Hanukah in Modi'in - Maccabee-style!

Today my brother, mother and I went to a moshav (farm) in Modi'in, the town where the Maccabees from the Hanukah story lived 2,000 years ago. When we got there, the first thing we did was milk the goats. I got to also hold a 1 week old baby goat and saw it drink from its mother.

Baby goats are like any other baby - animal or human - in that it's small and makes you feel loving towards it. With the fresh milk, we made soft cheese. It was a Russian cheese and took just 5 minutes to make once the milk was boiled to the right temperature (other cheeses can take up to 3 weeks to make!). We got to eat it right then and there, it was so good that I felt that I was in heaven. I never thought a Russian cheese would be so simple, fresh and tasty, but this one was.

This little bag of cheese cloth has the cheese in it.

We cleaned wool and spun it on a wheel.

We picked fresh herbs for tea, jam and other things. We then made a mobile of local clay. Judy, the farmer, gave us some homemade ice cream which was a very weird flavor of banana-date-coffee. After that, we went to an excavated archeological site right next to her home which had an oil press, a wine making area and even caves that the Maccabees hid in! After that, we had a great song session with some college-aged boys singing spiritual songs written by an Orthodox hippie who used to live on the moshav. In the middle of the nice songs, 30 old ladies busted in chattering and taking over our space, kind of ruined the moment!

The moshav was where Shlomo Carlebach lived - a lot of ex-hippies turned religious.

The whole day, my brother was excited and kept saying "Judy! Um, Judy! Excuse me!" and then he'd ask questions or say some comment, which cracked me up - I guess he did that because he was curious and excited to be there.

At the end, we went back to Judy's house to buy some fresh olive oil made right there from the area's olive trees; this was the same area where the Maccabees got the famous oil that lit up the reclaimed Temple in Jerusalem for 8 days instead of 1 day, the Hanukah miracle - so it was really special to be here during Hanukah!