Zev Vilnay: Walking the Land
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During the few days when snow may fall on the higher peaks throughout Israel, people who live in the white-brushed peaks make the most of the rare weather and rush outside to build snowmen. But for the thousands who live where snow does not grace the region, people get in their cars and travel miles to take a hike through the novelty of white.
Hiking and walking the land is not restricted to these rare days of a European winter, but is a favorite past time of many Israelis – come rain or shine. In modernity, this inbuilt hunger for exploring the land finds its genesis in Zev Vilnay, a geographer and author who made Aliyah with his parents from Kishinev three years after a murderous pogrom lead by priests who encouraged the mob to slaughter 49 Jews in cold blood. The program not only shocked the world, it infamously drove Theodore Herzl to desperately propose Uganda as a solution for the Jewish “question.”