Mount Arbel

Feel the wind first. Up here, on the bare limestone lip of Mount Arbel, it comes up off the water in steady pushes. It carries the smell of dry grass, warm rock and, faintly, the lake. Under your feet the stone is pale and pitted, worn smooth in places by hikers. Then the ground simply stops. Beyond the edge, the Sea of Galilee spreads out below you, wide and blue-grey, with the hills of the Golan rising on its far shore.

This drop is the reason people come. Mount Arbel is not especially high above sea level. But the lake beneath it lies around two hundred metres below sea level, one of the lowest freshwater lakes on Earth. So from this summit you look down a sheer wall of several hundred metres. The cliff falls almost straight into the valley. Your eye travels from your shoes to the water in one dizzy line, and the town of Tiberias sits along the shore to your right.

Look along the cliff face itself, if you can do so safely. The rock is full of dark openings. Some are natural caves. Others were cut, widened and walled by people over many centuries. From a distance they look like small black windows in a pale tower. These caves are the heart of Arbel's story. For a long time, they were the best hiding places in the whole Galilee.

The Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote in the first century, tells the most famous episode. In the decades before the Common Era, the future king Herod was fighting to take control of the Galilee. Rebels, whom Josephus calls brigands, had sheltered with their families in these cliff caves. The caves were almost impossible to reach from below. So, according to Josephus, Herod's soldiers were lowered from the top in large chests hanging on ropes.

Picture that for a moment, standing where you are now. Soldiers swung out over this drop, hanging in front of cave mouths, fighting with hooks and fire. Josephus describes it as a grim, desperate struggle. We only have his account, and ancient historians liked a dramatic scene. But when you see the shape of this cliff, the story becomes very easy to believe.

The caves did not stay empty after that. Much later, during the Ottoman period, the cliff was fortified again. Walls and rooms were built into the rock to create a cave fortress high on the face. Its stone walls are still there, set into the cliff like a castle that has been pressed into the mountain. Hikers who take the descending trail pass close to these structures, and they are among the strangest buildings in the region.

Now for something most visitors miss. Arbel was also the name of a Jewish village on the plateau behind you, near the base of the mountain. Its remains include an ancient synagogue, built of local stone, from the late Roman or Byzantine centuries. Parts of its walls and columns still stand. Unusually, the synagogue faces south, toward Jerusalem, and its doorway was set in the wall facing the city. It is a quiet site, and many people drive past it on the way to the view.

The village also gave its name to a sage. Nittai of Arbel was one of the early teachers recorded in the Mishnah, the great collection of Jewish law and teaching. In the section called Ethics of the Fathers, he is remembered for practical advice. He told people to keep away from a bad neighbour, and not to join with the wicked. From this windy height, with the valley below, it is a modest and very human voice from the past.

There is a second surprise in the old texts. A passage in the Jerusalem Talmud, written down in the Galilee, describes two rabbis walking in the Arbel valley before sunrise. They watch the first light spread slowly over the land. One of them compares it to redemption, which comes little by little, not all at once. If you come here at dawn, you will see exactly what they meant. The light reaches the far hills first, then slides down toward the water.

Turn west, away from the lake, and look for a hill with two rounded peaks. These are the Horns of Hattin, the remains of an ancient volcano. In 1187, Saladin's army defeated the Crusader forces on the slopes near there. That battle changed the balance of power in the Holy Land, and Jerusalem fell to Saladin a few months later. From Arbel, the whole battlefield looks small and peaceful, a patchwork of fields and pale rock.

Now look down, to the foot of the cliff, at the deep valley curving toward the lake. This is the Arbel stream valley, a natural route from the coast hills down to the shore. At its mouth lies the area of ancient Magdala, the home town linked by tradition with Mary Magdalene. Long-distance walking routes cross this ground, including the Israel National Trail and the Jesus Trail, a pilgrimage path through the Galilee.

On a clear day, especially in winter, look far to the north-east. You may see the long shoulder of Mount Hermon, sometimes white with snow. Across the lake, the Golan plateau forms a flat dark line. Closer in, fishing boats and tour boats leave thin white tracks on the water. Birds of prey often ride the warm air that rises along the cliff. Watch them hang almost still, at your eye level, with nothing beneath them but air.

Before you leave, stand still for one more minute at the edge. Listen to the wind in the dry grass, and the distant sound of traffic on the shore road far below. Notice how the lake changes colour as clouds pass. Rebels, soldiers, farmers, rabbis and pilgrims all stood on this same rock and looked at this same water. As you walk back from the edge, look once more at the cliff caves... the dark windows are still watching the lake.