Youngs Around the World

We left the hostel around 7:30am and caught the sherut to Central Bus Station, where we took another sherut to Haifa. A sherut is a privately run minibus system in Israel. We haven’t found any published schedule; you just ask around about where to catch one for a particular destination. The sheruts drive around and you hail them like a taxi, holding up as many fingers as you have passengers in your party. If they have room, they stop and pick you up. The fares are fixed: 5 sheqels (about $1.25 US) for a local ride and 25-35 sheqels between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Once seated on the sherut, you pass your money forward like an assembly line and your change comes back to you in exactly the same way. It is a cheap and convenient way of getting around, especially between the bigger cities. The drivers seem much more honest and helpful than the cockroach taxi drivers that we’ve encountered.

Haifa was beautiful! The sherut dropped us off a couple of blocks from the Baha’i World Center and, since I had characteristically left Saba’s directions at the hostel, we had to ask a friendly pedestrian to point the way. We didn’t see any signs for it but suddenly there it was on the left, a rising sequence of lush, green garden terraces with a wide marble staircase through the center, seemingly leading up to the gates of Heaven! The moment that I saw it, I gasped at its majesty. Saba was waiting for us on the other side of the tall, wrought-iron gate and we immediately took a taxi to The Shrine of The Bab, which sits between nine lower terraces and nine upper terraces, built into the steep slope of Mt. Carmel and overlooking the Mediterranean.

The Shrine houses the remains of the Bab, who foretold the coming of the Prophet Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i faith. The interior was simple: colorful Persian rugs lined the floor while a few chandeliers and vases of fresh white flowers adorned the rest of the room. Interestingly, the Baha’i faith has no clergy and the Shrine is a place for solitary prayer and meditation. The affairs of the faithful are administered by a system of elected councils. According to the brochure that we received, the main principles of the Baha’i faith are as follows:

Abandonment of all forms of prejudiceFull equality between the sexesRecognition of the common source and essential oneness of the world’s great religions Elimination of the extremes of poverty and wealth

Universal compulsory education

Right and responsibility of each person to search independently for truth

Establishment of a world federal system

Recognition that faith must be consistent with reason and that science and religion should be in harmony

It seems like a beautiful and peaceful religion, focusing on the equality and importance of individuals, as God’s creation. During our guided tour of the upper terraces, we learned that the symmetry of the garden represents equality. I felt very drawn to the gardens, not in a religious way, but as a place of self-discovery and reflection. I believe that so many spiritual answers lie inside us all but we are too distracted with our daily lives to spend the necessary time in prayer and mediation to realize them. We (generally speaking) rely on our priests, pastors, and rabbis to spoon-feed us the interpretations and we feed on them like carnivores on a carcass, hungrily devouring every word in our state of spiritual famine. I love my priest for his wisdom and guidance but I admittedly use him as a crutch, instead of actually reading the Scriptures and determining how they apply to my life as an Orthodox Christian. I believe that we must be students of our faith rather than sheep in a herd, led blindly by the shepherd to the ends of the Earth. But enough of my religious ranting…Aaron and I are fascinated by world religions. We dream of studying them in greater depth someday as well as learning to salsa, starting a business, having children, writing a book, living in Europe, traveling the world…so many dreams, so little time.

I can see why Saba is enjoying her volunteer work at the Baha’i World Center. It is a very serene, perfect setting for prayer and for walking, reading, thinking, or simply admiring the beauty of the gardens, which are meticulously manicured. I wanted to stay there – to spend more time wandering contemplatively through the terraces but there was no time for that. Instead, the three of us walked to Saba’s flat to change into our swimsuits, and then headed for the beach, where we relaxed and read all afternoon until the sun had set. The night breeze from the Red Sea had been warm in Egypt and we could comfortably sit by the water in short sleeves but the evening winds off the Mediterranean are cool and crisp. When the sun had sunken below the horizon, I quickly grew weary, covered in goose bumps and ready to hail the sherut to head for “home”. As I said goodbye to Saba, my old partner in crime, I didn’t feel sad because I know, with a strange certainty, that we will see each other again soon.

Back in Tel Aviv around 7:00pm, the end of Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath, during which many businesses close down), the city was bubbling with activity but we were too tired to go exploring. Instead, we hibernated in the privacy of our room and packed up our things for our bus trip to Jerusalem the next morning. Tel Aviv seemed to us like just another big city – very Western and cosmopolitan – but we didn’t spend enough time there to really get a feel for its energy and offerings. Still, we felt ready to leave. We have only budgeted two weeks for both Israel and Jordan – the two countries were not even added to our itinerary until I randomly reconnected with Saba via email a couple of weeks before our departure – and there is so much yet to see.

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