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Deganya Aleph: Long live the cafe. 7 hours in the Jordan Valley By Ronit Vered and Eyal Toueg Tags: cafes, Galilee  We poured a drink, sniffed a quiche, tasted olive oils - and were filled with a great love for the world. When the Jordan Valley isn't enveloped by scorching summer heat, the area offers some incredibly lovely vistas. The hills of the land of dates and bananas are covered in soft green, the fish ponds and reservoirs are visited by huge flocks of birds, and a drive along the border with Jordan is both beautiful and intriguing. Nearly a century of the cooperative settlement movement has not done wonders for the area's gastronomic heritage. But this part of the country, now the land of privatized kibbutzim whose members are desperately seeking new sources of income, has lately been stirring to life. After decades in the culinary wilderness, the first signs of life are showing. 1. Breakfast a la Gordon Advertisement The kibbutz banana pickers trudge over to a work meeting at the cafe that has sprung up on Deganya Aleph, the world's first kibbutz. The dining hall is dead; long live the beautifully designed coffee shop. This cafe, which sits amid the handsome basalt structures put up in 1912 on the model of German farm buildings, has been designed with sleek, minimalist lines. Yet it somehow still preserves the sleepy European atmosphere of a place where the pioneers would have been happy to sit, sipping their tea through a sugar cube held in their teeth. On the walls are early 20th-century pictures of the nine founders, members of the "Hadera Commune," and drawings featuring the busy back of Dr. Yehudit Frankel in various corners of the kibbutz. Frankel, an unmarried doctor of mathematics and law, came to Israel from Germany in the 1950s, entered kibbutz headquarters and announced that her life's dream was to clean the bathrooms of the world's first cooperative settlement, a task she diligently continued for the rest of her life. The menu is simple and modest. Zionist ideologue A. D. Gordon, a devout vegetarian who lived primarily on produce from the kibbutz's small vegetable garden, would have approved. There is a pioneer-style breakfast featuring a fresh and refreshing vegetable salad, yogurt with granola and silan, a syrup made from valley dates, and a selection of cakes and cookies. Cafe Rishonim, Deganya Aleph, 052-3749217; to schedule a tour of Hatzer Harishonim and the Deganya Museum, 04-6608125 2. Dances with wolves in Afikim Every night, before Moshe goes to bed, he howls good night to his pack of wolves. And when he leaves, the wolves howl a sad lament. Moshe Alpert, a news and nature film cameraman, is the leader of the pack of 11 Golan Heights wolves that have grown up at his home. They are movie stars, having appeared in numerous nature films, sometimes as themselves and sometimes in the role of, say, desert wolves. On the guided tour he gives visitors, he tries to convince people that the wolf is not the lone creature of legend, and that the cunning tricks of the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood" aren't all that characteristic of the species. Other stars of the tour are Buffy and Bitzon, a pair of swamp cats that are excellent at fishing; Piggy and Pumba, a pair of enormous wild boars; and the films Moshe has made over the years, which document the local natural world. Moshe Alpert, Afikim, 050-6754628; 04-5312999 3. Hummus under the ficus tree When we were kids, the kibbutz dining hall seemed like a fantastic place. Muscular kibbutzniks sat in their gray cotton undershirts and sliced up cucumbers for salad, an endless supply of seltzer flowed from the aluminum faucet and the greasy "meat" patties (some 80 percent bread and 20 percent meat) drove our appetites wild. Today in the kibbutz dining hall, they serve a plate of sweet-and-sour Chinese chicken from hell for NIS 10, and the third generation of Jordan Valley kibbutzniks is opening up hummus and falafel stands, chocolate factories and gourmet restaurants. The Afikim hummus restaurant, which sits under the thick branches of a large Bengali ficus serves up organic hummus from chickpeas that were sprouted before cooking. It sounds wonderful, but tastes a little too smooth and anemic. What redeems the kibbutz movement's honor are the terrific side dishes - lamb sausages, lentils with fried onion, roasted eggplant. A caring hand is also shown in the other dishes placed on the table (tomatoes, raw onion, pickles and good, bitter olives). Hummus Bengali, Afikim, 04-6754393 4. Pralines filled with dates and pine nuts The chocolate recipe of Minka, Kibbutz Afikim's legendary cook, calls for 11 kilos of sugar, 11 liters of eggs, 1 kilo of baking chocolate and 16 kilos of margarine. An amount of margarine that could fell a pack of elephants, and was the dominant flavor in the childhood of hundreds of toddlers who believed that this was the true taste of chocolate. Countless studies have already been written on what the kibbutz did to the family feeling of all those poor little ones who cried out for mommy between the cold sheets of the children's house and waited in vain for the night guardian. But no one has ever done an in-depth study of how the kibbutz movement affected the palates of generations of young kibbutzniks, for whom the phrase "mother's kitchen" mostly conjures up traumatic image of having to do "the big dishes." For Galit Alpert, it took three years of studying the chocolatier's trade in Belgium to get over the trauma. Today she makes all kinds of pralines with a variety of fillings - many classic, but also some that derive inspiration from local ingredients, such as dates and pine nuts. At the new "chocolate farm" she is opening this month on the kibbutz, there is a visitors' center that depicts the geographical, historical and cultural aspects of chocolate; a factory outlet store; a bar and cafe; and a center where workshops are offered in the preparation of chocolates and ice creams. Galita - Havat Ha'shokolad in Degania, Degania Bet, 04-6755608, www.galita.co.il 5. Where wine meets cheese We usually don't wait until such a late hour to start drinking, but the fear of the pioneering ghosts of Minka and A.D. Gordon got to us, too. Nor did we plan to hang around here for two full hours, but then we couldn't resist what naturally occurs when a bottle of wine meets a tray of good cheeses. Sara Levy's ancestors came from Normandy, France, a place known for a gastronomic tradition somewhat more venerable than that of the Valley kibbutzim. This led her to establish a dairy and produce a small and continually changing selection of mostly French-inspired cheeses made from goat's and sheep's milk. On the wooden table there was a soft, buttery feta, an aged Tzfatit, a young Morbier that was just one month old and had a stripe of coal dust through the middle, a semi-hard cheese with a nutty taste, in the style of the French Cantal, and a sharp blue cheese with Roquefort mold. So we poured a glass and then another glass, inhaled the aroma of the goat cheese quiche with the flaky and golden crust, asked to taste the olive oils, which were delicate and marvelous, and were filled with a great love for the world and for the Valley. El Velor Dairy, Kevutzat Kinneret, 04-6759687, www.elvelor.co.il 6. Holy water at Yardenit The pastor of a group of evangelical pilgrims from South Carolina slowly wades in the waters of the Jordan River. The freezing waters could well doom him to eternal exile in the soprano section of the church choir, but he perseveres and continues singing with devout feeling. His flock, a group of black women in white dresses and plastic swimming caps, tremblingly await their turn to dip in the waters. The procedure: The minister and another member of the congregation take hold of the next person in line, who holds her nose in anticipation, and dunk her backward with a swift motion. The shock of the encounter with the cold water seems to have an even greater impact than unification with the holy spirit, but the newly baptized are overcome with pleasure, just like the Israelis stuffing themselves with wine and cheese, who, while happily watching, are trying to decide which system is better for shedding one's sins - waving a chicken around your head or a group baptism in ice water. Yardenit - Baptismal Site on the Jordan River, 04-6759111 7. Kumquats in pools of sugar Anyone who has inhaled the vapors from the garlic factory on Kibbutz Dorot can really appreciate the symphony of sweet scents wafting through the Agam Hagalil factory: the aroma of apples being stewed and crushed for jam and to fill a French apple tart; the silan (date syrup) simmering in giant pots; and kumquats floating in pools of sugar. At the family-run factory store, you can find silan, a variety of dates, dried and fresh, alongside sugared hibiscus flowers and a dazzling assortment of dried and sweetened fruits, teas and spices. Tamar Bakfar, Moshevet Kinneret, 04-6709954, www.tmarim.com 8. The Kinneret cemetery We were once told that a visit to Paris may go awry if one doesn't offer one's respects to the emperor. Ever since, on every trip, we have made a pilgrimage to Napoleon's tomb at Invalides, the enormous mausoleum of the little general. Like the pioneers of the Valley and other people of vision, he didn't devote much time to the pleasures of fine dining. Food bored the decisive commander, who was heard to angrily comment that a meal lasting more than 20 minutes was indicative of the corruptive nature of power. Romantics who are fond of grandiose and mysterious gestures could wind up a visit to the Valley by wandering around the beautiful cemetery of Kevutzat Kinneret, among the graves of the pioneers who were felled by swamp fever or kicked to death by recalcitrant mules. If you are interested in the graves of the famous, you can seek out the tomb of the poet Rahel, and the little pit beside it where the faded pages of poems in her own hand were once buried; the much-visited grave of Naomi Shemer; and the tombstone of Ben-Zion Yisraeli, who brought from Iraq the date saplings that took hold in the region - along with nearly the entire pantheon of members of the Labor Movement. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Condemned cinema Dutch Jewish group: Anti-Islam film is 'counterproductive.' Suspecting Syria UN officials: Syria still suspected in Lebanese PM Hariri murder case.

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