by Renée Darline Roden ’14, ’18 M.T.S.

Despite the signs in three different languages forbidding swimming, I peel off my sneakers and sour socks and dip my calloused toes into Banias’ chilly current. The water washing my dusty toes will wander down through northern Galilee to become the famous Jordan River. Currently, I am sitting near the northern border of the Golan Heights, home to the most important headwaters of the Jordan River.

Since the Jordan River is the chief source of water not only for these highlands on the foothills of the Anti-Lebanon mountains but also for the arid desert regions further south, the Golan Heights is hotly-contested territory. The winding highway I drove my small Toyota Corolla along to reach Hermon Stream (Banias) Nature Reserve was lined by barbed-wire fences featuring signs reading DANGER: MINES. The lingering presence of landmines reminds visitors that dormant violence could still erupt, even on a quiet Saturday like today. But in Banias, under a lush canopy of oversize scalloped fig leaves fracturing the midday sun into a cool green light, I am at peace.

As I parked the car and approached the wadi, or gully, that houses the stream from Banias Springs, I took stock of the scenery around me: dry and lifeless. Nothing moved in the dull acres of grass. But, following the Israeli families on their Shabbat outings down a flight of wooden stairs and winding steep dirt paths into the wadi, I stumbled into a world bursting at the seams with beauty. The wadi teems with living; everywhere I look is covered in green. The smell of things growing fills the air, along with the symphonic din of Banias’ water roaring over stones. I hike up the path to the waterfall. In the quiet pool at its base, schools of fish swim in the deep green water. Their lithe forms are little arrows darting between the foam of the falling water and the sunlight playing off the rocks on the bank. After the dryness of the landscape, the absolute abundance of water crashing through this lush little valley is a shock of delight to my system.

Banias (or Panias) is the modern Arabic name for an ancient spring dedicated to the nature god Pan. The water that bubbles up from the rock at the foot of Mount Hermon grows to become one of the largest tributaries of the Jordan River. The city that was built up around these revered, ancient springs became known as Caesarea Philippi, which Herod the Great’s son Philip, the tetrarch of Galilee, made his seat of government. Somewhere in the wilderness near here, perhaps right here, where I am washing my feet, Jesus asked his closest companions the question: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:16)

The Jordan River comes from four different headwaters; Banias being one of the major sources. Another important headwater is just down the road, and is, in fact, a putative source of the Jordan’s name. I hop into the car and drive to Tel Dan.

Tel Dan, like Banias, is the site of an ancient Canaanite city. The most commonly accepted theories of the Jordan’s name is that it is an adaptation of the Hebrew word yardan meaning “to flow down.” Language develops to describe shared landscapes and realities. Accordingly, some theories imagine that the river’s name developed to describe that body of water which flows “down from Dan.”

The Tel Dan Nature Reserve, created in the 1970s, covers about 120 acres in a paradise of beauty. As I walk into the park, I feel like I am stepping into a fairytale. I’m certainly not alone in this feeling. Some Israelite folktales point to Tel Dan as the original location of the Garden of Eden. I could buy it, I think, as I walk through the dazzling mid-day sunlight dancing off water and trees.

In Tel Dan, water is abundant, profligate. Water crashes in miniature waterfalls and rapids, rushing over itself to make its way south. On a small stream that is also a path, water trickles over smooth stones. I catch a glimpse of a small blue-and-red crab scurrying between the stones. This garden is so saturated with life that even the empty spaces between stones crawl with it.

This water isn’t just beautiful, it’s a vital source of life.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as Jews fleeing a hostile Europe flooded Israel, they began to bring Western development back to their biblical homeland. As Israel rapidly developed into a nuclear nation after World War II, their boom of development required water. Naturally, in the arid region of the Middle East, where water is precious, the Jordan River is a coveted natural resource. Control of the Jordan’s headwaters and diverting river water for agriculture are still violently contested rights and delicate privileges.

On a hill at the north end of Tel Dan Nature Reserve, visitors can tour a now-defunct bunker that faces the Syria-Lebanon border, a reminder of the struggle for control over these waters. After Israel began using the Jordan Basin’s water for farming in Galilee, particularly after the installation of the National Water Carrier in 1964, which carries water from the fertile north to the southern regions, border skirmishes with their Arab neighbors to the north escalated. After the Six-Day war helped secure Israel’s northern border in 1967, Israel pushed back Syria to gain crucial control over the Jordan River Basin. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 and has controlled the prized region since. 

The nature reserve at Tel Dan was itself a compromise between water planners, who needed to draw water from the Jordan to support the streams of immigrants flowing into Israel, and conservationists, who worried that pulling too much water from such an important tributary would negatively affect the ecosystem around it: the Sea of Galilee, the Hula Marshes—important migration grounds of birds and other wildlife—and the Dead Sea, which is shrinking by over three feet per year, due to the decreased flow from the Jordan.

This exploitation of the Jordan becomes all too apparent further south. I drive my Toyota Corolla again past barbed-wire fences warning of land mines as I approach Qasr el-Yehud, “Castle of the Jews.” If you take Highway 1 from Jerusalem out towards Jericho, and then turn left after the gas station, you will reach the west bank of this ancient site on the Jordan River, that, for millennia, has been marked as the spot where John baptized Jesus. The hive of ancient churches and monasteries surrounding the sacred site are now bombed-out ruins behind the barbed wire fences.

A simple open-air chapel and visitor’s center ushers faithful to a roped-off section of the river. The Kingdom of Jordan is just feet away from us—I could almost reach out and touch it. The thought is so tantalizing, I imagine swimming across to the mirroring open-air chapel of Al-Maghtas, the ancient site of “Bethany beyond the Jordan” (Jn 1:28). The east bank of the Jordan opposite me appears so peaceful. But I suppose that any swimmer bold enough to attempt the crossing would not be peacefully greeted. Borders are strange things.

In the two-hundred-plus miles it covers in its course, the Jordan River also travels a dramatic vertical distance. It begins in the foothills of Mount Hermon, over 1500 feet above sea level, before sinking into the Jordan Rift Valley, to merge into the almost 700-feet-below-sea-level Sea of Galilee, where it musters strength to finish the journey to the Dead Sea, 1,410 feet below sea-level.

At Qasr el-Yehud, the vigorous life that animated the Jordan up in Banias seems to have been sucked out of it. And it has, quite literally, as its water has been diverted away from the river to help fuel the Israeli economy and various farming projects. At Qasr el-Yehud, the river is a thin, despondent brown. It seems a far cry from the rushing river of the harvest flood season featured in the book of Joshua, which required the assistance of an angel of the Lord to cross  (Jos 3:15-17).

I take Highway 1 out one final time from Jerusalem. This time, I turn right after the gas station. After a long desert hike on a hot June day, my travel companions and I pull into a grubby beach on the shores of the Dead Sea. We tentatively approach the famous salt water that is the Jordan’s final destination. As I slowly swim out into the water, I begin to laugh. The feeling of being buoyed up by the impossibly dense water is unexpectedly exhilarating. All three of us—the young graduate student, the father of three, the evangelical pastor—begin giggling like children as we roll around in the thick, salty water.

Even after just a handful of minutes, the sting of salt starts to burn, so we retreat back to land to slather ourselves in the rich black mud and rinse ourselves off in sweet, fresh water. Before I head to the shore, I turn to face the mountains of Jordan across the hazy heat of the flooded salt plain. Facing east, I quietly thank the God who made Banias’ roaring springs, Tel Dan’s crisp mountain water, and the life-giving river, for buoying us up with life and for holding us so tenderly in his provident hand.

Image Credits:

Jordan River, via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

vad_levin, Tel Dan Nature Reserve via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

All other photos courtesy of the author.