Follow Roosevelt Island's Doctor Jack Resnick On A Bicycle Trip Of Israel With The Arava Institute - Israelis, Arabs, Jews, Christians & Muslims Working To Save The Environment

You Tube Video Of Arava Institute

Roosevelt Island's Doctor Jack Resnick is participating in his third 300-mile bicycle trek across Israel together with 130 other people. They are raising money to support the Arava Institute, an ecological educational institution in the Israeli desert that works to promote peace between Arabs and Jews. The Arava students are drawn from both populations and they spend a year living and studying together about protecting the environment. Doctor Resnick says that most importantly, the students learn how to live together.

Doctor Resnick shares the following report of his trip. From October 20:

The first day of my 300 mile bicycle trip from Jerusalem to EIlat is coming to an end.

 A Map of Jerusalem on Byzantine Mosaics

Yesterday was a training day and we roamed around Jerusalem visiting the Old City and the Temple Mount. We saw the holiest site of the three great Western Religions -- the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,

 

 The Blue Domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

The Wailing (Western) Wall of Solomon's Temple,

 

the Mosque of Omar

 

and the Al Aksa Mosque.

 

Sadly, we also saw the separation wall built by Israel in response to the last Intifada.

 

My hope is that the small progress in coexistence fostered by the Arava Institute will someday lead to a broad coexistence that can see this wall torn down.
We set out on our bicycles at 6 a.m. not knowing that we would soon be riding in the most difficult day in the nine-year history of this ride.

 

The thermometer reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit and we faced 35-mile an hour headwinds for much of the morning. I took more breaks than planned and managed to make it through the day's 60 mile trek. (In the accompanying photos you'll see the butterfly that spent some time on my finger as I sat in the shade of the only tree around.)

We traveled through beautiful countryside lush with olive trees and dozens of species of trees along with birds which I had never seen before.

The day ended in Ashkelon,

 

a city on the Mediterranean. A dip in the sea was the first order of business.

Continuing on his journey, Dr. Resnick writes:

 I'm writing this at the end of Day 3 of my bicycle trip from Jerusalem to Eilat.

Yesterday was an education in how all things are relative. My house call patients have brought home this idea to me many times over the years. I'm no longer surprised when somebody who spends their life in a wheelchair expresses pity and sadness for the difficulty faced by someone only slightly more disabled. They appreciate the sometimes subtle ways in which their own limitations afford  them degrees of freedom and happiness unavailable to that other  person.

Yesterday, the temperature and wind each dropped by 15 points on our bicycle route. That meant it was 97 degrees Fahrenheit and the winds had dropped down to 20 miles per hour. But it felt positively balmy compared to the previous day. Everything is relative.

The most moving stop was at a resevoir. The Israelis are renowned for their ability to manage that scarcest of resources, water. The resevoir employs fancy technology that I could barely understand to supply the water that has made a good portion of the Israeli desert bloom. But that wasn't the moving part of the stop.

As we stood at the edge of the resevoir we could see the skyline of Gaza in the distance. We knew that thousands of people were crowded into those buildings living very difficult lives. Our Israeli tour guide waxed eloquent on the plight of the Gazans. Even more eloquent was the Israeli resident of Sde Boker who had addressed us the previous night. (Sde Boker is the Israeli town closest to Gaza which has come under intermittent rocket attack from Gazan mlitants.) He recalled the past when the residents of the two communities had been intimately involved in each others lives. And he urged us to join him and other Sde Boker residents in their plea to the Israeli Government to lift the seige on Gaza.

The day was not all grim. Animals supplied some lighthearted moments. We were riding along and saw a herd of dark animals on a farm. As we got closer we realized that they were ostriches -- and the herd came flopping out to meet us.

Late in the day, as we entered the desert, we arrived at an oasis. Lying on the rare patch of green was a cat who, at first glance, seemed  dead. But then we realized she was just conserving energy. And our energy had crashed as well.

 Today we really spent the day riding in the desert. The heat was back, although not to the punishing levels of our first day. Tomorrow is a day off.

Here's a You Tube Video of the 2009 Arava ride from the crew's perspective.