“Fifty Years Later”
Adding to the solemnity of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in Israel is the memory of the fateful Yom Kippur War in 1973 when Arab forces attacked Israel on the holiest day of the year.
On the Golan Heights sits Kibbutz Ortal, and resident Heli Jacobs, as the kibbutz’s director of tourism, has created a three day tour named “Fifty Years Later” to mark both the past battles and the future of the Golan region. Her father died in the war in the Sinai when she was just a year old. She explains her aim in creating the tours: “Everyone will speak about stories of heroism and the fallen, and that’s obvious. I wanted to do something about life after the war, about what happened here in the fifty years since, the wineries and tourism and archaeology and the relationships between people, the kibbutzim, the secular, the religious, the music, what happened to all of us.” Regarding the conflict singer Mika Zeinav, who presents a concert as part of the tour says, “1973 was a strategic win but so many people were killed. It was a win, but with losses of 2,000 people. Everyone in Israel has to find their way to connect to this moment, Jacobs said. Music is one way, visiting and talking about the area is another method.”
The tours begin October 8-10 and will run throughout the year, “private tours can also be customized for groups who want a different date or a tour fitted to their needs.”
(Source: The Times of Israel)
