A drought in Israel in 1985 caused the water level in the Sea of Galilee to fall lower than usual. On January 24, 1986, the remains of an ancient boat were discovered. Archaeologists carefully extracted the remains and preserved them in a museum at Nof Ginosar, near Tiberias. A cooking pot and a lamp were also found with the boat.

The boat is just over 27 feet long by 8 feet wide. Radio carbon dating has put its age at 2000 years, which means that it was sailing on the Sea of Galilee at about the time of the Julius Caesar assassination.

This model from the museum at Nof Ginosar shows what the boat would have looked like in its heyday.

Rabi Moshe ben Nachman, widely known as the Ramban was born in the year 1194 in the town of Gurunda, Catalina. He became famous as a great scholar and sage and wrote interpreta­tions on the Torah and on many Gemaras, and authored many seforim, which are revered to this day. The Ramban was also a philosopher and a physician and his ser­vices were in great demand.

One day, while the Ramban was study­ing, an elderly man was ushered into his chambers. The man was a mystic and well versed in the Kabbalah, He introduced himself to the Ramban and proceeded to urge him to study the Kabbalah. The Ramban avoided this study, as he believed it was unnecessary in this world. When the man became persistent the Ramban ordered him to leave.

“You’ll see,” said the Kabbalist, “how necessary it is to study this mysticism. I am urging you to do this for your sake, because you are a great man and you never can tell when you may need it.”

The elderly man left the Ramban’s house and walking into a church began to smash the statues and do other mischief. He was caught, judged to be a heretic, and sentenced to be burned at the stake that Shabbat.

The Kabbalist Performs Miracles

When the Ramban heard he was aghast. He visited the condemned man and upbraided him for his bad behavior, which served as a reflection upon all Jewry. The elderly man seemed un­concerned and asked the Ramban to please prepare his three Shabbat meals. The Ramban thought he was men­tally unbalanced and left him.

Shabbat morning the man was led to a tremendous burning pyre. As the soldiers prepared to throw him into it, the Kabbalist uttered the Holy name and they were suddenly struck blind. Miraculously a goat appeared on the scene and the soldiers grabbed it and threw it into the fire, thinking it was the elderly man.

Walking home, the Kabbalist entered the Ramban’s home in time to answer Amen to the Ramban’s kiddush. The Ramban was amazed and after hearing the entire story he decided to learn the wisdom of the Kabbalah. He spent many months with this elderly man and then he went to study with the sage, Rabi Elazar of Worms, world-renown Kabbalist and author of the sefer HaRokeach. After a few years, the Ramban became proficient in the wisdom of the Kabbalah.

Ramban Launches A Ship

The following year all of Spain turned out to witness the launching of one of the largest warships of the time, in the city of Barcelona. The king and queen were there as well as the entire court. The leaders of all nations were also present. As the chief spokesman for his people, the Ramban was also invited to attend.

While the trumpets blared, the workingmen released the wedges to permit the ship to slide down into the water. But something went wrong and the boat would not move. The workingmen frantically began to push the boat and used every method but it wouldn’t budge. The pop­ulace began to groan.

The Ramban, seeing this predicament, remarked to one of his pupils that with the use of the Holy Name he could move the boat and if need be, even mountains. A neighbor hearing this rushed to the king and repeated the conversation. The king commanded the Ramban to be brought before him and he ordered him to fulfill his boast.

Realizing his predicament, the Ramban requested a dinghy with a pilot to accompany him in the harbor. This was granted. The Ramban then uttered the awesome Holy Name and commanded the ship to slide down into the waters. Wonders of wonders! The boat began to move slowly and soon with a rush it splashed into the harbor water. The crowd cheered. However, before the king could sum­mon the Ramban to reward him, the Bishop approached the king and accused the Ramban of witchcraft.

Ramban Escapes

Hearing this the Ramban wrote out the Holy Name and the symbol of travel, on a piece of paper and placed it in a corner of the little boat. Immediately, the boat jumped forward as if guided by a tremen­dous power. The pilot had been asleep so he didn’t notice the boat racing through the waters. In a matter of minutes the boat covered half the coast of Spain and he entered a port near his home.

The attorney for Guma Aguiar’s wife is saying that the Brazilian born billionaire could have staged his own disappearance to flee his marital and financial problems.

“It’s a family tragedy involving a young man who’s intelligent and very talented, but has a severe mental illness and those two things have interacted in his life for the last four years and has impacted his wife and four children dramatically,” attorney Bill Scherer told ABC News on Thursday, after a court hearing in Miami in which the missing man wife and mother clashed over his estate.

“He either committed suicide, fell off the boat and drowned, or staged it,” Scherer stated. “It’s hard to tell at this point…My client does hope and pray that he didn’t die.”

On June 19, Aguiar, 35, whose marriage was very unhappy, according to people in his circle, and who was in the midst of a court battle with his uncle, took his 31-foot fishing boat out to sea from Port Everglades in choppy seas and inclement weather. That same day, the boat ran aground on Fort Lauderdale beach, engine was running, lights on, and no one aboard.

Police spokesman Travis Mandell, told reporters the next day that Aguiar got into the boat alone, “but that’s not to say he didn’t meet up with anyone.”

The Miami Herald noted that Aguiar struggled for most of his life with a severe bipolar disorder, was arrested several times after “bizarre tirades,” was institutionalized at least twice, and even detained involuntarily for psychiatric evaluation.

But crazy or not, many causes found their savior in Aguiar. He donated more than $8 million to Nefesh B’Nefesh, and was a major supporter of the March of the Living, to name but two causes.

In 2009, the Aguiars served as the co-chairs of the “Facing Tomorrow” Conference in Jerusalem, and During the Conference, and Guma was on a panel with President Peres, offering his vision on Israeli society and culture from the perspective of one of the country’s entrepreneurs.

Aguiar founded the “Defender of Jerusalem Award” which recognizes public figures who have taken uniquely strong stances in support of Jerusalem: Shimon Peres, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Congresswoman Ileana Ros- Lehtinen and Texas State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa.

In court last Thursday, Guma’s mother Ellen Aguiar filed a petition for Northern Trust, a wealth management company, to become the guarantor of his assets.

His wife, Jamie Aguiar, filed for complete control of her husband’s assets which included a $50 million investment portfolio and $15 million in cash, as well as $40 million in Israeli real-estate – the latter sum being outside the Florida court’s jurisdiction.

According to ABC News, before Thursday’s hearing, a committee of three fellow Jews, two of them rabbis, which had been formed by Aguiar as his group of advisers, activated a legal mechanism that gave Northern Trust control of the assets. The court agreed and ruled in favor of Ellen Aguiar’s petition.

In court, attorney Scherer accused Aguiar’s mother Ellen Aguiar of being “an enabler of Guma’s irrationality,” and said she rode on her son’s “gravy train.”

When asked if Jamie Aguiar believes that her mother-in-law knows Guma Aguiar may be alive and staged his own disappearance to protect his assets, Scherer said, “She hopes that that’s so, that her children’s father will come back to them, that the good Guma will come back, not that he jumped out of that boat when it was three miles out.”

The Israeli Navy captured a Palestinian fishing vessel engaged in illegal smuggling travelling towards the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. No weapons were discovered on board the ship, only spare vehicle parts, and it was taken to shore by an Israeli Navy Dvora class fast patrol boat.

After the investigation was complete, the smugglers were released to the Gaza Strip via the Erez crossing.

The Navy Patrol Squadron, responsible for securing Israel’s southern marine front, carries out short-range operations off the shore to prevent additional weapon smuggling. “There was a lot of equipment on board the vessel, which could have easily included weapons,” said commander of the Dvora class patrol boat reconnaissance squadron, Cpt. M. to the IDF Website.

Once a fishing vessel crosses the border and enters Israel’s jurisdiction, it is immediately captured by Israeli Navy forces. “Smuggling takes place regularly,” said Cpt. M. The detained smugglers go through a thorough security inspection of the cargo. If no affiliation with terrorist organizations is recognized, the smugglers are returned to the Gaza Strip in an orderly fashion along with the capture vessels.

Young Orthodox women ride a bicycle cart through the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv.

The Yarkon Park is Tel Aviv’s green sanctuary. It’s quite large and very pleasant, with a wide variety of activities, including boat rides, walks, ball games, and all manner of bike rentals.

The girls are optional.

The Guardian reported that Israel has forced the low-cost airline Jet2.com to revoke the tickets of three women from Manchester who were on their way to Bethlehem via Ben Gurion airport this weekend to participate in an assembly of anti-Iaraeli activists.

The three women received emails from Jet2.com informing them that the airline will not carry them and there will be no refund. Israel has been pressuring airlines to ban “known activists,” according to the Guardian.

One of the women, retired nurse Norma Turner, told the Guardian, “It never crossed my mind that Israel could stop people with British passports leaving British airports.”

Israel says it will block the hundreds of activists who are expected at Tel Aviv airport on Sunday, on their way to a week of “educational and cultural activities” in the PA controlled areas of Judea and Samaria.

As many as 2,000 European activists were planning to participate in the “flytilla,” a reference to the boat flotillas that have tried to reach Gaza in the past.

The German airline Lufthansa has also cancelled the tickets of many activists, on Thursday, in compliance with Israeli demands, and other airlines are expected to follow suit.

On one of those cable financial stations the other day, one of the talking heads was explaining the concept of “Mancations.”

“Men leave their wives home and visit another city and usually see a ballgame as part of their itinerary,” the talking head said.

Well, I’ve been doing that for a couple of years. I’ll tell you about my latest “Mancation.” Of course, we have permission from our wives, who’d rather shop in Boro Park or see people in Lakewood. We men are usually gone two nights as that gives us enough time to experience our destination.

We decided on Pittsburgh for our latest trip. It was an almost five-and-a-half hour trip from Detroit but more than worth it. Pittsburgh is a great city to visit.

We left on a Sunday morning and made it to PNC Park, the home of the Pirates, in time to see the afternoon game. The ballpark may be the nicest in the major leagues. Located just a couple of steps from the Allegheny River, PNC Park offers great views of boaters, bridges and buildings.

   After the game we trekked across the Roberto Clemente Bridge (open to foot traffic only on game days) to the downtown district, which is sort of a mini-lower Manhattan. We walked pretty much in a straight line through downtown and exited on the Monongahela River side (less than a mile) and walked over the Smithfield Bridge to take a boat ride. We agreed it was like walking over a bridge from New Jersey to lower Manhattan and crossing another bridge to Brooklyn.

The one-hour sightseeing boat took us on the two aforementioned rivers as well as the Ohio River, which borders the tip of downtown and morphs into the other rivers. Pittsburgh, we were told, has over 400 bridges, the most of any city in the world.

We chose a hotel in the university district about ten minutes from downtown and ten minutes down Forbes Avenue to the Orthodox community of Squirrel Hill. There are a couple of good kosher eateries on Murray Avenue and we also sampled the shuls and kollel nearby.

While we dined on Murray Avenue, a nice fellow recognized me from my column photo and introduced himself. Jesse Salem and his Mrs., knowledgeable baseball fans, were visiting from New York, where the mister deals in home furnishings out of West 33rd street in Manhattan.

In a beautiful park-like atmosphere, surrounded by buildings that make up the University of Pittsburgh, you’ll find the outline and remnant of the outfield wall of Forbes Field, the storied old home of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

PNC Park on the other side of the Allegheny River from downtown Pittsburgh

Built in 1909 by Barney Dreyfuss, the Jewish owner of the Pirates, Hall of Famers from Honus Wagner to Roberto Clemente plied their trade there. Hank Greenberg finished his career with the Pirates in 1947 and became a tutor and friend to upcoming slugger Ralph Kiner. Dreyfuss named his ballpark Forbes Field because of the famous avenue that ran from downtown past the exterior of the third base side and into Squirrel Hill.

Today, home plate of the old ballpark is embedded in the floor, covered by Plexiglass and plainly visible in the Wesley Posvar Hall of the University of Pittsburgh. A few feet away are rest rooms, drinking fountains and benches. A great place for a rest stop.

   Outside the building you’ll find gardens and the actual vine-covered wall that Ralph Kiner hit balls off and over. The centerfield portion still retains its 453-foot marker and the flagpole, a few feet in front of the wall is in its original spot. Red bricks embedded in the sidewalk show the outline of the rest of the outfield wall and a plaque marks the spot where Bill Mazeroski hit his World Series ending home run in 1960 against the Yankees of Casey Stengel.

The Gaza flotilla and the flytilla may have been failures, but they were also missed opportunities for Israel. It’s no secret that a portion of Israel’s tourist trade comes from “protest tourism” – philosophy students and poetry Ph.D.s who want a chance to visit the Holy Land, throw some rocks at a soldier and have their pictures taken with AK-47-wielding terrorists. And it’s time the Israeli tourist industry took their business seriously.

Rather than profiling them and giving them the heave ho at the airport, why not develop special tourism packages catering to their needs? Imagine the possibilities:

The Rachel Corrie Experience: You’re angry at your parents. You’re angry at the world. You’re still angry at Bush. One time you saw a PBS documentary on Gaza and you said, “Man, are those people angry. But in a really deep and spiritual way.”

Pack your hemp sandals, your $259 sunglasses and get ready to fill your Flickr account with photos of underprivileged children.

Take off from San Francisco International Airport in a remodeled Tupolev Tu-114 aircraft that smells like gasoline and cow manure. As your body tries to decide whether it should pass out from the fumes or throw up from the turbulence, you will relish knowing you have left behind your comfortable life and will soon experience the agony of being in the Third World.

You land at Ben Gurion Airport, where you will be encouraged to yell “Power to the People” slogans at customs officials who will pretend not to understand what you are saying. If you cannot think of anything to yell, a booklet of slogans by a committee that includes Noam Chomsky, Tony Kushner and Norman Finkelstein will be provided for you.

Your accommodations will be a half-collapsed house with an Israeli bulldozer outside. With six to a room, your job will be to prevent the bulldozer from knocking over the house. At unpredictable times during the night the bulldozer will start up, and then you will be expected to run out of the house, screaming and waving your hands while shouting political slogans at it. The bulldozer will then usually stop. If it does not, you will be expected to lie in the mud while contemplating the geopolitics of the whole thing.

Sometime during the night, men will come through the tunnels in the house carrying mortar rounds and IEDs. You will be given 15 minutes to pose for pictures with them. These will look really good on your Facebook page, and your friends who went skiing or to build homes in Africa will be really jealous.

After three days of this, all while drinking stale water and eating old pita, you will be able to say you participated in the revolutionary struggle against Zionism. You may even get a Ph.D. thesis out of this, or at least a foreign correspondent post with Time magazine, which means you will be able to do this sort of thing full time. And even get paid for it.

The Alice Walker Excursion: You are a very deep person. People tell you this all the time, even when you don’t prompt them. Often you wish you’d been born earlier so that you could have participated in the great protest movements of the past.

In your deepest self you hate Israel, Coca Cola, nuclear power, country music, organized religion, people who don’t recycle, and Republicans, in no particular order.

You leave on a boat from somewhere. Probably Mexico. Maybe Turkey. It’s still too early to tell. The boat will not be very good. It will lack a toilet. Occasionally you will have to row. On this cruise you will rub shoulders with authors like Alice Walker and Henning Mankell. If you are not abducted by Somali pirates, you should be approaching the coast of Gaza in 6-8 weeks. Possibly more if you took a wrong turn around Australia or Atlantis.

If your captain is not excessively stoned, he will successfully run the boat aground on the Gaza coast. You will be given one hour to pose for photographs with authentic Hamas terrorists and even hold their weapons. If you do not yet have a keffiyah, one will be provided for you.

After this, you will be arrested by the authorities for illegal entry. You will be given 15 minutes to be photographed struggling with them in heroic poses. If your poses are not heroic, it’s your own fault.