The sun hasn’t quite risen yet, but the sky over the Hula Valley is already alive with color. Pink clouds streak across the horizon, layered with purple and gold as December dawn breaks over northern Israel. My family and I sit huddled on a grassy patch near the water’s edge, wrapped in jackets against the morning cold, thermoses of coffee and hot chocolate warming our hands.
And then there’s the noise.
It starts as a low rumble, building gradually into something extraordinary – thousands of cranes calling to each other, their trumpeting voices filling the air. The sound reverberates across the water and off the surrounding hills, ancient and almost prehistoric, as if the valley itself is waking up. There’s no silence here, no peaceful winter morning. Just wave after wave of birdsong as the cranes prepare for flight.
As the sun breaks over the horizon, the first groups begin lifting off. Wings beat in perfect unison, massive birds rising into the brightening sky. Then more join them, and more, until the air is filled with cranes – one-meter-tall birds with two-meter wingspans, calling to each other as they ascend. Their silhouettes cut dark shapes against the pink and gold morning, and I find myself holding my breath, watching.
A tradition of migration
This has become our Hanukkah tradition. Almost every year, we make the drive north and sleep over near the Hula Valley. Then, early the next morning, we head out with sufganiyot and coffee to witness the great crane migration. I’m struck by this thought: the birds I see here in modern-day Israel every Hanukkah are the same ones the prophet Jeremiah knew well thousands of years ago.
“Even the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times,” Jeremiah wrote, “and the turtledove, the swift, and the crane observe the time of their coming. But My people do not know the judgment of the Lord” (8:7).
The Hebrew word he uses for crane is “agur.” Rashi, the great medieval commentator, translates it into Old French as “grue” – crane. Modern Hebrew has kept this identification; we still call them agur today. And they’re still here, flying through the land in fall time, following the same routes their ancestors likely followed in Jeremiah’s time, responding to the same rhythms built into creation.
Israel sits at one of the world’s great migration crossroads. Positioned between three continents, more than 500 million birds pass through this narrow airspace twice each year – about 25% of all migrating birds in the world. The cranes Jeremiah mentions, Grus grus, are among the most conspicuous. When they travel in flocks, their trumpeting calls can be heard from miles away. Early naturalists noted that their numbers were so vast they could literally darken the sky.
The other birds in Jeremiah’s list are also present in modern-day Israel. The stork, called chasidah in Hebrew – literally “the kind one” – arrives in enormous flocks each autumn and spring. The European turtledove’s return signals spring – “the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land,” as the Song of Solomon (2:12) says. And the swift, that tireless flier that nests in the crevices of the Western Wall, spends nearly its entire life on the wing.
Our family has another Hanukkah tradition that includes bird-watching: hiking through Tekoa Canyon. We make our way down into the gaping canyon, climb through the various monk caves, and inevitably, perch on a rock ledge to eat breakfast.
While we eat, we watch swifts and swallows dart overhead. They swoop and glide from one side of the canyon wall to the other, resting briefly on rocky outcrops before taking flight again. Sometimes they go in pairs, wings moving in perfect synchronization, their dark silhouettes catching the light as they ride the breeze in an aerodynamic dance of remarkable elegance.
At the end of our meditation on bird flight, we pack up from our canyon perch and start the climb back up. The morning sun is warming the limestone. Someone spots a kestrel circling overhead, and we all stop to watch.
Later, driving home through the Judean Hills, I think about Jeremiah standing somewhere in this same landscape, constructing a prophecy. He needed an image everyone would understand immediately – something so obvious, so universally observed, that he could build his entire rebuke around it. And he chose birds.
Not because birds were poetic or symbolic, necessarily, but because they were impossible to miss. The stork, the crane, the turtledove – these weren’t occasional visitors requiring special trips to witness. They were the backdrop of ordinary life, so present that their comings and goings marked the calendar as surely as any festival. When Jeremiah rebuked the ancient Israelites and said, “even the stork knows her appointed time,” everyone listening understood exactly what he meant.
Half a billion birds still pass over Israel twice a year. The cranes still trumpet across the Hula Valley during Hanukkah, at a time of year that typically features perfect, crisp hiking weather. In Israel, we can use this holiday of miracles as an opportunity to witness natural wonders that inspired biblical prophecies of long ago.
The writer is the creator of Hiking the Holyland (hikingintheholyland.com) and author of From Southerner to Settler: Unexpected Lessons from the Land of Israel.