Israel’s “Trail Angels” Offer Free Lodging to Backpackers

July 3, 2014

Tzippi Moss smiled as she watched the four young people sitting around her small kitchen table tucking into a meal of cooked vegetables with salmon. It could be any dinner table in any house in Israel, but the unique thing was that Moss had met her dinner guests for the first time just ten minutes earlier.

Moss, a therapist, and her tour-guide husband Allan Rabinowitz, are “trail angels”—citizens who open their homes to the growing number of people who set out to walk the Israel Trail, all 620-miles [998 km] of it, running from Eilat on the Red Sea in the south to the Lebanese border in the north.

The four hikers have been together for a month, and plan to be on the trail for another six weeks. They met up through one of the hikers, Eyal Kedar, three of them having just finished their compulsory army service.

“It’s a way to discover the country with my feet,” Danielle Telman, 22, told The Media Line. “This country is so small but there’s so much to see. When I meet these trail angels it makes me believe in the good in people and makes me ask myself if I am really doing enough to help people.”

After dinner, the hikers sat in the living room to chat. When Rabinowitz arrived home after a long day of guiding, he took out his guitar. Kedar took out his guitar that he has been carrying on his back for the past month, and the two began playing American rock songs.

Moss said she feels she has gained even more than she has given from her experience, first as a hiker, then as a trail angel. “I’ve fallen back in love with the country in a big way,” she said.

Source: Excerpts of article by Linda Gradstein, The Media Line