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For all tastes By Ronit Vered Tags: Friday Magazine, Israel news  The fourth Ta'am Hakinneret (Taste of Kinneret) festival, featuring special foods, workshops, hikes and various culinary events, will be held during three weekends next month (from December 12-27) around, well, Lake Kinneret. This year, more than ever, organizers are focusing on the historical angle of gastronomic tradition, perhaps in an effort to define and characterize local cuisine. In addition to the various events described below, workshops and meals showcasing Tiberias cuisine will be available at the Scots Hotel and at Holiday Inn Hospitality College; a cooking workshop celebrating the citrus industry will be held in the renovated villa of Lord Mond (for whom the town of Tel Mond is named). Some 8,000 years ago, a huge village (at least according to the standards of the time - 200 dunams, or 50 acres, in size) stretched along the banks of the Yarmuk River, below the Gilad ridge and in the foothills of the Golan Heights. Boasting the best-planned streets found in the ancient Middle East, the village was inhabited by people who unknowingly made history: The Neolithic Yarmukian culture was one of the first to move from a nomadic way of life to permanent dwellings, and from a civilization based on hunting and gathering to agriculture. This innovative breakthrough heralded a revolutionary transformation in humanity's relations with nature. Agriculture became the basis for the creation of human civilization. Even back then, subduing nature and conquering the land provoked moral qualms. Early man agonized over ecological quandaries, as reflected in the myths and folktales that saw the discovery of agricultural production methods as an act of violence against nature. Fertility rituals were meant to atone for the sins committed against Mother Earth. It is possible that the beautiful, surrealistic figurines discovered at a Yarmukian dig, mainly of sensual full-hipped women - which nowadays make tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre and the like - were part of a cult that aimed to please and placate the earth mother. Advertisement Also unearthed at Kibbutz Sha'ar Hagolan in the Jordan Valley were the first pottery vessels ever found in the Land of Israel: a small-big step for humanity, but a big-giant step for those who revel in gastronomical pleasure. And this is not only because of the attractive variety of food-preparation techniques that suddenly became available to our early forebears. Roasted meat requires only a source of fire in order to be prepared. When meat is cooked in a pot, however, the juices remain. Thus was beef stock invented for the first time, and where would we be without it? With the juices one can cook not only other meats, but also grains, lentils and vegetables. The transition to pot cooking generated work that already then was perceived as largely feminine in essence, as opposed to the masculine occupation with procuring raw meat. Women were already in the kitchen thousands of years ago. Finds from this fascinating period in human history are on display in a small but charming museum in Kibbutz Sha'ar Hagolan. Devoted to Yarmukian culture (around 6000 B.C.E.), this was the first museum of prehistory to be opened in Israel, in the 1950s. There are plans to reconstruct a Yarmukian village there, and enable visitors to get a taste of everyday life 8,000 years ago. However, lack of funds has relegated that scheme to the drawing board for now. The workshops run by Catherine Ivry , who was born in Paris and came to the kibbutz after marrying the grandson of children's author Miriam Roth, also a kibbutz member, are perhaps the first step toward implementing this welcome plan. On the lawn overlooking a primal, virginal landscape that has hardly changed since prehistoric times, in a small studio below the museum, workshops are held in making figurines, ceramics, creating flint tools and prehistoric cooking. The subtleties of the gastronomic preferences of these early ancestors are unknown - they left behind no recipes or written evidence - but it is possible to reconstruct cooking techniques and flavors based on the archaeological findings. The indigenous plants cultivated on a large scale in the Middle East - grains such as wheat and barley, legumes such as lentils, chickpeas and beans - are the star players in the recreated meals, along with dishes such as pottage and bread made of flour mixed with almond powder and honey. Also available are wild plants and spices such as nettles and rue. Even if it's not necessary to actually hunt the beast for your meal, cooking in the prehistoric kitchen style takes time and patience. Museum of Yarmukian Culture, Kibbutz Sha'ar Hagolan; for workshops, phone 04-667-7386. Cave drawings found at prehistoric sites in Europe showed early honey hunters scrambling down ropes from cliffs, under attack by hundreds of furious bees, but nevertheless transfering the precious combs from hives into baskets carried on their backs. Early man was familiar with the republic of bees and was extremely fond of its sweet product - a fondness he passed down to his descendants. Honey has enjoyed thousands of years of culinary history, not only because human beings have always had a sweet tooth, but also because it played a key role during periods when spices and condiments were used to conceal the bad taste of the raw ingredients. Kibbutz Kinneret has been in the bee-and-honey business for 88 years - the twinkling of an eye in historical terms but very meaningful in local tradition. Kibbutz member Noga Tamir, the daughter of Ben Zion Yisraeli (who, among other things, restored date growing to this country by smuggling date shoots out of Iran and Iraq), and Haya Yisraeli (one of the country's first beekeepers), is intimately acquainted with most of that long history. She is now 82. In 1919, Avraham Hartsfeld, a leader of the Labor Zionist movement in Palestine, summoned Tamir's father to Jaffa to help establish an agricultural center there. Yisraeli inaugurated the first beekeeper's course in the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community) because bees were considered vital to making the land bloom. Haya, who audited the course, was enthralled by what she heard. The first beehives were acquired in 1920 - cylinders of clay or wood in which the local Arabs raised bees - and Noga was born into a busy world. "For decades we worked with angry bees," she recalls. "The local bees are a particularly aggressive species. It was only in later years that a calmer Italian species was brought to Israel." Tamir retired from her work five years ago. These days she uses a cart to traverse long distances, but her back is still erect, her features strong and beautiful, and the outpouring of stories from her about family and national history is riveting. An encounter with her, which includes a visit to the bee house, is held in the yard of the house she shares with her husband, Ze'ev. The backdrop is a collection of large, splendid pottery vessels, which he fashions by hand, without a potter's wheel, in the same way that the Yarmukian culture produced the first ceramic utensils. Encounters with Noga Tamir, Kibbutz Kinneret. The men of the Golan Heights are continuing the ancient male tradition of preparing and consuming meat. And as usual with men, in this case also, size does matter. While they are involved in pursuing this tradition on a regular basis, it seems like the male characteristic of primal desire overcoming common sense has only become stronger as the Taste of Kinneret Festival approaches. This is evident in the huge, 1.1-kilo hamburger served at the Marinado meat bar, in a thick bun made in the Balkan bakery below. Also on the menu are two steaks of an unusual cut: the 1.5-kilo double prime rib, which reminds one of the head of a raging bull, and the 1.2-kilo double porterhouse. The hamburgers were great, but even more impressive are the dishes with lamb, some of which comes from the ranch of Roi Tabor and Itamar Kendrick, the smoked sausages of lamb and veal, and the lamb osso bucco, served in a stew with white wine, root vegetables and whole garlic heads. There is another advantage to this professional and enjoyable place, which consists of a meat-cutting plant, a bar-restaurant and delicatessen, which offer the best Golan Heights products: The wine in the restaurant is sold at the prices of those in the store there, and thus one can enjoy a good bottle for NIS 40-50, and a great one for NIS 100. Prices for comparable wine elswhere would cost three times as much. Marinado, meat bar and delicatessen, Kibbutz Ein Gev, www.marinado.co.il (Hebrew only). Bookmark to del.icio.us   Light unto the nations Obama must help Israel break its territorial addiction. Blockade busters Israeli Arab leaders vow to sail to Gaza to break blockade.

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