Stuck inside? Pesach trip canceled? Join Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz for a virtual tour instead

Photos: Menachem Kalish

If you’re stuck inside dreaming of blue skies, rushing water, and the joy of watching your kids run freely through the grass, you’re in good company. You’re also in the right place, because we’re about to take a virtual tour of what is in my humble opinion one of the most amazing sites in Eretz Yisrael — Tel Dan. Usually I do my tours in person, but we’re all discovering new talents and abilities these days.

A River Runs through It

Our tour begins with an incredible overlook of the Dan River. This year our tefillos of v’sein tal u’matar have been answered in abundance. Whereas last year the river was a mere trickle in many places, today the river is roaring.

The Dan River is one of the three major rivers that flow down from the Chermon, Israel’s highest mountain, which is on the border of the Golan Heights and Syria; the other two are Nachal Senir (Hatzbani) and Nachal Chermon (Banias). All three rivers converge and become the Yarden (aka the Jordan River). The Dan is the largest of the three — in fact, it’s bigger than the other two put together — and provides more than half of the water in the Yarden.

By the way, “Yarden” comes from the words yored Dan — the downflow of the Dan River. The Yarden flows down to the Kinneret, which flows down to the lower Yarden and to the Dead Sea. After four years of drought they were both drying up. The gishmei brachah of the past two years have them brimming with water.

Wade a Minute

Following the trail, we come upon a big wading pool. Usually this pool is full of children frolicking in the waters. Everyone loves the water here in Eretz Yisrael, and so this is one place where you can see Jews of all kinds — chareidim from Yerushalayim and chilonim from Tel Aviv — as well as Arabs, all of them enjoying a fun afternoon together. There are no politics or religious differences — and because it’s just a wading pool with little kids splashing around, tzniyus is usually not a problem. Today, however, when everyone is under quarantine, it’s eerily quiet.

Shoftim Stop

The majority of Sefer Shoftim describes the stories and wars of the shevatim and their leaders after they conquered the Land. The shofet with the most “face time” is Shimshon of shevet Dan, who gets four perakim. He’s certainly the most difficult shofet to comprehend. This one-man fighting machine against the Plishtim didn’t command an army. And he is handed over by the people to the Plishtim, where, after his downfall with his Plishti wife Delila, he meets his end. But this difficult navi opens the door to a subsequent chapter in the sefer, which is the story of how Shevet Dan moved to the next stop on our itinerary.

Oy, Dan

If walls could speak, as the saying goes, the almost-3,000-year-old walls of the city of Dan would have a lot to say. We can approximate the age of the walls because of their two types of construction. First, there are the big boulder-sized original rocks that make up the bulk of the wall. There are also a few places on the upper part of the wall which have Roman-style shaved bricks similar to Herodian stone. This tells us that Dan’s city was inhabited from the early period of the Shoftim all the way through Bayis Sheini.

Inside the gate of the city is a podium, where there was once a throne. From Tanach we know that the gate of the city was where the shofet sat, and it’s amazing to see Tanach come alive before your eyes. Imagine the dinei Torah that might have taken place here!

In other words, this is a perfect spot to open up a Tanach and read a story — one of this tour guide’s favorite things to do. We begin with the chapter in Navi that describes how the tribe of Dan didn’t successfully conquer their portion, which is the central coastline of Eretz Yisrael — from above Ashkelon to north of today’s Bnei Brak and inland to near Beit Shemesh. Today the Gush Dan region is the most populous of Israel, with almost half of the country living there. Back then, though, the terrorism of the Plishtim was too much to bear. The tribe of Dan therefore needed somewhere else to live.