to outbreaks among pupils and staff that left schools logistically unable to function due to large numbers of teachers and kids in quarantine or infected.

Schools can't function normally when infection rates are through the roof. I saw primary schools where hundreds of pupils were in bidud at any one time with dozens of teachers either infected or in bidud.

Lockdown or no lockdown a school can't function like that. Certainly a situation of rolling recurring quarantines and infections will not yield any kind of stable school routine and it will still disrupt the economy and parents ability to work.

More than many other Western countries with colder climates we are in a position to make a lot of use of the outdoors. Yes, even in the rain.

I realise this is not mainstream, but among Israel's homeschoolers and at the margins there is a "forest school" type movement, there are communities where learning happens at least in part outdoors and in most weathers. There is the Shomrei Hagan organisation which has educational programmes running outdoors throughout the year in all but the most foul weather.

These are resources which MoE could be looking at to apply on a wider scale to facilitate learning through the covid crisis. We have a country blessed with a relatively mild winter with lots of winter sun. We have stunning nature and archaeology sites, many within or close to urban areas, including in more deprived locales and especially, but not only, in the periphery.

Even if we have to in part continue by distance learning it should be possible for classes to have regular weekly socially distanced meet-ups outdoors, with nature and archaeological classes and activities. These are mostly free resources located near to so many of our schools.

Yes, it will mean that academically there is less emphasis on the conventional core curriculum but frankly I don't think that is key during a global pandemic. Facilitating learning lishma and the social connections between kids, class cohesion, contact with their teachers, healthy outdoor time, these are all fundamentally important to the well being of our communities and our kids.

Maybe they will still be zooming maths and English part of the time, but outdoor schooling away from screens at least a couple of times a week could do a great deal to support their physical and mental health.

None of this is to say that MoE has the foggiest idea how to enact any of this. MoE policy makers are unlikely to look to homeschoolers or fringe educational movements for their covid policies (or any others), but in principle the concepts and resources are there for innovative alternatives.

Will the Ministry of Education do any of this? Sadly I think that is doubtful.

I see a lot of innovative teachers and school headteachers who would like to get more creative and more flexible in their response to covid and who see how critical it is to maintain that bond between them and their students, who appreciate that creating an alternative framework for learning together is far more crucial than plugging away at some kind of traditional core curriculum. 

My impression (and I hope that I am wrong) is that the MoE itself is characterised by policy makers who are far more set in their ways and unable to deviate from a more traditional curriculum and teaching methods. I fear that this will mean continued attempts at re-opening schools and doing the same attempt at "regular school" over and over with the same results we had in May and in September. 

Virtual Ushpizin

Here in Israel it is the start of the week long festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles, Festival of Booths). The holiday is celebrated with the construction of huts outdoors, on people's balconies, in yards, even in parking areas and on the pavement in buildings where that is the only open space.

The sukkah, the temporary dwelling we live in for the week of Sukkot, represents the uncertainty and frailty of human existence. It has at least a couple of walls, but the roof must be sparse enough that at night you can see the moon and stars through the cracks, even though it offers shade by day.

It reminds us of our ancient ancestors wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt and later our agricultural ancestors who built temporary huts in the fields this time of year during the autumn harvests, a season focused on the delicate change in weather on the margin between the hot dry summer and the hoped for rainy season.

We need the rains, but if they come too early they may damage the harvest, not to mention rain out our fragile sukkah huts. If they come too late they will damage the coming autumn agricultural seasons. Everything hinges on the rains coming at their appointed time, a seasonal reminder of the fragility of human life.

One of the central themes of Sukkot is hospitality. Traditionally this is a holiday with much inviting and hosting, to the extent that the President of Israel opens his sukkah to the public and citizens from all over the country can come to visit.

This year though Israel sadly has one of the world's highest covid infection rates and the country is under lockdown. No one may host in their sukkot, immediate households only. An especially lonely holiday for those who live alone.

Among the customs related to the sukkah is the symbolic inviting of the Ushpizin, the biblical figures Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and King David. This year these will be our only "guests", representing for us all the family and friends we would usually share this festival with.