Six Words: Thin, Ideal, Decorate, Agile, Relative, Float
When you think of a ski resort, most people don’t think of Israel, but you could. Mount Hermon, Har Hermon in Hebrew, is at the northern end of the Golan. Snow melt from Mount Hermon forms the headwaters of the Jordan River. The river flows into the Sea of Galilee, called Lake Kinneret in Israel, and then to the Dead Sea – the lowest place on the surface of the earth!
In places, the Jordan river has enough volume to swim, but in many places it is thin and shallow. We drove across it in a jeep but could easily have walked across. I started to sing “Just a going over Jordan”, but no one joined me and I ignored the strange looks I got.
If Mount Heron is the head of the River Jordan, I guess you could call the Dead Sea its foot. If you’ve been to Israel, chances are you’ve been to the Dead Sea. And if you’ve been there, ideally you had a chance to float in it. You don’t want to shave or cut yourself for at least a day before you go into the waters of the Dead Sea. The salt will sting anywhere that your skin is raw. It’s not the time to worry about your bikini line.
When you first learned to swim, you probably tried floating first, maybe on your stomach, and also on your back. It was challenging in the beginning. Not so in the Dead Sea. In the Dead Sea you cannot help but float on your back. You can’t sink and you don’t want to get the extremely salty water in your eyes, so you won’t swim or float on your stomach. It takes no agility. You just lean back and you’re floating – high, with your tummy and any other parts that bulge sticking up out of the water. You’ll want a relative or friend to take your picture.
Some people decorate themselves with mud from the Dead Sea. The minerals are supposed to be good for the skin. But it is hard to wash off and very hard to get it out of a bathing suit. You’d certainly be bringing a bit of Israel home with you. It’s much easier to simply buy a bottle or jar of Ahava skin care products. They’re made from Dead Sea minerals and Ahava is Hebrew for love.
One final thought. The water level in the Dead Sea has fallen drastically over the last several decades. From 2004 to 2016 it has fallen 16 meters! That is 52 feet! It is currently falling by about a meter a year. There is a proposal by Israel to desalinate Red Sea water and pipe it to the Dead Sea, but that will take the cooperation of Jordan and of the Palestinian Authority, which is complicated. A lot of ahava, of love, is going to be needed to make that happen.