Israel Travel Blog

Sunday July 17, 2011 - Last day

2011-07-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

I let the kids sleep in the morning to try to get them started back towards home time, and then we got all packed up. Somehow, we cannot fit into the suitcases we came in and we have had to make a few adjustments. We will be leaving with lots of carry-ons...
When we finally got our act together, we headed out for one last sivuv of some of our favorite shopping spots -- Ben Yehuda, Machane Yehuda, Yoel Solomon Street. We got excellent falafel/schwarma from Moshiko on Ben Yehuda, and as Ilana was eating she looked up at me with a bloody mouth and said "did I lose my tooth?" And she finally did lose it, it has been loose since we arrived, and as it was no where to be found it is either on the street, or more likely, in her belly with her delicious schwarma! We had the great pleasure of bumping into Tova on Jaffa street, so we sat down to chat and have a cool drink with her before we set off for HaSofer, the tallis and tefillin shop, for Noah to do a little shopping. He needed a new tallis/tefillin bag, and he also wanted tefidanit, a more protective case for his tefillin. The store didn't carry them, but a young man standing at the counter said, I have them right here and I want to get rid of them, do you want them? And he sold them to Noah for 50 nis, quite a bargain. Only in Israel! After all of our last minute shopping was done, we took a bus back to the apartment, showered and cleaned up, and went to dinner in Emek Refaim. The kids then went back to the apartment to watch some TV, and I took one last walk over to Yemin Moshe, now one of my favorite places in Jerusalem. I savored every moment of my stroll in the cool evening air, with gorgeous flowers and greenery, picturesque streets, and an amazing view of the city.
The sense of belonging that we feel here that is manifest in so many ways. The kids refused to play the what I will miss and what I will not miss game, but here is my list for us all.

What we will not miss:
Tiny washing machines
Uncomfortable beds
Traffic and crazy drivers
Walking in the heat of the day
Litter
Not understanding understand the language
Museums, hikes, and historical sites
Bad tasting water
The family bickering (but will that stop anywhere???)

What we will miss:
Our friends and "family"
Touring wineries and being able to drink the wine
The eating
iced Aroma
Mamilla at night
Chance encounters with our friends from near and far
Not driving
Experiencing Israeli life in so many different communities
The beauty and diversity of the land
Museums, hikes, and historical sites
The freedom and independence that the kids have here
The magic of the entire country shifting for Shabbat, especially in Jerusalem

We have had an incredible gift for the last five weeks; we are so grateful. Our hope is that we can keep the feelings and memories from this trip strong in our minds and in our hearts until, god willing, the next time.

Shabbat July 16, 2011

2011-07-16T15:13:00.001-07:00

Our shabbat dinner last night at the Messers was wonderful. They have a beautiful home in the German Colony, just a 5 minute walk from our apartment. We ate Shabbat dinner outside on the gorgeous patio, surrounding by flowers, and the weather was perfect. I understand why that spot is one Sara and Hyim's favorite. Despite the fact that only half the Messer family is in town (Barbara and her two daughter's), there were quite a few guest, a bit of an eclectic group. The conversation was interesting and the food was delicious, the boys and I stayed til past midnight. The girls never left. Naomi hit it off with Naomi (age 11), and Ilana hung out with Danielle (age 9 I think), and they both wound of spending the night. Sara, you did well with this match!
In the morning, the boys and I went to the Pinsker shul and then I walked over the get the girls. But they didn't leave. I would up bringing them bathing suits and they went with the Messers to the King David Hotel pool. The boys and I had lunch in the apartment after visiting with Efrat's family at the kiddush. Her grandfather lives in the building and they were celebrating his 90th birthday. We met her brothers, sister-in-law, nephew, aunts, uncles, the whole shebang. After reading and playing games for a few hours we went to pick up the girls at the pool.
The King David is beautiful, as I mentioned a few days ago, and the pool area is amazing. Right smack in the middle of the city, it is huge and lush and green. There are chairs in the pool to lounge, a restaurant, and a huge grassy area with a small playground. As we walked into the pool area we walked right into Stanley Raskas! He looks great, it was nice to catch up, here is here with his wife visiting a couple of his kids. And of course, it turned out that Barbara knows Stanley as well. It is such a small world... So we chatted and bit and then said our goodbyes. The girls had a great time, Naomi and Naomi found a lot of common ground, and we so appreciated the Messer's hospitality.
So then we went from one pool to the next. We took a short stroll over to the Dan Panorama to hang out and swim with the Perlmans, and were with them at the hotel, or at our apartment, until it was almost the end of Shabbat. We all walked over to the kotel for maariv and havdalah. We were wondering how havdalah would work, how all the necessary item would get here. Well, there was b'samim (mint) stuck in bunches in the mechitza and in the back fence, and women peered over the mechitza/fence to be able to see/hear men doing havdalah. No idea where the candles and wine came from. I thought there might be more singing, dancing, festivities but there just were not. We then walked home among falling apart kids, hoping to get them together enough to go over to a Babette's waffles near Ben Yehuda at the recommendation of Sara. And we did it! We made it to the Ben Yehuda area which was bustling with families and lots and lots of teens and young adults. it was defintely a younger crowd. The waffle place is a tiny tiny store, packed with people. The waffles are huge and can be ordered with a variety of toppings including standard fare like chocolate, butterscotch, whipped cream, but also the more unexpected like sour cream or halva. Have I said that I am going to miss eating out? The waffles were delicious but the kids were pooped. So we said our sad goodbyes to the Perlman's and trudged back to the apartment, by now it was well after midnight, but we did make the most of our last night in Jerusalem.

Friday July 15, 2011

2011-07-15T06:18:00.001-07:00

The kids are fatigued and want no more museums, historical sites, or walking in the heat. They wouldn't even play the what I'm going to miss about Israel is... game. I think its about time to go home. Two quick things worth mentioning, one mundane and one anything but. First - the boys and I went to pick up Shabbat take-out at a place called Marvad Hamaksimim. They have a few locations, but we went to the not as authentic one in Emek Refaim. This place is known for plentiful, good, and cheap Israeli food. We got lots and lots of chicken nuggets, some beef, some kebab, stuffed artichokes, peppers, and onions for lunch tomorrow, all for 150 shekels. Probably our cheapest meal yet, that barely covers a burger and fries at Black 'n Burger! Maybe the kids won't play the game, but boy I will really miss that about Israel. Second worth note -- we finally went to the tent across from the Prime Minister's House where Gilad Shalit's family is camped out. All over the street in our area of Jerusalem, their are stickers that say "Gilad is alive!" They are on lampposts, fountains, signs, everywhere you look. we have walked by the street where his family is many times, but a felt a bit awkward about going, not sure what to say. This has been a particularly difficult month as Gilad just passed his five year mark in captivity. So we walked over to the area, which is filled with signs, banners, and ribbons attached to the fence on the sidewalk. There is a table outside the tent (it is not really a tent, it looks more like a pre-fab sukkah with hard sides). Volunteers man the table nad collect donation, sell t-shirts, and give out yellow ribbons. When we first got there, the Shalit family was not there so the kids signed the poster, and took some ribbons. Then we went inside the tent, which is set up with chairs around the perimeter and stocked with water and snacks provided by volunteers. Shortly, Gilad's father came back and we did speak to him briefly, we told him that we are thinking on Gilad in St. Louis and shared with him some of things that B'nai Akiva and Epstein have done to recognize and remember Gilad. In the end, we were all glad that we went to visit and show our support.
The girls and I met the Perlman's in town for a bit; they are staying at the Dan Panorama for shabbat and we will hand out with them on Shabbat afternoon. Tonight we are going to Sara and Hyim's friends David and Barbara Messer for dinner. We have not met them, but Sara hooked us up with them and they so kindly invited us sight unseen!

Thursday July 14, 2011

2011-07-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

News alert -- Burgers Bar has been usurped! The new standard for burgers is Black Bar 'n Burger, a place that Noah was introduced to by his Petach Tikvah friends when he dined on a 450 g burger with them. Noah has been raving so much we all had to check it out and we all were happy as it turns out they have a mean veggie burger too. I had the popeye burger -- beef with spinach and pine nuts, topped with mushrooms. Noah had amazing chicken wings, Eitan had a giant hot pastrami sandwich, and Ilana had chicken fingers "to die for". But enough about dinner.
This morning I went on a major shopping excursion. Some of the loot was for us, but most was gifts to bring back. I started in Mea Sha'arim, where I browsed for quite a while in a big bookshop and some other small gift stores. The prices there are much better then the rip off prices on Ben Yehuda. Then I walked over to Yoel Solomon street which I remembered from last trip but up til today had been unable to find. Because of construction on both ends of this very short street, it does not really look like a street til you walk past the rubble to find the cute shops, restaurants and art galleries. I spent a good chunk of time in a game store called Gaya. It is an Israeli company that makes wooden games and puzzles, and they are addicting (more on this later). I also visited the 36,000$ Havdalah set that Mike and I love -- yes it's still there, and the store clerk seemed disappointed that I still wasn't buying it. I then had to hustle back to the apartment to drop off the loot and pick up the kids for our afternoon activities. I thought it would be best not to drag them along in the morning, so I left them a morning note with things on the list like shower, take your medicine, get lunch, clean up the garbage from the floor, take out the garbage and recycling, get your water bottles ready and be ready to go at 1:15! (much like home). When I got back to the apartment, I found garbage everywhere, a half eaten pizza they had ordered in still sitting out on the table, dirty dishes sitting out, no water ready (much like home). We got out the door, but later than I had hoped and we were late to our tour at the Davidson Center, which is an archeological site near the Dung Gate. When we got to the window 10 minutes late the woman told us that we missed the tour and couldn't go. I asked if we could catch up, and she refused to let me but tickets but told me to go ask the guide. So we walked over to the entrance, the security guard let us in and told us to catch up, and we made it! The archeological park is a huge area just outside the walls of the old city, starting at the corner by the Dung Gate and going south from there. Our guide took us to the Southwest corner of the Temple Mount, and described the Herodian masonry, showed us where Robinson's arch (or its remains) is, showed us the Roman street at the base of the wall -- it is excavated here, you can see remains of stores lining the marketplace, and you can even see large stones that were knocked out of the wall when the Romans destroyed the beit hamigdash. The guide then took us inside (thankfully, it was hot!) and to a three 3 computer recreation of the Temple Mount in the second temple period. The kids called it "Sims -- the Beit Hamigdash version". It was really cool. The guide can zoom in and out and go through doorways, move around structures so you can see them from every angle, and add features that show the locations during different times (like how the walls of the old city have moved). He could bring up photos from as things are today and put them right next to the 3-d representation in the beit hamigdash computer animation. He showed us the Roman marketplace/road, the stairs and entrances to the Temple Mount from the south side, and some of the structures on the Temple Mount including where the trumpetor stood. All of the information is based on archeological excavations, so there is not information on the inside of the beit hamigdash itself as it is not permitted by the Muslim's for us to dig in that site. The presentation was fascinating, and even got the attention of my archeology weary kids. After the presentation we walked around outside in the park, looking at some of the features that we had seen in the animation.
Next we walked back up the steps from the kotel and into the old city for a cold drink, before heading back down to the kotel for a "generations tour". This tour is right next to the site of the tunnel tours, and is mostly a walk through glass art that has names etched into it. Each room has different works of art, which represent the Jewish people at various times in our history. The tour was low on content, but the last part which was a story told by one of the soldier's who liberated Jerusalem in 1967 was interesting. After this tour we all davened at the kotel and our timing was great as the girls and I could stand right next to the wall without being pushed and jostled. It was Ilana's first time davening at the kotel (and she used her new purple siddur) and it was very special. We then headed up the stairs and just at the top, near all the falafel stands, there was Sara! Her group of campers had just arrived this afternoon, and was on a bathroom break before heading down to the kotel. With her were Bradely Goldmeier, and Lisa Ast who is also a madricha! They all looked happy and ready to have a blast. What fun to see them.
Now we left the Old City and had our Black 'n Burger dinner, and then I took the kids back to the game store from this morning. I could not get them out. They were in there for over an hour playing various games. And I left with even a few more games... Then back to the apartment, it was already past 10. I love walking in this city, but I have to say that after today, my feet are killing me. I could really use a foot massage... Mike?

Wednesday July 13, 2011

2011-07-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

Noah and Eitan woke up at 3am to watch the all star game, so I let the kids sleep in a bit thins morning. We left around 10:30 to go to the Underground Prisoners Museum, which is in the Russian Compound. On the way, we stopped at the King David Hotel. There was a limo with tinted windows outside, and when we got into the lobby there was some kind of army official (not Israeli) dressed in a fancy uniform with lots of metals and ribbons on it. No idea who he was. Haven't read a newspaper in weeks. We were looking for a display about the Irgun's bombing of the hotel in 1946 but instead found fancy shops and beautiful lounges and photos of lots of dignitaries and celebrities taken at the hotel, and a small display of historical photos of the hotel, including one from just after the bombing. From there we continued on to the Underground Prisoners Museum, an actual prison where the British held members of Irgun and other Israeli freedom fighters, as well as criminals and some mapillim (illegal Jewish immigrants). The prison was originally a hostel for Russian women making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so it is not built like a prison and is not as creepy as the prison in Akko. We met Faye, Earl, Yedidya, and Noam at the gates, and pushed the button as directed to get into the gated compound. After the gate automatically and slowly creaked open and we walked in we were accosted by a security guy dressed all in black who asked to see our passports. Kind of strange as that had not been our experience at other museums. And it may not have been such a serious request as none of us had passports with us and he let us all go in on my driver's license. The museum starts with a movie that describes the experience of the prisoners there, and then leads you on a self guided tour through the prison compound. Most of the the rooms are set up as they were when it was a prison -- cells, workshops, the kitchen, a shul, solitary confinement cells, and a death row gallows that was never used. They had a scavenger hunt and activities with lots of interesting info and though Ilana was the only taker, I really enjoyed it too. We saw the spot where the prisoners dug out of their cell and through to the courtyard. 12 of them then climbed through the tunnel and then dressed like maintainance workers and walked out of the prison. We also saw the cell where Moshe Barazani and Meir Feinstein killed themselves with explosive smuggled in inside an orange rather than be executed by the British.
After the museum we all headed to Mea Sha'arim to find a shofar for Eitan among other things, with the exception of Noah, who walked back to the apartment to sleep. We found ourselves so in the heart of it that we could not find a atore with shofrot, the streets were tiny alleys, and they were filled with people dressed in garb from the shtetl -- we clearly stuck out as tourists. After we found a way to the main street we looked back at the alley where we had come from and their was a big sign hanging over it that said something like, "This is our neight borhood, where we live. It is not for tourists. Please do not enter if you are not dressed in accordance with modesty." One we found the more touristy area with lots and lots of Judaica stores, Earl and Eitan blew many many shofrot looking for the perfect combination of quality and price. Earl was a diligent and patient shofar buying guide. Our search and walk in the heat made the kids very hungry, but it took us a while to find a main drag with food. we finally found a pizza store that had -- I'm not kidding -- separate lines for men and for women, and a men's only eating room (but there were two young women sitting in there with all the men so I have no idea what the story was.) After lunch, Faye and her boys took a cab back home, and Earl and the remaining Oberlanders finally made their purchases. Earl headed home, and we walked over to Ben Yehuda to get some frozen yogurt. One of the kids didn't like it as it tasted too much like yogurt. If you want to know how Eitan's shofar sounds, just ask anyone who was walking on Ben Yehuda this afternoon as he practiced his skills and startled passersby. Chen was in the area and came by to say hi, she looks great and sounds great and is a rosh bus on mach hach, which starts tomorrow. We were so glad to see her! After lots of hugs, Chen headed back to her office and we took a bus back to the apartment (the kids rebelled and refused to walk).
Then another real treat -- Sarah and Carl Ashkenazi and Yacov and Noa came to meet us for dinner! They seem to be so well adjusted to life here; it is hard to believe they came less than a year ago. Carl is working from home, Sarah is working 5 days a week to get her Israeli medical certification, they are loving life on the yishuv. Yacov is speaking Hebrew fluently, and we can't believe how big Noa is! We really enjoyed seeing them and catching up, though our time was much too short as we had to leave for a previously scheduled tunnel tour at 8pm. Dinner was great -- we ate at a sushi place in Emek -- it was incredible. Ilana ate all of her sushi and most of mine!
Naomi was not feeling great -- totally exhausted -- so she skipped dinner and Noah stayed home with her. After dinner we switched and dropped off Ilana and picked up Noah, and the boys and I went to the tunnel tours at the kotel. We were running super late so we decided to take a cab. Riding a cab through the old city, winding our way to the kotel, gave me another perspective on the city. I'm glad that we got something out of it as the ride sure wasn't cheap. I don't really understand how cab fares work here -- one cab we rode in had a meter, but most don't and it seems that the driver just makes up a price and then you are supposed to argue over it until it is all resolved. Too stressful for me, I'd rather walk.
The tunnel tour was definitely worth doing again (we did it 4 years ago). First because it is just plain old cool to be in the depths of the Western Wall, and second because they have added to the tour -- a very cool model of the time of the second temple that can or remove the current structures that are built again the outside of the wall, and add or remove the Roman promenade that ran next to the wall. Also they have excavated a huge mikvah that may have been used by the Cohanim, and a large reservoir at the end of the tour after the walk through the aquaducts. The entire area was bustling even though it was 9:00 on a Wednesday night --It is emboldening that so many of us make an effort to be there and experience. After the boys davened maariv at the kotel, we walked home. Though it is sometimes a challenge with the bickering kids, I am trying to savor every moment. We have so few left...

Tuesday July 12, 2011

2011-07-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

With Noah away for the day, we decided to some things that the younger three might enjoy and to take cabs instead of the bus as we are only 4 people and can all fit into one cab. So, we left the house by 8:45 (a record early start for us) so that we could arrive at the Biblical Zoo when it opened at 9:00. I had wanted to go there with the kids when we were at Ein Yael last week as we were there anyway at the bus stop, but they refused. After Hili gave the zoo a rave review I overrode the kid vote, and I am glad I did. When we got there it was still cool (relatively) and shady, and the animals were active. The zoo is spread out on a lush campus, and the animal habitats blend in with the surroundings. We were immediately drawn to the Siamang monkeys who live on an island in a large pond that stretches through much of the zoo. They have ropes to climb out on over the water, and can come fairly close to the pedestrian bridge that overlooks them. The zoo is different in a several ways for our famous St. Louis zoo. Often several animals are together in one enclosure, for example the rhinos, hippos, zebras, ostriches, and giraffes are all in one large enclosure with trees and other shaded areas, and with a large pond. Most the animals on display are indigenous to the region, and quotes from Tenach about the animals are on their display signs. The kids favorite animals were the meerkats and prairie dogs as the kids could go through tunnels under the exhibit and pop up into a plastic bubble in the middle and get very close to the animals. Eitan loved the rhinosaurus, and Naomi was very fond of the hippo who at first looked like a rock with a bird on it, but then surfaced to take a breath. And we all loved the naked mole rats. At about noon the zoo started to get hot and crowded with loud and pushy day campers, so we departed with our friendly cab driver, who we called to pick us up, and headed for the Bloomfield Science Museum.
We visited the science museum when we were here four years ago, and the kids loved it this time as much as the last. We spent several hours investigating simple machines, electricity, and basic physics among other concepts. It was also a pleasure to be able to eat at the museum snack bar! As our museum exploration wound down, we decided to take the bus back to the center of town to run a couple of errands before heading home. But I remembered from our last visit that we had a hard time finding the bus stop as there is no bus service directly to the museum, you have to catch it at the University Campus across the street. I still have memories of trudging up a giant hill in the heat, searching for a path to a bus stop. Well, it turns out that elusive bus stop is quite simple to find with good directions -- it is an easy 5 minute walk down the street from the museum. So we hopped on the bus (after a wait, of course) and got off at the center of town. We picked up Naomi's beautiful new siddur and a few other gifts, and then used our transfers to take the bus back to the apartment. After an hour or so of rest, Hili and Maayan and Adin met us at the apartment. We had planned to have dinner together and then go to the Migdal David "Night Spectacular" light show. As we began our walk towards dinner and the Old City, Maayan started to not feel so well, and let's just say be careful where you walk on the sidewalk near the King David hotel. But after leaving her deposit, Maayan did feel much better so she was a real trooper and continued on. We made it to Mamilla and had an extremely rushed dinner at Cafe Cafe, during which both Noah and Sara joined us. More on Noah's adventure later. Hili got some Tylenol for Maayan, who was still hanging in there, and we all hustled off to Migdal David.
The Night Spectacular truly was spectacular. As you walk in through the courtyard, there are various scenes projected on to the walls, showing representatives of the peoples who have lived in Jerusalem through the ages. Eventually our winding walk ended in the main area of the courtyard where seats were set up, and after everyone was seated the lights dimmed and the real show began. It is hard to describe, but basically the show told the story of Jerusalem and its people from the time of creation up through the 1900's, with virtually no words. The story is projected onto the walls and towers and corners and crevices of Midgal David. A huge section of the building itself is the movie screen, and the show uses the shape of the walls to help tell the story. The scenes flowed from creation, to King David building Jerusalem, to the building and burning and building and burning of the Beit Hamigdash, to the Crusaders, Byzantines, and on. It was an amazing show (though hard for the younger kids to follow); Noah, Sara, Hili and I LOVED it.
After the show Hili took a cab back to Pinsker and her car with her very tired kids. We have really enjoyed hanging out with the Zimbalists here, so fortunate that we could be here at the same time enjoy our vacations together, and we are glad that we will see them in St. Louis in another month or so. The Oberlanders and Sara stopped for some Aroma and hung out in Mamilla until Sara had to leave to catch her bus. It was not so easy to say good-bye as we will not see her again this trip. Sara has really taken care of us and made us feel so good and so welcome and so much a part of her world. We are so lucky to have had this time together but so sad it has to end...
I will respect Noah's teenage privacy and not report too many details about his trip except to say that he was very independent and confident, and had a lot of fun. And he ate a 450g burger for lunch. My favorite moments -- Dvir (the kid he was staying with) called Noah while he was on the bus on his way there and said give the phone to the guy sitting behind you. Noah gave the phone to this complete stranger and Dvir told the guy, hey, help my friend get off at the right stop. And of course he complied. Second favorite detail -- Noah and one of the other guys he was in Tel Aviv with today went for walk at the outdoor mall that was part of the beach where they were hanging out. But they did not bring shoes, and the cement was really hot. So instead of getting their shoes, they sprinted across 50 meters of pavement, burned their feet, asked a waitress somewhere for water but then were to embarrassed to not drink it so they put it in their mouths and then spit on their feet. Complete teenagers.

Monday July 11, 2011

2011-07-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Guest blogger:
Today we went to the pool. We walked to the pool but at first we couldn't find it and we asked this couple and they told it where it was. It looked like a restaurant when you walked in but then there were these two doors that would lead you to the pool. The pool was really crowded. It had 2 pools outside and one pool under this roof thing. And there was this really boring water slide that you had to push yourself down. The boys went out to get us New Deli for lunch. Then we went home and we ordered Burgers Bar to be delivered. Noah went to Shoham on a bus to go his friend's party. Pools are so much different here because people they kick you and then they don't care. Also the girls had to wear a swimming cap or put their hair in a pony tail.

Editor's note:
We relaxed in the morning and headed to the Jerusalem pool which is in nearby Emek Refaim, and stayed there for 5 hours. A great way to beat the heat. We got back to the apartment and the 3 younger kids relaxed while Noah planned his trip to meet up with the robotics boys from Petach Tikvah. The plans changed about 4 times, but eventually Noah headed to the bus stop. With phone guidance from Sara about which platform to go to, he took a bus to the Central Bus Station and then picked up a bus to Shoham where one of the boy's mom picked him up. He is going to someone's birthday party there tonight, sleeping over, and then going to the beach with the boys tomorrow. A great adventure for him, and he could definitely use some teenager time.

The 3 younger kids had Burger's Bar delivered to the apartment for dinner (can't beat that) and after they were fed, Hili Zimbalist came into town to meet me for a grown up dinner! We went to an amazing Asian/Israeli fusion restaurant called Ryu on Emek Refaim. The food was great, the atmosphere was fun, and the spiked lemonana was delicious. A calm day without suffering in the hear was very pleasant. I am forcing the kids to go to bed early tonight so we can get an early start tomorrow. Though Eitan is planning to wake up at 2:00am to watch the home-run derby...

Sunday July 10, 2011

2011-07-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

It was another scorcher, so I decided that we would spend the heat of the day indoors. The Israel Museum has been recently remodeled, and is huge, so that seemed like a good choice. The website advertised that the new youth wing had lots of activities for kids, but when we got there, of course there was "nothing special" going on there except day camps. But, there is plenty to see in the museum. There are 4 synagogue that have been restored and moved from their original locations to the museum -- one from Germany, one from India, one from South America, and one from Italy. They are all really amazing, the kids favorite part was that the one from Suriname is constructed to look like it is Dutch with the exception of a sand floor. We also saw menorah's from all over the world, different dress and jewelry, and some elaborate sephardic sifrei torah. There was an interesting movie about the ideological development of Israeli artists, which we watched and then tried to sort out which works of art on display were from which era. We also visited the Dead Sea scrolls, and the giant model of Jeruslame in the 2nd temple period which used to be at the Holylands hotel but was moved, little piece by little piece, to the Israel Museum. We saw Sam and Shuli's across the street neighbors, the Goldbergs (we stayed at their house for Levi's bris), in the lobby! We then walked around a long corner to the Knesset for a tour, at the request of a couple of kids. All of this would have been much more pleasant if the four children were not verbally, physically, and emotionally attacking each other incessantly.
The mood improved dramatically as we then took a bus to the center of town and met the Gastfrainds! We ate with them at a restaurant called Sima's near machane yehuda. It was very good (no bias). The new banot sherut, Yaara and Efrat, came to meet us there as well. The Gastfrainds left to go meet some friends, and we stayed with the girls and got to know them a bit. They are really terrific, St. Louis is in luck yet again! Both Yaara and Efrat grew up in the Old City and have been friends since they were in 3rd grade, but Yaara's family moved to Kiryat Shmona about 4 years ago. Both of them have good English; Yaara's family was on shlichot in Maryland when she was in first and second grade and Efrat has been working on it on her own. After we finished dinner, Efrat offered to take us back to her house and we jumped on the opportunity. She lives on Chabad Street, just off of the shuk area as you walk in through the Jaffa Gate. You get to Efrat's house by passing through a gate that leads into a lovely courtyard surrounded by 14 houses. This is the only courtyard in the Jewish Quarter. Efrat's mother greeted us warmly with a spread of fruit, cakes, and ice cream -- I have no idea how she threw it together so quickly. We visited for quite a while, and then they took us on a tour around the courtyard area. It was truly beautiful and such a special place, and also very quiet and private. Efrat's mom told us that after Efrat was born (she is the 4th of 5) they needed a larger house and started to look but could not find a location that they liked as much as their current one. So they did some exploration and found that the walls of all of the rooms in their house were 6 feet thick. So they excavated out the walls, and by making them thinner and added steel reinforcements they were able to add 3 bedrooms, and expand their living space! So they "added on" without changing the footprint! Then they took us just a few feet down the street to where Yaara's old house was. Her house is right next to the spot that is the exact middle of the 4 quarters of the Old City. Yaara told us part of the reason that her family moved is that tourist always go to the spot and take pictures, and they were tired of people taking pictures of them through their windows while they were eating dinner! Then walked us back to the Jaffa Gate, and we said our goodbyes. Ilana is quite upset that they will not be living with us and told them so several times. i realized she probably does not really remember NOT having girls live with us. This will definitely be a transition, but we hope to be close to them even if we are not their "immediate family."
On the way home we stopped for iced aromas, Eitan got a lemonana, which was a little sour for his liking. Oh, and it turns out that Efrat's granparents live in the building where we are staying, and they are sponsoring kiddush this Shabbat im honor of her grandfather's 90 th birthday. Efrat will be back in Yaffo finishing her sheruet leumi, but we will see her parents at shul on Shabbat!

Shabbat July 9, 2011

2011-07-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

We split up for Shabbat morning services. The boys went to the Pinsker shul (downstairs), and the girls serviced their need to sleep and stayed home. I went around the corner to Shira Hadasha, an orthodox, feminist congregation. The shul is set up with men and one side and women on the other, and a sheer curtain mechitza separating the two sides. The mechitza is divided into sections, and the sections can be pulled open (like during the d’var torah, which was given by a woman, the mechitzah was pulled open in the front sections so everyone could see.) I arrived during shachrit, which was my first clue that the davening would be slow. It was really slow. Lots of beautiful singing but really slow. So slow I had to leave before mussaf to get to lunch on time. But it was a really different and interesting experience to participate in a service in which a woman led the torah service, and both women and men had aliyot and layned.
After I left the shul, I picked up the kids and we walked over to Faye and Earl Newman’s apartment for lunch with the Newmans, with Rachel and Michael and their kids, and with Michael’s parents. It was very hot. But lunch was really fun. The ruckus of the kids was considerable, but we enjoyed being together. Though Eitan did not enjoy that the entire meal was fish, some of them whole sardines, he kept averting his eyes and saying, “mom, there are 4 whole fish on the table!”. But he survived. After lunch the kids played cards, and then the boys went to the park and the girls played in Rachel and Michael’s apartment next door, and then the kids all came back and it was so loud that Faye and I went to the park to get some quiet and sit in the shade. At the park we saw Tehilla and Ori Teperberg, who had taken the bus and come into town to spend Shabbat with Uriah’s dad, Dani, and his wife Dorit! So we brought them back to the Newman’s apartment, where Ori and Ilana reunited and Mira joined the gang, and Noah and Tehilla had a chance to chat and get Tehilla caught up on all her Epstein classmates. Faye and Earl had been invited to the Teperberg’s for seudah shlishit, and the Oberlanders and Mira tagged along. Dani and Dorit were so welcoming and warm, as was Uriah’s brother and grandmother. The kids had a blast outside (it had started to cool off) and the teens and adults enjoyed chatting. Shabbat was over so quickly, it was a wonderful day, full of friends old and new…

Friday, July 8 2011

2011-07-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Friday was a shopping day. I started off early by leaving the kids and going down to Emek Refaim where they have as market of local artists and goods on Friday mornings. I browsed for a bit and then came back to get the kids moving. The weather has shifted and it has gotten quite hot, so we decided to take a bus to Machane Yehuda instead of walking the 35 minutes or so to get there. But we should have known that Machane Yehuda on a Friday morning was not a good idea for the Oberlanders. Too much sensory overload, and other issues to be described shortly. The bus let us off right in front of a bakery with delicious smells wafting out, so we went in to pick up a few treats for breakfast. While selecting rugella, burrekas, and delicious pitas in this tiny store, Naomi started to get claustrophobic and went out to wait on the sidewalk. Within 3 minutes she was back inside, totally disgusted by something she saw out there. Reader, if you are weak of stomach, please skip ahead to the next paragraph. Naomi saw an older woman who was walking toward her reach back into her pants. Naomi thought maybe she was taking care of a wedgie. But in fact it was so much more, as Naomi saw her pull some poops out of her pants and throw it on the sidewalk. I saw the evidence. Needless to say, Naomi could not eat her bakery treats and now has an extreme aversion to Machane Yehuda.

We did venture into Machane Yehuda but between Naomi’s trauma, Eitan’s visceral reaction and disgust at all fish stalls, and Noah’s impatience with wandering we were there only long enough to grab some gummi candies and then we got the heck out of there. We walked from Machane Yehuda down Jaffa Street, where we stopped at New Deli for lunch. New Deli may have surpassed Burger’s Bar as the ultimate eating experience for the kids, but I have not sampled it as I have been able to eat meat since our week of 7 days of meat in a row. We also found a great vegetarian restaurant on Jaffa Street that has tofu – actual protein for Naomi to eat! We then continued on toward Ben Yehuda where the girls got some skirts, the boys visited the kippa man, we ordered Naomi a siddur, and Eitan realized that the shofar he liked was not actually kosher. Noah bought what he thought was a Washington Captials kippa, but on closer inspection the Israeli girl who knitted it misplaced the hockey stick in the logo and the kippa read" CapiLals." Gives it even more character. By now it was mid afternoon, and the kids were complaining bitterly about walking home in the heat. So, I gave them the cartissiya and the apartment key and told them to take the bus. I got to walk home browsing through more markets on the way and though I was sweltering it was nice to have some quiet time. And when I got home I found all 4 of them safe and sound.

Back home, everyone showered and got ready for Shabbat. We enjoyed speaking to Papa and wishing him a happy birthday! We were invited to dinner at Tova and Yishai’s apartment, and as it is about a 35 minute walk we planned to take the bus there. Tova told us which bus to take to get there and she was going to meet us at the bus stop. So I took the bus pass, no money or cell phone, and we headed to the stop (about a 7 minute walk). As we got closer and saw no one at any of the bus stops, and no buses on the street, we realized that bus routes must stop a little earlier than we had thought on a Friday afternoon... So we walked back to the apartment to call Tova and tell her we were taking a cab and to get some money, and we headed off again. As we were trying to find a cab, a car pulled over and offered us a ride -- he saw Noah’s siddur and figured we needed a ride to shul. It was really nice, but we were not going in his direction. We did get a cab at the Dan Panorama and headed to Tova’s neighborhood, Beit Yisrael, which is right next to Mea Shaarim and like Mea Shaarim is a haredi neighborhood. Our cab driver found their street, but could not find the house. He stopped to ask many people, most of them with long peyes and wearing a strimmel, where the house number was and we kept being directed up and down the same street but no house 31 was to be found. He tried to leave us there, saying it is around here somewhere, but I said no way, if you can’t find it how can we? Eventually he went a little farther down the street and stopped to ask someone on the front porch, and that someone was Yishai! Yipee!
We felt very honored to be at Tova’s and Yishai’s house – we were their first Shabbat guests! They live on the first floor of a 3 story apartment building, and the apartment is brand new and very nice. They look settled in for having been married only two weeks. Noah and Eitan went with Yishai to a nearby Moroccan shul, and the girls and I stayed home with Tova and looked at the gorgeous photos from their wedding. It was a great dinner, the food was delicious and we enjoyed visiting with Tova and getting to know Yishai. His mother is American and speaks English to him, so we spoke to him mostly in English and he spoke to us mostly in Hebrew. Yishai is very friendly and warm, he has friends all over the neighborhood, and Yishai and Tova are very cute and happy. It was a very fun meal, and after cleaning up the soup nuts the kids had somehow scattered all over their apartment Tova and Yishai walked us back towards our apartment. On the walk, the boys asked Yishai what he did in the army (he is in Hesder, he was released from army service a few months ago and is now learning in a yeshiva in Tel Aviv). He told them that he was a big gunner, he shot machine guns with bullets several inches long. And those bullets were much bigger than the 9mm ones that are in the gun in that he then whipped out of the back of his pants to show them. And he showed them the bullets. Yishai’s coolness factor went sky high. And then he told them how he gets to test all the newest weaponry, and how the bullets that he has explode upon impact… so the boys talked guns all the way home, and heard stories about Yishai’s experiences in the field during Cast Lead (when they asked his if he was afraid when he had to go into combat, he told them no, it was no big deal, he was too tired to be scared), and could not stop talking about it even after Yishai and Tova got us onto familiar ground and turned around for home. And all the gun talk aside, to be in Jerusalem on Shabbat, passing by the walls of the old city on the way home from dinner, is really special. The streets are quiet -- either completely closed or with much less traffic than normal -- the restaurants and shops are closed, the constant hustle and bustle come to a stop. It truly feels like Shabbat, in our holy city.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

2011-07-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

Answer for Tuesday’s guest blogger: Naomi Oberlander
Answer for Yesterday’s guest blogger: Noah Oberlander

Today’s Guest blogger: ???

Today we left the house at about 10:30 to take a true Israeli bus and transfer to get to the Biblical Zoo. We didn’t go into the Biblical Zoo, but we walked across a bridge over railroad tracks and through a desert canyon and through a horse stable to get to Ein Yael, a place where they practice ancient arts. Eitan made it by the horses no problem! [editor’s note: The bus ride and transfer were uneventful, but Sima did learn that the bus driver could drive the bus down a busy street with no hands while printing, putting together and stapling 5 transfers. The directions on Ein Yael’s website were to take a bus to the zoo, cross over the railroad tracks on a bridge, and then take a short 5 minute walk up the road to the entrance. In actuality, we had to go up a steep metal staircase to cross over the tracks and then back down. This left us in the middle of a desolate and sandy valley with no road but some kind of track that looked to be used by the heavy machinery we saw along the way. On the other side of the valley is a road near a horse stable. We could see the Ein Yael site but not the way to get there. So we cut through the stables shielding Eitan and pretended to be stupid Americans when interrogated by the stable people (not a stretch). When we got there and asked how to get back down without cutting through the stable they said take a cab.] We made flutes by cutting bamboo into different sizes. The girls both stabbed their feet with bamboo, and Eitan cut his finger a little bit with a knife. We needed some tissues to soak up the blood. Then we put the bamboo together to make flutes. Then we went to the mosaic area. We got to crush pottery with hammers. Eitan and Noah really enjoyed that. [no injuries here]. Then Mom and Eitan went on a tour while the rest of us finished our mosaics. Eitan and Mom told us they learned about the Roman villa, and how the maayan was channeled. [editor’s note: Ein Yael is billed as an outdoor museum that teaches about ancient crafts such as paper making, weaving, pottery, mosaic, basket making, pita making, wine making, and fresco. But in reality most of the advertised areas were closed, and the site is home to a day camp filled with screaming kids. There were only a couple of other families there, one of whom was Eva Ozarowski’s son Joseph with his son and daughter-in-law and their children! He is from Skokie and also knows Sam and Shuli. The site was originally an archeological excavation. A Roman villa sat at the top of the hill, and the ruins that have been excavated include a giant mosaic floor in the living room that at one time had a fountain in the middle. There are also ruins of bath houses that were fed by the maayan. The maayan, which is also toward the top of the hill, was captured in a channel, and sent to two pools – the first allowed sediment to settle, and the second was a reservoir that stored the water used for irrigation. The land beneath is terraced, and the arts and crafts areas were spread out on the different terrace levels.] Eitan and Ilana walked through the channel. We had a snack at pita making, then we went to clay making. It was a lot of fun.
Next we walked backed across the canyon and kept on waiting for a bus that went past us so then next we took a cab to the Malka mall, which everyone said was big but was small compared to American malls. We had great Chinese food at the food court. [editor’s note: Amazing to eat in a huge food court where everything is kosher, and to pass a Beit Knesset while walking through the mall.] While we were eating they made an all call to the mall that mincha was starting. The whole family found that humorous. After shopping for a long time, Eitan bought an Omri Casspi jersey and some Manchester United socks. Ilana had shoes and a shirt, Eitan and Noah both got the world’s smallest kipas, and Naomi got nothing. Then a singer named Miki was entertaining little kids. Then we took a bus back to the apartment. Noah and Eitan went to get iced Aromas – best coffee ever. Then we watched TV and relaxed and ate a McDonald’s Happy Meal which we bought in the food court to give the box and toy and containers to Miriam our cousin who’s obsessed with McDonald’s. It was such a fun day.

Wednesday, July 6 2011

2011-07-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s guest author= ??? no guesses, no answers…
Today’s guest author:

Today we woke up at around 9:30 and got ready for the busy day. Mom said it was supposed to be very hot so we brought a lot of water, except the water is not good enough for Noah so he had to buy purified water. We walked to the Old City and were already very sweaty by 11:20. The first event of our agenda was going on a tour of the Hurva Synagogue. We met in the lobby of the Synagogue and the first thing we saw was this 13 meter high Ahron Kodesh, it was so beautiful. We started our tour thinking it would be 20 minutes long but ended up being an hour, but we were not disappointed. The Synagogue has so much history it was burnt to the ground twice; once by the Romans and once By the Jordanians in the Independence Day War, yet they continue to rebuild it. [editor’s note: though there were earlier synagogues on this site, the Hurva Synagogue was first built by about 500 Ashkenazi Jews who came back to Israel in the early 1700’s – these were the first Jewish immigrants to return to Jerusalem in 100’s of years. The synagogue was burned by the Ottomans, and was rebuilt in grand fashion by followers of the Vilna Goan in the mid 1800’s. The synagogue was designed and constructed by the sultan’s chief architect, and was the first grand and proud Jewish synagogue permitted to be built in the old city in 100’s of years as there was a Turkish law again the construction of any new Jewish house of worship – this was only circumvented with the help of Rothchild and Montefiore. This glorious structure was destroyed by Jordanians in 1948. In 1977, ten years after Israel united Jerusalem, a single arch from the synagogue was reconstructed from its back wall. This was a symbol of the Jewish rebirth of Jerusalem. Now that arch is incorporated into the back wall of the synagogue, which is prominent in the Jewish Quarter]. It was rebuilt a year and a half ago and they spent 10 million dollars on it. First on the tour we went to the basement a saw a ruins that they excavated, one of the ruins was a wall of what they think was the wall to the Rambam’s Shul. That was very cool for me to think about this great Rabbi who lived hundreds of years ago davened here. [editor's note: We also went up on the roof and climbed up to the dome, and walked around both inside and out]. The tour ended and we made our way to the Burnt House, but on the way one of the kids saw a place were she really wanted a ring so we all had to stop and wait for this person to chose the ring she liked. Then we joined another tour group and the Burnt House and watched presentation on what they found there and then watched a movie about what could have happened at this house based on the facts that we know during the Churban Beit Hamekdash Sheni. We all enjoyed learning about History in the comfort of sitting down and air conditioning. After we were all getting pretty antsy but our Mom dragged us on to another archeological site called The Herodian Quarter. I can’t tell you much about this place except there were a lot of stones and some tiles because I was completely spacing out. But I know my Mom really enjoyed it. [editor's note: This site is underneath Yeshivat Hakotel, and consists of the ruins of 6 large homes from the time of the second biet hamigdash. Mosaics, mikvah’s murals, ad may other artifacts are on display here.] It was already 2:00 and we had not eaten yet so we walked back to Mamilla mall and ate at Café Rimone. All Ilana ate at Dairy reasraunts was ravioli, but this time my mom decided to use her veto power and made Ilana have something else. After filling our bellies we walked back to the Old City and met the Pearlmans at Ir David. Instead of just meeting the Pearlmans we saw a lot of unexpected guests, we saw Noah’s friend from school and an Aish group for women from St. Louis. The tour started with us getting lost (not unusual) but we found our way back to the right tour guide. [First our guide showed us the boundaries of the orignal city of David, in David's time. Ir David sites on a hill adjascent to the Old City. It is not within the walls of the current Old City. It sits between two valleys, and is surrounded by hills. One of the valleys, the Kidron valley, has a spring that is the source of water for the city. More on that later.] Our tour guide took us on an adventure back in time. Our first stop was where some historians think that David Hamelech’s Palace once stood. Then The Tour Guide showed us two places where letter seals made out of mud were found. The First was that of a minister 3 hundred years after David’s time. The second found 15 feet away was another minister of the same time period. [editor's note: He read to us the possuk in Jeremiah in which these two ministers are mentioned – in the same sentence in the Tenakh, and found only 15 feet away from each other in the City of David, right next to what may have been David's palace!] They survived because when the Temple was destroyed and burned the mud seals hardened and survived. Next we learned about how important the water was during the Jebusite period, and how they had to fortify the water supply. In order to have access to the water and protect it from being poisoned, they fortified the spring, which lay in the valley outside the walls of the city. They dug an underground tunnels leading down to the fortified spring, the citizens would walk down many steps and take water from the spring back up to the city. [We walked through this tunnel, and I would not want to be the one who had to carry the water back up – hard job!] When David Hamelech captured the city he used the tunnels as his point of entrance into the fortified city. [editor's note: We then re-enacted David anointing Shlomo at the actual site of the Gihon spring. Our tour guide was amazing – he had the kids role play throughout the entire tour so one was the king of the Jebusites, one was King David, one Shlomo, etc.. The guide also read to us from the Tenakh the passukim that described the city, or the battle, or the ministers, in the place where they actually were, that was so powerful and just plain cool. The Tenakh came to life. About 400 years after David and Shlomo, a king called Hezekiah had expanded the city to the west, and now one of the border valleys became incorporated into the city. So Hezekiah had the spring, that was still outside the city, channeled through rock, underneath the city to this valley within the city’s borders. The engineering is truly mind blowing – the tunnel is about 1/3 of a mile long, but has a decline of only one foot! And they built it from both sides and met in the middle! Axe to axe is how the sources describe it. Truly an amazing feat!] Then we actually walked in the tunnel for 20 minutes in the water, it was so much and refreshing. [editor's note: At the end of the tour, our guide read of Jermeiah;s prophesy that Jerusalem will be rebuilt and within its walls we wil again hear the sounds of joy, and reminded us that is what we did today -- very powerful]. That concluded our visit to Ir David. We then went out to dinner with the Pearlmans because it was Ella’s Birthday. We all had either falafel or pizza or both. It was a jam-packed day full of excitement. [We ate in the Old City and walked back through Mamilla, which is beautifully lit at night, the air was cool, the breeze refreshing -- i wish that the walk was longer so that could prolong our enjoyment of the night!]

Sima’s note: This was a day of chance meetings. We saw Ezra and Shoshana Hurwitz on our way to Hurva, Noah’s lacrosse teammate from Ladue and many friends on the Aish tour (Michelle Brooks, Lisa Binowtiz, Marianne Chervitz, and Keri Simon to name a few) at Ir David, then on the way home in Mamilla Noah saw a kid from Petach Tikvah that he met on the robotics weekend, and we topped off the night by running into Joe and Orit Strauss at our building – Joe’s dad lives in the apartment next door to the one we are renting. We also had phone calls from Elianna, Faye and Earl, and we are invited our for both Shabbat lunch and dinner this week… That connected feeling that you get here is hard to describe, but we really do feel like we belong and this is where we should be.

Tuesday, July 5 2011

2011-07-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

Today: Guest Author

We started the day off with me being the slacker. I woke up late, took 30 minutes to shower, and found 2 pieces of hair in my egg salad sandwich. Enough about me, let’s move on to the family activities though I feel that I am way more interesting. Noah ditched the family and went to hang out with Alek Zimbalist. The rest of the gang went on a search through Mamilla Mall for kids Naots for Ilana. Then, we went to the time elevator. That was pretty cool. It was a 4-D movie (or as Eitan would say, “No it’s not.” And explain 4-D in some math words that most people don’t understand). The movie was basically like a roller coaster through time in Jerusalem, Naomi was pretty scared to go on it after she realized we need seat belts. Of course she ended up loving it. After, we went on a self- guided tour. My mom gave Ilana these pictures to find along the “tour”. You’re probably asking yourself, why did I use quotation marks around the word TOUR. Well, I did it because we could only find about 4 of the landmarks along the tour, so we ended up just giving up and buying ice cream. We walked up and down Jaffa and Ben-Yehuda streets on yet another search for Naots. We didn’t find any. Then the family went home to pick up Noah and head off to the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. It was all different movies about his life. It was very interesting. We ate at this restaurant called Cup a Joe. It looked very good but unfortunately we all had stomachaches, so we didn’t really get to eat the good food. We came home and now my mom is at the
Emak Refaim looking at some art and a present for Ella Perlman, she’s turning 4. So here I am now finishing up the blog.

Guess who?
(tune in next time to find out)

Sima’s addendum:
While the kids were sleeping and slacking this morning, I was doing research and making phone calls to set up our activities over the next week and a half. One of the places that I really wanted to visit is the Begin Museum, but they were not answering the phone and you must have reservations in advance. As Google maps showed the museum to be a nine minute walk, I thought I’d take a pilot trip to find the museum and make reservations. Well, Google was right that it is nine minutes away, but it was a different nine minute walk than the one shown on the map… So after 25 minutes and a ramble through the Yemin Moshe neighborhood I eventually sought directional hope, found the huge impossible to miss building, and made reservations. The rest of the day is as described above until after the Begin Museum. After enjoying the beautiful view form the patio of the museum we did a short walk around the area, stopping first at the Lions Fountain which was a gift from Germany to Israel and has several spitting lions. The girls enjoyed wetting their hair in the lion spit and frolicking in the fountain. Then we walked over to Montefiore’s Windmill, and for a family stroll around the Yemin Moshe neighborhood. This was one of the first neighborhoods built outside the Old City walls in the 1850’s. When East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control, this neighborhood was in the line of fire from snipers. Now it is beautiful, upscale neighborhood with quaint narrow little streets, gorgeous flowers blossoming throughout, and houses overlooking the Old City walls with flat screen TV’s inside (we peeked in the windows). I did later get an hour to myself to go to the grocery store and browse in a shop called Dahlia, but the best gift of all was that I came home to four quiet, happy, peaceful children!

Monday, July 4, 2011

2011-07-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

Saying good-bye to Mike last night was sad for us all. We will miss his enthusiasm, sense of adventure, encyclopedic recount of facts, and the company of another adult. This morning Noah was feeling a bit better than yesterday, his fever seemed to be gone, but he was still not well. So Noah stayed in the apartment to rest and recuperate and the rest of us walked to the kotel for the bar mitzvah of Noam Ganz, Faye and Earl Newman's grandson. We met at the entrance to the Tunnel Tours, and it was great to see Faye and Earl, Rachel and Michael and their kids, and Sara and Tova! And Naomi finally got her burning question answered -- does Tova wear a shetel or a shmata? I would hardly call it a shmata, but Tova does look adorable in a scarf. Boaz and Heftzi Ganut were there as well. After greetings and a bit of visiting, the men went into the shul that is inside the men's side of the kotel, and the women were brought in through the corridor that is at the beginning part of the tunnel tours, to a balcony that overlooks the shul. There were 4 bar mitzvahs going on at once, but we could see Noam through the one way glass, and hear them using the headphones that were tuned to the channel of the microphone that the men were using below, so it was just like being there... It was quite a sight to see four groups of men, some Sphardic and some Ashkenazi, each with a sefer Torah, some celebrating quietly, and some celebrating quite boisterously. After the service we departed for Beit Ticho for a bar mitzvah luncheon. The kids, Sara, Tova and I went by bus. This was our first bus ride in Israel on this trip, and it was definitely the way to go. Sara led us to the bus stop, got us onto the right bus, bought us our 10 ride cartissyea, got us off at the right stop after calling her uncle to figure out exactly where the restaurant was, and guided us right to the door. It is wonderful to be taken care of by our girls! Beit Ticho is a beautiful and calm oasis in the middle of the bustling city. The house is set off the street and surrounding by a lush garden. We ate outside in the garden, under giant umbrellas in the shade and enjoying the cool breeze. We were treated to dish after dish of amazing food, a sheet Noam had prepared from his learning about the menorah (including a scientific experiment about the direction of the flames, love it!) and lots of Earl's gemmatria. But now Ilana started to not feel so well, so it was time to leave. We said our goodbyes, and Sara came with us as we headed out. But next door to Beit Ticho is Rabbi Kook's house from when he was the Chief Rabbi of Israel. At Eitan's insistence we had to stop and take a quick tour. Rav Kook was the first Chief Rabbi of Israel and he lived in this house in the 1920's. This facility also houses the yeshiva that he founded, Mercaz HaRav. Our guide told us many interesting stories and anticdotes that exemplified Rav Kook's amazing middot, and also told us that if you look into every single photo of Rav Kook in the house,as you move Rav Kook's eyes follow you. We tested this hypothesis and it seemed to be true.
By now Ilana was not such a happy girl, so we walked back to the apartment (via Ben Yehuda street for some quick window shopping) where we had a little quiet time with Sara and let Ilana rest. Sara had to be at work in the B'nai Akiva building by 6, so Eitan and I walked back that way with her and then went on to Ben Yehuda, where Eitan had previously spied a few kippot that he was interested in. We did get him a fresh copy of his fish kippa, and a variation on that theme to be revealed later. After Eitan and I got back, we spoke to Mike who had safely arrived home and was dealing with piles and piles of mail. After some horrible fighting between siblings we all set off to Emek Refaim to get dinner as I could not leave any combination of the 4 home together without fear of someone getting seriously hurt. I am thinking that we need a little more structure to our days so tomorrow morning I plan on making lots of phone calls to schedule various activities around the city.

Friday - Sunday, July 1 - 3, 2011

2011-07-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

This will be a short blog as I (Mike) am at Ben Gurion waiting to take off to come home and the keyboard on my iPad case has decided to not let me use any keys on the top row.

Friday started with saying goodbye to Netanya. Leaving the apartment was easy, except the four kids all sitting in the middle row. Fortunately, the ride to Ra'anana was quick and the kids were happy to see the Hartsteins. Noah left us for a few hours to hang out with Matan Rich - you will have to ask him what they did. We went to Park Ra'anana where Dalia was selling the candy mugs the kids made at her bat mitzvah. She was helping to raise money to fight pulmonary hypertension. Their babysitter from years ago (who also happened to be good friends with Libby Adler) died suddenly and many groups got together to memorialize her. After selling out, we all headed to Appolonia, on the coast north of Herziliyah - a ruin we had not yet explored. The kids played with the water fountains, and had a great time with each other even if it was hot. The adults loved having some time to really talk. The breeze off the sea almost made it tolerable to be out in the heat. I loved exploring the crusader castle. Then to Rehovot to spend Shabbat with the Fass family. They were concerned that with all of the restaurant reviews we have provided that they would not stack up - nothing could be farther from the truth - dinner was excellent and equaled by lunch - bourekas, chicken soup, chicken, schnitzel, etc. The kids stayed in the kids room and Sima and I stayed at Hester's parents house a few minutes away. The teenagers slept most of the day, the kids played risk and other games, we talked and read and I even learned a bit with Ephraim and a friend. At times it was just easier for them to speak Hebrew and I wasn't totally lost.

Oh, I forgot something, and that is a theme. We forgot to get a prescription from Mo for Noah's sinus infection, so we called a friend of his in Rehovot and he very kindly gave us a scrip for an antibiotic. We then drove into Jerusalem as this landlord was being very nice and letting us check in early. He was very late and one of us (me) really needed to use something in the apartment - good thing the Inbal Hotel is just down the street. After settling and checking out the view of the Old City from the mirpeset (balcony), the boys headed to Burgers Bar. My stomach was not going to get in the way of a greasy burger at 1:30 am. Later this morning Sima and I got gas and returned the car. Two miles of driving in Jerusalem and there was more swearing than the rest of the trip combined. Everyone must just know that to return a car to Avis that you drive to the gas station down the block and enter a gated area to head underground to return the car. I will never understand some things. We then walked back go the apartment - ten minutes - to find the kids enjoying American TV. We headed to the Old City, via the Mamila Mall - amazing new things in this very old city. Noah had been in contact with Aleck Zimbalist and he and a friend were going in meet him there, so we stopped for lunch. We were surprised that Hili and Meital joined them and we all had a very nice lunch (Cafe Cafe was so-so, but the company was great). We bought Naomi a bat mitzvah present at Michal Negrin and filled Noah's prescription. But, not fast enough as he was really not feeling well. He toughed it out and we entered the Old City by the Jaffa Gate, headed down the shuk and entered the Jewish Quarter at the Cardo and went to the rebuilt Hurva synagogue. Noah spiked a fever so he, Sima and the girls went home and Eitan and I went to the Kotel. Those reflections will wait. I finally grabbed a falafel, and headed to the airport. Sima will add/subtract (I didn't blog about how the 5 other members of the family all took advantage of the very clean bathrooms at the Mamila Mall) and blog alone for the rest of their trip.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

2011-06-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

It is late, and we are tired as we had to pack up tonight. It turns out that our landlord (or his son) has changed his mind and instead of letting us keep the apartment until Sunday now wants to charge us to stay past Friday. Who needs to pay him to store our luggage? So we will shlep all of our stuff to Rechovot for Shabbat and then to Jerusalem. So - in typical Israeli fashion - we took a "pilot trip" today. We brought down our empty suitcases to see if they will fit in the car. We think they will (or might), if we squeeze all 4 kids in the middle seat and fold the rear seats down. Wish us luck. The Arab spring has spread to the Oberlander summer - the kids' revolt has continued. But, no (or very little) violence. So, instead of our planned hike near Yokneam the kids stayed in the apartment all morning staring at various screens of different sizes. We walked down the tayelet along the beach and then to the ATM that has English and we know takes our card. We gathered up the kids and then went to Yokneam to meet up with Judy Yuda, who works for the Jewish Agency and is the Regional Manager for the partnership between St. Louis and Yokneam. Again, in typical Israeli manner, we met her on the side of a street. We followed her to a wonderful restaurant, but Sima is really getting tired of eating so much meat. So, she had fish. And, Naomi had stir fry, but no chicken. Everything was arranged ahead of time - we sat down and appetizers and drinks were brought to us. No paying, no signing, no nothing. Thank you St. Louis (and Atlanta) for a wonderful lunch. During lunch the kids got a lesson on the work of the Jewish Agency, and the partnership between St. Louis/Atlanta and Yokneam/Megiddo. The kids asked really good questions and we hope will retain some of what they learned. We then went with Judy to Beit Cham (Warm House) to see one of the programs in action. At Beit Cham, 30 students (1st to 6th grade) from disadvantaged families come after school to work on homework, get a bit of tutoring, spend time with friends, eat a hot meal, etc. Today was their last day of school, so we did an art project with them. None of them spoke English, and so we tried our best to communicate as we cut out felt flowers and sewed beads onto them. Mike is really glad that he doesn't have to sew on many buttons. After a very rewarding couple of hours at Beit Cham, we decided to make a short stop in Zichron Yaakov (which was on the way) so we could have on more chance to look for property (no, not really, spend a few minutes in the shops, and enjoy the atmosphere and the amazing views. We then drove (and got a bit confused) to - again in typical Israeli fashion - a junction to meet up with Chaim and Shifra Weiss, Yaara's wonderful parents. They guided us to a Moshav called Kfar Haroeh and we went to Yaara's favorite restaurant, and now one of ours. Not sure it has a real name - just the cafe in Haroeh, we believe. We will check with Yaara. We ordered all of Yaara's favorites, salads, ravioli, quiche. And, of course milk shakes for the kids. We really do think the dairy restaurants are better than the meat restaurants. We then packed up most of our stuff and told the girls that if they cooperated that we would walk with them to the kikar to look for earrings. They did (sort of) so we did. Ilana got a cute pair of dangly butterflies and Naomi realized that she has expensive taste. After only like the silver and gold jewelry, she finally settled on a cute anklet. Mike couldn't get his falafel as the stand was closed, but we did give tzedakah to the Na Nach Nachman Meuman guys (3 times) and got 2 bracelets and a sticker. The best souvenirs so far!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

2011-06-29T13:44:00.001-07:00

We had a wonderful day on the Golan Heights with the Teperbergs. We were said to say goodbye to them, but most of us will see them in Jerusalem. We must admit, however, that were not too unhappy to say goodbye to Hispin and the youth hostel. Hispin is wonderful because of the Teperbergs, but it is not a "beautiful" place. Dusty, dirty. No real view. Not much to do right there; there are much prettier places in the Golan.

We let the kids sleep a bit later. Breakfast was not as good. We really must have been the only family there and they forgot we were there. It seems that families get a better breakfast (fried eggs, cheese, etc.) as well as place mats instead of plastic table cloths. So, the staff quickly made us room at a bigger table and promised us fried eggs. By the time we got them, however, we were mostly done. Guess what some of us had for lunch? Fried egg sandwiches. We went to the Teperbergs, and after waiting the typical amount of time for Camp Teperberg, we headed off on a drive up the eastern most road of the Golan. We learned about some of the preparations the Israeli army is taking in case of another tank war. Our first stop was Tel Saki, an Israeli army position that was overrun at the beginning of the Yom Kippur war. We saw an old jeep, an old tank and some artillery. We explored the trenches and saw the bunker and could even take up position with the fixed machine guns (no firing pins, but Uria says they are operational). Uria told us the story of how the few soldiers there took the first fire of the war, received reinforcements, were overrun and how one injured solider convinced the Syrians that all of the others were killed, saving the 27 others who were hiding in the bunker. At the end of the war, that soldier returned to Israel as part of a prisoner exchange. We even had our own casualty at Tel Saki. Eitan was bravely exploring the trenches when he fell backward (about 6 feet). Visions of broken bones or worse were quickly replaced with some bad scrapes on his side and leg. He was a real trooper and kept going.

Our next stop was about 4/5 up Mt. Peres, which has a military base at the top (like many mountains in the Golan). This point presented us with a view all the way to Haifa. We also saw a cool spider that many of us believed to be poisonous. The drive to had us path through a lot of rock strewn fields, but also some beautiful vineyards and orchards. And, many "unofficial" memorials, including one to a unit that included the name Yoel Shalit, Gilad Shalit's uncle. Then on to Mt. Hozek - almost in the middle of the eastern border of the Golan, with a great view of Syria. We were about 1 mile from a Syrian town and could see Syrian traffic. We also saw Israeli troops keeping on an eye on Syria and clearing some brush from no-man's land. Next stop will not be on any maps. Even the Teperbergs had to pull to the side of the road and call a friend to make sure that we were in the right place. We parked the cars and walked about 100 meters down a dirt road that had barbed wire fences on both sides warning of mine fields. At the end of the "road" we found 3 soldiers putting up a shade covering and some tables and flags for a ceremony later in the day. We took advantage of the shade. Also at the end of the road was a Syrian made "pool" - it was circular, about 5-7 meters in diameter (none of us figured out how deep), and the source of the water was the matter of some debate. Vardit thinks it is spring fed and Uria things it is like a cistern and catches rain water. Regardless, Noah was the first to jump in. It was quite cold, but we all jumped and swam, except for Sima and Vardit and Noa. We even coaxed Ori and Shlomo into the water. The soldiers looked on jealously. Vardit was in charge of the pita/bread sandwiches with hummus, hatzilim and agvanyot (tomato). The kids had a great time, even the ones who freaked out about trying to find some privacy in which to change clothes. Then, off to De Karena chocolate factory in Ein Zivan. The tour was a bit of a disappointment in that it was all in Hebrew, the tour guide spoke really fast and she wouldn't even pause to let the Teperbergs translate. But, we did get to taste some chocolate on the way out. After our sad parting, we headed to Rosh Pina because Uria told us it was beautfiul. Not sure what we were supposed to see, but we parked near the "historical sight" sign, left the kids in the car (better than fighting with them) and we went exploring and found cobblestone streets that looked like the streets from the early days of the settlement. We were following a group of 20 to 30 middle-aged to older Israeli men on an outing. They came across a bride and groom taking pictures and broke into song and encircled the newleds and danced for them - only in Israel would you see that. Back to the car and off to Tiberias for dinner at Deck's. We have heard so much about this place that even the great meal could not live up to the hype. But, the view was tremendous (and the steak not bad). Home in Netanya and the kids all collapsed.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

2011-06-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

We think we've found our kids limit. The Teperbergs were busy with an all-day school trip today, so we said a quick hi to Vardit (and picked up forgotten items from last night) and headed out on our own. But, before that, we enjoyed our first "official Israeli breakfast" at the hotel/youth hostel in Hispin. Why "youth hostel"? Because it seems that we are the only family staying here this week - the rest of the guests are Israeli youth groups and Taglit/Birthright trips (and French and British teen groups). There was a lot of noise last night, but it seemed to quiet down around 12:30 p.m. Breakfast consisted of salads, peppers, bourekas, cereal, fried eggs, cheese. But, no cottage cheese as the hotel is showing solidarity with the cottage cheese rebellion. And, Sima snuck some bread and cheese for lunch sandwiches and Mike saw some "take away" bags by baguettes, so we don't think we actually needed to sneak them away.

We headed to our first hike - Nahal El Al. No, it is not just an airline. The El Al is the southernmost river in the Golan and runs from the northeast to the southwest and into the Kinneret. The hike started at second yishuv down the road - called Avnei Eitan (so, Eitan was happy). This hike was pretty official, with a parking lot (gravel) and bathrooms and even a snack bar (that was closed). The hike took us down a pretty steep incline to the river bed and then through dense and beautiful vegetation (lots of flowers of all colors, so some thorns - it was almost like being in a jungle) and then around to a beautiful waterfall. We only saw one group on the way down - a group of guys in their late teens/early 20's. They decided to head off the marked path and we asked where they were going. They said they were going to find another waterfall, but suggested we stay on the marked path. Good suggestion. We got to the pool/waterfall by climbing down a steep incline and only made it with the assistance of metal handholds knocked into the rock wall. The water was sure cold, and Mike was the first to dunk himself, but all the kids soon followed. Only one of us needed to make a deposit way off the beaten bath, and Sima had to help, and it seems that others needed to do the same thing at some other time. Glad we brought handy wipes with us. As we were getting ready to leave (and Noah finding a secluded spot to change his clothes) a man in black pants and white shirt walked on us and asked us in Hebrew when we were leaving. We told him 5 or 10 minutes, but he kept pestering us. Sima knew that he was the scout for a larger group and very soon we were inundated with 40 or 50 screaming kids who all began stripping even before we were out - we just didn't need to see 10 year olds swimming in their tighty whiteys. The climb back up was much easier than the climb down. We came across the same group of 20-somethings they asked us the way to the waterfall. We asked them what they found on their detour, they said "it was a secret" - code for they were lost, glad we didn't follow them. The kids were already tired and kvetching and it wasn't even lunch time. We went back to the rooms to change out of our wet swimming clothes and into normal hiking/walking clothes. The kids revolted and demanded that we not go to another hike. So, we headed to Aniam - up the road - that has an artists colony. We each had an ice coffee and bought them all fruit shakes (prishake) to go with our purloined sandwiches. We browsed in the shops and then headed to Katzrin. Katrzin is the only city on the Golan and we went to a strip mall to watch a movie at Kesem Golan. The movie was in 4D (fans blew on us and we were shpritzed with water a few times) and showed great views of the Golan. It was essentially a great commercial for the Golan. Only problem - we were already here! Then we went upstairs to a really interesting 3D topographical map and there was a multi-media presentation that talked about the geological and political (and military) history of the Golan. One of us was sure freaked out to find out that there was a war right where we were standing only 38 years ago. The only assurances that worked were that this is where the Possicks are moving (we think), would they come anywhere that is unsafe? Of course, Katzrin didn't exist during the war anyway, it was founded in 1977. After the official show was over, we spent a long time looking at the map and finding all the spots we had visited on this trip (including finding what the boys are adamant was the Teperberg house) and last trip. The relief sure puts everything into perspective - why the Golan is strategically important, not only because of the high ground but also because of the control of the water feeding the Kinneret and the Jordan River. After the movie, and a short stop at a memorial that included 5 old tanks, we headed to Gamla. The park was closing in 90 minutes, so we were not allowed to hike to the city of Gamla that was destroyed by the Romans in the first century. Instead, we hiked the other way to get to an overlook for a wonderful view of the Gamla Falls - the tallest falls in all of Israel. Noah ran ahead to get in shape for lacrosse and Mike and Eitan walked fast. The girls fell behind and didn't quite make it the whole way. The boys decided to catch up with girls and were jogging, which was fine until Noah turned back to make sure that Mike had not had a heart attack and tripped and fell over a rock. Glad we had more handy wipes. We then walked a paved path to see the vultures and an overlook of ancient Gamla. The views were great, but watching the soaring vultures was truly amazing. We took some pictures and even some video - hope they come out. Then, the kids were hungry and crabby (did we say that they were in full revolt yet?). So, back to Katzrin to the food court - pizza for the girls and Burger Ranch (yuck) for the boys. (Folding the case to hold the Burger Ranch meal for 2 took the clerks 5 minutes.) We brought the kids back to the room and they ate, watched a movie and we (the adults) went back to Aniam for a nice dinner at Suzanna's. The highlight was that Sima got a Poykepot! Yup - cholent on a Tuesday night. We bought the boys and Ilana steak burgers to go as a peace offering (and Naomi a salad). Didn't work, so we are outside in the wind, with Sima drinking a beer and Mike drinking a 375 ml bottle of Gamla wine. And, watching (and listening to) more teenagers. How many times do we need to say that we don't have an aish (a light) for these idiots who shouldn't be smoking.

Monday, June 27, 2011

2011-06-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Teperbergs! We could stop right there and that would be the highlight of the day.

We woke the kids up and packed up for the trip up north. We have no idea how we will get the luggage in the Mazda 5 for the trip to Jerusalem next Sunday as we had to put part of the back seat down just to fit in a few backpacks. We are glad we brought the bungee cords and just hope that we don't lose our luggage on the road up to Jerusalem. We have been listening to the seventh Harry Potter book on CD in the car and the kids were so engrossed that they didn't want to stop the car. Our first stop (after stopping for gas for the umpteenth time) was Har Tavor, or Mt. Tabor. Christians believe that the mountain is the sight of Jesus' transfiguration. According to the summary on wikipedia, that is the story where Jesus transfigured into rays of light and spoke to Moses and Elijah. Har Tavor is mentioned in Tanach in Yehoshua as the point where 3 of the tribes' areas met as well as in Shoftim as to the place where Devorah and Barak fought battles. It was also the sight of battles in Roman times (where in this country is that not the case?) and there are the remnants of a wall that Josephus Flavius built. In order to get to the top of the mountain, we drove through a very interesting Druze town and up a very steep and windy street. At the top are a Franciscan monastery and a Greek Orthodox church. Only Eitan and Mike went to visit the Franciscan church, saw a monk dressed in monk's garb and watched as pilgrims took communion as part of a Mass. (When we used the bathroom on the way out, there was a box that asked for 1 shekel for using the WC - we paid.) The hike essentially circled the top of the mountain. The absolute hardest part of the hike was finding where the path started (or ended). We started and stopped several times and even drove the car to look for the trail markings. We found 3 girls who were hiking from Tel Dan (way up north in the Golan) all the way to Jerusalem. The pointed out the path they took up and down the mountain, but we found the black trail that circled the mountain and off we went. The hike was not terribly strenuous, pretty short (an hour in total) and afforded beautiful views in all directions.

After the hike, we went to Kfar Tavor at the base of the mountain to visit a fascinating museum - the Museum of Marzipan. That's right, a whole museum dedicated to almond paste and sugar. We saw amazing sculptures made out of marzipan, watched a short video on the history of marzipan and how to make it, and then Naomi, Eitan and Ilana went to the marzipan workshop to make their own works of art (pizza, flowers, a hot dog and corn on the cob). We each had a taste, and none of us like marzipan. That didn't stop the girls from buying marzipan in the shape of a dog and a chick. It was 2:30 and we still had not had lunch, so off to SuperSol to buy bourekas - pizza, onion, mushroom, cheese and potato - we all snarfed it down in the car and then headed out. The drive took us to the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and then along the border with Jordan and up to the Golan Heights. Just as windy and steep a drive, but a lot longer and more trucks coming down. Once on top of the Heights, it was a quick drive to Hispin (or Chispin or Haspin), where the Teperbergs live. After a wonderful greeting by Uria and some of the kids, we settled in like it had not been 3 years since they left St. Louis. All of the kids felt so comfortable with each other (even Noa, who was not yet born when they left) - we did miss Tehilla as she is on a school trip). Noah joined us as Uria took us on a tour of his school. He is the head of school of a high school called Bnai Golan in Ramat Magshimim, the town just next to Hispin. Uria seems to be doing an amazing job helping 70 at risk teenagers become productive members of society. For many of these kids, if not for Uria's school they would be in prison. The school is actually a small village, with dorms, a shul, different buildings for classrooms, administrative offices, a music room in the old air raid bunker, etc. Several of the buildings were built by the Syrians when they controlled the Heights, including Uria's office and part of the shul. If only the Syrian army knew what is going in on in the buildings formerly used by their officers. After the tour of the school, we got a quick tour of Hispin (that is all it takes is a quick tour). Let's put it this way, there are no street names - you just count the number of streets over (there are only 3 or 4). We saw the plot of land where the Teperbergs will be building their house soon. Uria the barbecued for us (on the grill they brought from the US) - the meat was straight from the butcher on the Golan, and was probably the freshsest meat we have ever had.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

2011-06-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

We spent the better part of the day in Ramat Hanadiv, a nature preserve/gardens at the southern end of the Carmel, between Zichron Yaakov and Binyamina. (It is a 2 minute drive from the Tishbi winery.) We thought it would be just a short visit and we would then venture onto Zichron Yaakov for lunch and a visit to the Nili museum (a museum to the resistance against the British). But, we were pleasantly surprised with how much there was to do at Ramat Hanadiv (we tried to go there the last time we went to Zichron and Tishbi, but arrived when it was closing). The highlight (for most visitors) are the beautiful gardens surrounding the burial place of Baran Edmond de Rothschild and his wife, the Baroness Adelaide. True, the terraced gardens, the rose gardens and the other botanical beauties were amazing. But, we were there to hike in the nature preserve. There are three marked trails - the helpful woman at the information center suggested we take the blue-marked Spring trail, which is recommended for families and the map (that cost us 2 shekels) says should take an hour to cover the 2.5 Km. We decided to take the red-marked Manor trail instead. It is 4 Km long an is supposed to take 2 hours. Well, being us we would have finished the trail in an hour or so, but we took a bit of a detour and our path was more like 6+ Kms. Why? Well, we would like to think that we planned it that way all along but the answer is much simpler, and one word. Cows. Lots and lots of cows. But, more on that later. So we started out on a dirt path, realized we were on a service road and not the trail and double backed. On the hike(s) (more on that later too), we only saw 2 other hikers, and extremely little litter. We were very happy to only have to dodge the cowpies that marked the trail (that should have given us a clue, but we are a bit clueless sometimes). We came to the first signpost (marked with a #1) and dutifully looked at our map for an explanation. But, the map we bought didn't tell us anything (we found out later that the Hebrew map includes explanations - sheesh, talk about discrimination). That was when we came across the first hiker - a woman who was documenting the number and types of butterflies she saw. She told us that we were standing by a ancient quarry and we headed on down the path. The boys were trailblazing ahead, Sima and Naomi were in the middle and Mike was trailing back with Ilana who seemed to be in her own little (happy) world most of the morning. That was when Noah and Eitan sprinted back to Sima yelling "turn around, turn around!!" Naomi asked in a panic "Why, wild pigs?" as were told at the information center that pigs do live in the park but hide during the day and come out at night. The boys screamed, "No worse, cows and horses!" Recall, ever since the unfortunate horse bite incident Eitan is terrified of horses. So, Mike took the lead, Sima took charge of the girls and Noah was charged with throwing himself between any wild, vicious horses and his brother. As we moved forward in our defensive positions we came across the first of the wild horses - with engorged utters and looking an awful lot like a cow. (Noah said later that he was the boy that cried "Horse".) Then another cow, and another, and a few more. They were just chomping away at the grass and showed little interest in us, but the path was blocked, and not only by cows but by a yellow rope that seemed to be directing us off the path. So, we dutifully followed the rope naively thinking it would take us back to the red path. But, alas, we found ourselves off the path and on some unmarked dirt roads. We aimed ourselves for the cliff overlooking the coastal plain (the red path eventually turned at the cliff and has several amazing overlooks) so we figured the worst thing we would do would cut to the north or south of the path and rejoin it. Well, we ended up going further south than we thought and found ourselves in a Tumuli field. What is a tumulus - good question. A tumulus is a Caananite grave site, marked by a pile of rocks,and quite cool. We were several Kms south of were we should have been but we found ourselves on the Israel National Trail and took that north until it met up with the red trail, at a very cool excavation of a Byzantine farm house. The house was 2 stories tall, and the foundation is well preserved. That farm was built on the same spot where there was a Second Temple Era agricultural site. We saw wine presses from both eras, a mikveh and an olive press. The red path took us down into a wadi (valley created by a stream) and then back up to the trailhead. A very cool hike that we (meaning Sima and Mike) would definitely do again. But not cool in the sense that we were drenched with sweat and thirsty as much of the water in our camelbacks was still frozen.

But at the visitors center, like an oasis beckoning to us, was a lovely little cafe (called Kerem Zayit - vineyard of olives?). We must say, that it is now our favorite restaurant. The views are amazing, the food was delicious, and we adore the little tiny cheese graters for the parmesean. Even the boys, who are huge meat lovers, agree that our three favorite restaurants are all dairy restaurants - Aresto in Caesaria, the Tishbi Winery restaurant and now the restaurant at Ramat Hanadiv. The boys split penne and a pizza, the adults each had salads (Nicoise and a salad with fried goat cheese), Naomi had lasagna and Ilana had here favorite, ravioli (this time spinach with tomato sauce). The highlights were the focaccia served with the salads (that all enjoyed), the ice mint that Sima and Noah had (think ice cafe with lemonade and mint - crushed ice infused with mint and lemon), and the individual serving of parmesean cheese with a mini grater for the pasta - Mike used up every bit of Ilana's on her ravioli.

After the wonderful lunch, we did the Spring trail, which was supposed to take an hour. The kids all made guesses, and everyone overshot - it took us less than 30 minutes. But the short trail took us be a Roman tunnel and aquaduct (a little one) that feeds a pool/bathouse. A sign said that this was the best preserved aquaduct in Israel and the only one that continuously fed water from its source to its destination since ancient time. We then saw other ruins, but don't know what they were (darn helpless map). Since there was no complaining on that short hike, the girls got ice cream and the boys chose sodas. After the hike, back at the information center, we found out the cows are in the park to graze the greenery and get rid of the vegetation that could feed a fire. Though we only saw their poops, the park also has a herd of goats that serve the same function. As we turned away from the attendant at the visitor center and looked back over at our kids, who were waiting outside, we saw them surrounded by a group of 20 or so Nigerian men taking turns posing with them and taking photos. We went to investigate and found that this group is visiting Israel for 3 months and learning about agricultural techniques. Apparently one of the guys had approached the kids and asked them where they were from, they said St. Louis, in America, and that was the hook. Each of them wanted a photo with the kids, which they obliged until it just got too tedious and we had to move on.
We then watched a short movie (thank you air conditioning) about Ramat Hanadiv ant the Baron de Rothschild. Unsurprisingly, the movie did not share any of the negative perspectives on Rothschild or his overseers that we heard at the First Aliyah Museum. But, we learned that his father was from Frankurt and was renowned for his honest business dealings. The father asked his 5 sons to spread out across Europe and deal with each other honestly - they did, to London, Paris, Vienna, Florence and .... 1 other city. The youngest, Edmond, went to Paris. It was there that he joined the French, Jewish aristocracy and became interested in the fledgling Jewish communities in Palestine. He was a patron of towns from Rosh Pina to Gedera, including Zichron Yaakov. He died in 1934 and his will asked that he be buried in Israel, but did not indicate where. His wife died the next year, and in 1954 their bodies were brought from France aboard an Israeli naval frigate and they were reinterred at Ramat Hanadiv. (Rothschild was known as Hanadiv Hayadua - the Known Benefecator - because of the humble way that he gave of his fortune.) We then walked the gardens and visited the Rothschild crypt.
Afterwards, we returned to Netanya, the girls and Eitan swam a little and we all got cleaned up to go to Modiin, to have dinner with Nava and her family. Although we were afraid of getting horribly lost in Modiin, we only made one wrong turn and found the Brief's house easily enough. We had a wonderful home cooked BBQ with Nava, her parents and siblings, a cousin (and her friend) who just finished a Birthright trip and, of course, Yehoshua. The conversation was lively and interesting, and the Brief children were wonderful hosts to our kids; we even had the opportunity to watch all of the kids gang up on Nava and try to wrestle away her bat mitzvah album. Any of the Brief kids (or Yehoshua) who post pictures from Nava's bat mitzvah up on Facebook will get special prize from St. Louis. We then sadly said our goodbyes as Nava is leaving for camp up north and we will not be seeing her again this trip, and made our way back to Netanya. The kids are, again, exhausted. They already complained about getting up early tomorrow, but tomorrow is a big day - we head up north to the Golan and to the Teperbergs!

Friday/Saturday - June 24 and 25, 2011

2011-06-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

Friday was another "vacation" day for us. We stayed in Netanya and went to the beach/kikar/pool. The beach was beautiful, and as it was Friday it was a bit more crowded. At one point we had a very Israeli beach experience. To the left of us was what looked to be a Russian couple on lounge chairs. He was wearing a speedo type suit and she was tatooed and wearing a thong and usually not her bikini top (but lying on her stomach). To the right, we saw an elderly couple walking down the beach towards us - probably in their 70's. He was wearing a black suit with his pants rolled up to his knees, still wearing his black hat, and she was completely covered. The juxtaposition was just amazing. The kids came up to the apartment for lunch, and the adults went to get more cash out of the ATM. We just had to stop for a smoothie (for Sima) and a shwarma (for Mike). We then picked up some more food for the apartment and Mike took the girls and Eitan swimming. This time, we were asked for the cartis (the card that shows that our landlord paid the dues for the pool). Well, it turns out that he hasn't yet. So, Noah will just have to call him to talk about that too. (And, that someone else keeps parking in the spot that we were told is for our use.) Still can't beat the location and views from the apartment.

We then showered and got ready for Shabbat and started our trek into the Shomron (Samaria - part of the "West Bank") to spend Shabbat with the Kampler family. Sara lived with us 2009-10. We have a very "liberal" GPS; no matter how hard we tried, it just would not give us directions to Karnei Shomron. We tried "bypassing Area C Override" and it still would not work. So, we called the Kamplers and they gave us easy directions. The GPS wanted us to take a route that would take 4 hours and it took us less than an hour. We encountered the first checkpoint of the trip, and they waived us right through. Driving through the Shomron, we saw Arab towns and Jewish towns. And, for the first time in almost 2 weeks, we saw a bit of a military presence. On either side of the road was a fence and a military road and the road was not so busy -- it was very different from the driving we have been doing through the central corridor. We passed through the gate in Karnei Shomron, found our way to Ginot Shomron, and found Sara there waiting outside her house for us. It was so great to see Sara and to meet her family. All of her siblings were home for the weekend, except for Shlomzi, her sister who just graduated from high school, who was at a shabbaton for her class. Sara's parents, Fruma and Mark, and her siblings Noam, Beneyahu, Shivi, and Adi made us feel so welcome. While Sara's dad worked on the Shabbat cooking, Sara and her mom took us on a short driving tour of the area. They took us through the Ginot Shomron hill and the Karnei Shormron hill. They also took us up to a caravan settlement on a nearby hill called Ramot Gilad. The views were amazing; you can see Hadera, Netanya, and Tel Aviv. And we got to meet Shlomzi as we passed her and classmates driving decorated cars in a "graduation Parade" around the yishuv. After the tour we met Sara's next door neighbor, Sara, who housed Mike, Sima, and the girls. We went to shul, and enjoyed a delicious meal with lively conversation. After dinner Noah went out to walk the streets and find the teen social scene with Beneyahu, and Merav's mom Rutie stopped by to say hello and we chatted for a while. She is so amazing, we will miss her visits to St. Louis when the Possicks return home.

On Shabbat morning we all went to shul/synagogue/beit knesset, which is much faster and more efficient than at home. The girls and Sara and Sima sat with Ruthie and made it in time for mussaf. We were back at the Kamplers by 10:30 to visit a bit before lunch. Mike and he boys went to a minyan that started at 9 a.m. and was over by 10:30. Sara's grandfather Jay Shapira stopped by to say hello; we had met him when he visited St. Louis a year and a half ago. Again, lunch was delicious. The kids all really hit it off and hung out together all afternoon. The adults napped, and then Sara took us for a walk around the yishuv, she showed us the wadi next to their hill, which is the nachal that separated the land of the tribe of Menashe from the tribe of Ephraim. The kids went to b'nai akiva, and the adults had a much less chaotic seudah shlishit, and before we knew it Shabbat was over. After saying our goodbyes, we got back in the car with our uncooperative GPS. The trip was easy, except for our delay at the checkpoint traveling back across the green line. We did not know which line to get into so of course we got into the slowest one, and the border patrol soldiers checked our passports and the back of our car, and then let us pass through and on to Netanya. So, now we are watching Israeli tv and blogging.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

2011-06-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

Today we headed north and east, in the direction of the eastern Galil. We passed lots of picturesque Arab villages, beautiful scenery, and a ski slope on the way (not kidding, there was a complex with two short snow covered "slopes" - read, "bunny hills" - and kids skiing and snowboarding down them near Maale Gilboa). Our first stop was near the border with Jordan in the old city of Beit She’an. This city has been the site of many civilizations, including Caananite, Egyptian, Philistine, Jewish, Hellinistic, Hasmonean, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab. In 749CE a huge earthquake destroyed the city and it was never rebuilt. This is the city where the Philistines displayed the bodies of Shaul and his sons on the city walls after their defeat. The tel at Beit She’an has been found to contain over 20 layers of civilizations!
The ruins of ancient Beit She’an include an amphitheater, 2 complexes of bath houses, a road lined with columns (it used to have a roof and be shaded, we were really missing that roof today as it is darn hot there), a Roman temple, and hippodrome that was converted into another amphitheater. The Romans had much leisure time -- plays were put on over 140 days a year, the bathhouses were a public meeting place with multiple pools, massage and other luxuries available, and even space for lectures – as their slaves did all the work. The city is quite a large expanse, very impressive even as ruins, and did I say it was very hot? Mike thoroughly enjoyed exploring the ruins, the kids tolerated it for about half and hour, and then Mike and Sima climbed the tell for a spectacular view of the Jordan River Valley and checked out the rest of the city while the kids went to wait in the air conditioned gift shop.
Soaked with sweat, we were ready to spend the rest of the day in water. We drove about 10 minutes to Nahal Kibbutzim, a river that runs about 3 km near Kibbutz Reshafim. The river is set just off the road; we parked and then walked a bit to where the nachal (river) ends in a few small pools. There are picnic tables in that area, but if you keep walking the river narrows and is surrounded on both banks by high reeds that make you feel like you are wading through wild terrain even though you are really in the middle of a farm. At a couple of locations, the river flows through large metal drainage pipes that double as a series of waterslides. This nachal was pretty busy, lots of families and a couple of school groups were enjoying the water as well. We ate lunch on the shores near the pools, and then climbed in and swam and waded and frolicked up stream, stopping to slide through the tunnels, for about half an hour and then we waded and swam and frolicked back downstream, again sliding through the tunnels. The girls, who had complained bitterly all morning, said in unison “Sorry we didn’t trust you Mom, thank you for bringing us to this wonderland of water!” The only casualty was Noah’s North Carolina hat, which came loose from the backpack and is now permanently living in the nachal.
We had to drag the kids out of the river (did I say that it was hot outside) in order to take them to another wonderland of water another 10 minutes down the road. This was Gan HaShlosha, also known by its Arabic name of Sachne. This park is beautiful. It is on Nachal Amal, which used to flow through Beit She’an and provided water for their bathhouses. The Nachal was dammed, initially for a mill but later for recreation, and a series of beautiful pools and small waterfalls was built into the natural surroundings. The park is huge -- there are 3 or four large pools, each almost the size of a small lake – and it is so green and beautifully landscaped. It was an interesting mix of people here, we heard a lot of English and some other European languages, saw many Israeli Arabs, and of course lots of Israeli Jews. Apparently there are some historical and informational elements in the park but all we did was swim and climb around the rocks along with the rest of the crowd there until the park closed and they kicked us out. We will just have to go back – this could easily be an all day experience, and it is only about an hour from Netanya.
Back in Netanya we met Shany and Elianna (who came up from Tel Aviv to see us) for dinner at Marrakesh. Marrakesh is our favorite Netanya restaurant; they serve Moroccan food and atmosphere. The food was delicious, the company was good, and then we all walked back to the apartment to hang out and drink some of the Carmay Avdat wine. Alas, Shany and Elianna had to leave and as Shany is leaving on motzei Shabbat for Switzerland, we will not see her again this trip. It is very hard to say goodbye all over again… Tired and glowing from the sun, we are all ready for sleep.

Wednesday, June 22

2011-06-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

Our day started idyllically, waking in our beautiful cabin at Carmey Avdat to find a huge and delicious breakfast waiting for us in a cooler outside the door (along with our camera returned by Benny). We didn't get moving until about 9:30 or so, and we loved the farm so much we decided to stay until check out at noon. The girls swam in the pool again, and Eitan and Shany and Sima went exploring on the farm. We got a brief tour of the winery shed, and climbed up the hill to see Nabataean writings carved into a stone. The farm is built on an archeological area, but they have worked with the authorities to protect the relics. The Izraeli family also set up the farm to be ecologically sound; they use efficient irrigation techniques (water in pool we enjoyed is later used for irrigation). Naomi and Shany went to see the farm's horses including a baby horse; Eitan stayed far away. We really did not want to leave the farm, but alas we had to. We were planing on doing an hour hike in to a place you can swim at Ein Ekev, which is nearby. But Halelei, on of the two adorable young women who works at the farm (Ora was the other, they both took very good care of us) told use it was a five hour hike in total, which we were not up to. Shany was very interested in Avdat, so we decided to drive the 10 minutes there an check it out.
Avdat is an ancient Nabataeans city built up high on a hill. It was later used and added on to by the Romans. The Nabataeans were an ancient Arab people. In ancient times Nabataean traders carried spice and incense between Petra and Gaza, and Avdat lies directly on this "spice route". Avdat had been excavated and some of the structures had been restored, but a couple of years ago vandals attacked the site and destroyed must of the restoration. The city is currently being re-restored. We were the only ones in the park, and drove to the top of the hill to walk around the ruins. After walking around the remaining arches, columns and cisterns for a short while, the heat began to get to us (it is quite hot on the top of a hill in the Negev at 1pm at the end of June) and despite the fact that it is a large site and required more time to see it all, we had to go.
This was a theme today, we had great plans for the afternoon but the heat made it difficult to follow through. No hike to Ein Ekev. Short visit to Avdat. Aborted visit to Ein Ekev, a canyon with a waterfall, because we were too hot. A short visit to David and Paul Ben Gurion's grave, which is in a gorgeous park near Sde Boker that has some shade and lots of grazing ibex, because it was too hot to be out for long. And again we were the only people there. Naomi keeps wondering why we are so crazy to be out in the heat when all the "normal people" are inside. We skipped Ben Guiron's desert home at Sde Boker because we wanted to get to the Israeli Air Force Museum with time to visit there. So we drove to Beersheva and to the museum. The museum has small area inside with various displays about planes and pilots clothing and equipment, and the soldier in this area gave us a very nice talk. She told us how the Israeli Air Force started with homemade bombs dropped out the window of regular plane -- Israel initially had no war planes as no other country would sell them to the new state. She also told us about the types of flight suits that soldiers wear, how to tell an F15 from and F16, and other assorted air force facts. But the majority of the museum is plane after plane after plane outside in a big area with no shade. Again very hot. We did spend an hour or so looking at the planes outside - we found a couple made by McDonnell Douglas. The kids could climb into a couple of the planes. We looked at lots of antiaircraft guns. Sima's favorites are two planes on display that were brought to Israel by defecting pilots, one from Iraq in 1966, and one from Syria in 1989. Those planes were then used by the IAF to gather intelligence and prepare for battle.
We grabbed some sandwiches at the museum concesssion, and then piled back in for the drive to Netanya. Again on 6, the drive was not so bad, and we got into Netanya in time to watch the sunset from the beach. Sadly, Shany had to leave us. it was SO WONDERFUL to be with her, and we so appreciate that she made the time for us with papers due and getting ready to head of to Switzerland for the summer on motzei shabbat. Now we are back in the apartment, relaxing with the air conditioning on (it is starting to get hot here, the breezes of the sea had kept us cool until now), and awaiting Mike's return in a few hours.

Tuesday, June 21

2011-06-22T10:40:00.000-07:00

To the South! This morning we got up and after an extended delay for Noah and Shany to get coffee, we were on our way. We decided to take 6, the toll road, as we heard it was a very good road. It is a very good road. Less traffic, no stoplights, just highway. And in Israel you do not stop to pay on the toll road, they take photos of your license plate and mail you the bill. You don't even have to slow down. We very smoothly traveled past Tel Aviv, through Beersheva, and to Mitzpe Ramon. Our first stop was the visitor's center on the edge of the makhtesh. The makhtesh is a crater/canyon like formation. It is 5 miles wide and 27 miles long. It is not a crater or canyon, however, it is called a makhtesh because of the unique way in which it was formed. A makhtesh is formed when a mountain with limestone as its upper layer and a very soft layer of sand underneath the limestone rose up from the earth. First the formation is an island, and then the water recedes. Upheaval in the earth tilts the mountain slightly, and then the top erodes. After penetrating the limestone, the erosion removes the sand underneath, effectively hollowing out the mountain. This is a makhtesh, and it is called a makhtesh in every language. There are only 7 in the world - 5 are in this area of Israel, and 2 are in the Sinai.
We had read that the visitors center has great exhibits about the nature in area, but what the guidebooks did not mention is that it is closed for large scale renovations. The renovations should be done soon, but as both Shany and our guide (more on this in a bit) told us, things tend to get forgotten outside of the central area of the country so who knows when it will really be done. For example, in 2000, the Israeli government decided to build an airport in Mitzpe Ramon; it is still not built yet. So we left the visitor's center and nosed down the hill (road under construction) to Bio Ramon, a small zoo of animals from the area (though the bunny they had there must have been someone's pet once, the desert does not seem like bunny terrain). We ate lunch in the shade, took a quick look at the animals, watched a movie about the formation of the makhtesh, and then drove across the traffic circle to the gas station to meet our guide for our jeep trip into the makhtesh. Our guide, Benny, piled us into the jeep and took us to the edge of the makhtesh, where we saw ibex up on a ledge. He then took us into the makhtesh for a three hour bumpy, twisting ride through unbelievable terrain. It felt like a roller coaster at times, and the kids loved it (though Eitan somehow keep banging his head against the side of the jeep). Things we learned from Benny -- the makhtesh has much animal life including lizards, birds, foxes ibex, wild asses, horses, hyenas, and wolves. Most of the creatures are only out at night, though we did see holes that some of them burrow into during the day. The wild asses were reintroduced to the area about 30 years ago with a group of 6, now they number 300. There are two man made watering holes; it was a very dry winter in the south and the animals are struggling as a result. We saw 2 mines, one for colors for pottery clay and the other for I don't remember. The sand in the makhtesh is a variety of colors, brown, red, green, some blue, black and is due to different iron compounds present. The black color is formed when the hot sun burns the earth! Throughout the makhtesh you can see the strata in the rocks, often the layers within an area will be several different colors. Benny showed us two plants with interesting adaptations to the salty desert conditions - the salt bush excretes salt from its leaves. We ate some and they are like potato chips, a good salty snack! He also showed us the soap plant which removes the salt from the water it takes in specific cells that contain oil. The oil separates the salt from the water, so the salt is removed and pure water is left for the plant. If you take the leaves and smash them between your hand and add a little water, it produces a soapy substance (for the chemists our there, soap is a mixture of water soluble and water insoluble substances, like water and oil). When we were driving here, Shany pointed out that there are lots of military bases in the Negev, and a major air force base is nearby. We saw several groups of F15's flying over the edge of the makhtesh. Benny told us that Ilana Ramon trained near here. He originally had a different last name, but Israel asks its pilots to take on a more Israeli name and Ilan chose Ramon after this area. The new visitors center will have an exhibit about the Columbia and will be dedicated to Ilan Ramon and his son Asaf, who died in a military plane crash. Also six formations in the makhtesh have been named after the other six astronauts on the Columbia.
After Benny returned us safely to the gas station, we had some ice cream to cool down, then drove to the next stop on the traffic circle to where the restaurants and the grocery store are. We picked up a couple of pizzas for dinner and then drove the 20 minutes North to Carmey Avdat, our home for the evening. On the car ride, Benny called to tell us that we left the camera in the jeep but no worries, he will bring it to us as he lives close by. Benny had told us that he used to live in Herzelyia and was a consultant, traveling constantly, but 7 months ago he and his wife left it all and moved down here with their two young boys. It is a refuge here, far from the traffic and frantic pace of the central cities.
It is hard to put into words how amazing Carmey Avdat is. You are driving through the desert, and you turn onto this little road off the highway, then turn again through a gate onto another dirt road, and you are in the middle of a lush, green vineyard nestled into a valley. The farm has a shed and some other structures around a small parking surrounded by beautiful landscaping, small pools, and a path learning up the hill to the 4 cabins. We will put photos on Facebook as it is indescribable. One of the sheds houses a workshop and the winery, another houses a small gallery, and the last structure is the home of the Izraeli's, the family that owns the farm. Our cabin is at the end of a footpath up the hill, it has a front porch with picnic tables and a hammock, shaded by a straw roof. Inside the floors are not really floors but a layer of rocks covered with a few small rugs with a small kitchen area, several beds, and a separate bedroom and bathroom. On the table in the room was a small bottle of the kosher wine made at the vineyard (only one of their wines is kosher, they send it to another farm to be processed with kosher certification). It is almost perfect here, it would be completely perfect if Mike was here with us, we will have to come back next trip with him! Naomi was extremely happy as we were greeted by several dogs. Two of them look like Camden but smaller and better behaved, and one of those dogs, Tuts, followed us around much of the time and slept outside our door. The kids and Shany could not resist the small pool by our cabin and they went for a dip after we ate dinner on our front porch. After changing clothes, we walked down to the parking lot to wait for Ira Machefsky, who came out to take us into the darkness for a star tour. We followed Ira and his son in law Donni several miles up a dirt road that leads from the farm to a very dark area, where we sat down on folding chairs and Ira told us all about the stars and constellations. We learned that all the stars in the night sky rotate around the North star, Polaris, in the northern hemisphere. We learned to locate polaris, the the star that was the north star when the Jews left mitzraim (the earth wobbles as it spins so the axis on which the earth rotates changes direction slightly). We also learned to find the stars Arcturis and Spica, and looked at several other constellation including Virgo, Scorpio, the little dipper, and the jewel box which is a grouping of many stars. Ira also showed us the huge expanse of the milky way. After about an hour and half, we took a break for tea and Ira set up the telescope. He then showed us Saturn ( you could also see it's rinds and it's moon Titan (very cool!), two stars close to each other that are different colors , one gold and one turquoise, we had also seen these through the wash u telescope, the jewel box which contains many stars, some of them reddish, and finally the moon rose at about 11:40 and we look at that and saw incredible detail, many craters and formations, those of us who were still awake and not sleeping in the car (that would be Ilana and Shany who were sleeping) were amazed. We drove back to the farm and trudged up the hill to bed. An amazing, day but we couldn't help but be a little sad as Mike would have loved it, and we would have loved to share it with him.

Monday, June 20

2011-06-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, today we had a lazy day. We are all pretty wiped out after our huge week, so we just let everyone sleep in and most of us stuck around Netanya all day. Mike had to leave for Amsterdam this afternoon, but the most difficult leg of his journey was getting him to Ben Gurion. Our original plan was for Sima to drive him but the traffic between Netayna and Ben Gurion is so bad Sima did not want to spend 2 hours in the car getting him there and getting back, so we investigated other modes of transportation. Actually, we just called Moshe and asked him what to do. Moshe suggested that Mike take the train, he said it was very easy, but as nothing is truly easy in Israel Mike and Sima decided to do a pilot trip to the train station. So this morning the kids stayed behind glued to screens, and Mike and Sima easily made it to the train station and bought Mike's ticket for later that afternoon. We could see the sign for "Supersol Big" close to the train station, so we also decided to hit the grocery store. Even with the GPS directing us, the store seemed much closer than it was and after arriving there, finding the entrance to the parking lot was more challenging than it should have been. We figured out the change needed to rent a cart, saw 2 cars smash into each other in the parking lot, and then embarked on our shopping adventure. 45 minutes later, our cart filled with hummus, cold cuts, berrekas, pastry and lots and lots of yogurts we rushed back to the apartment so Mike could pack and eat lunch, and go back to the train station.
After Mike left, the girls went swimming and the boys walked down to the kikar looking to buy a paddle ball set for the beach. Then the kids vegged some more til Sima forced then to walk around town. We walked for several hours, ostensibly looking for colored pencils and those paddles. Eventually we found both, met up with Elianna Smith (from 3 years ago!) and had a dinner of shwarma or pizza sitting outside on another beautiful night. It was wonderful to see Elianna, she is working at an insurance company, about to move into her own apartment, and seems very happy. And it was like no time had passed -- the kids (and Sima) were so happy to catch up with her!
We all walked back to the apartment together, and then Sima walked Elianna back to the kikar so she could catch the bus, and exchanged girls picking up Shany! We are always so happy to see Shany! Shany is spending the night here tonight and traveling with us to mitzpe ramon tomorrow morning. Mike has safely arrived in Amsterdam and we will surely miss him -- such a shame he had to leave but he does have to work for living... It was nice to have a quiet day with friends, and now we should be rested for our big adventures tomorrow!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

2011-06-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

We have wireless! No more sitting on a park bench by the Mini-Golf restaurant, unless we choose to get a drink there.

The started off and everyone was tired (exhausted, almost), but that didn't deter us from our plans. We headed north to Tirat Carmel, which is just south of Haifa. Sima found a hike for us on the Internet. This one is not off the beaten path, but way off the beaten path. The instructions were to find the Pais Center and park in the parking lot and look for a green pole in the ground and take an unmarked path up the hill. Well, we found the Pais community center, but we really needed the Pais sport center. Not a big deal. We parked and the boys started scouting several paths up a hill in Park Mondheim. Mike didn't think they were looking in the right place and walked in the parking lot and found a sign indicating that the trailhead for Wadi Oranit and Oranit Caves started there. So, off we trudged up the hill up at a pretty steep incline. We felt like we conquered the hill after we meet up with the red path and made it to the crest, just to see another hill we needed to climb to get to the caves. Mike and Eitan decided that the garbage others left on the path was just too much so they started picking up other people's pach (Hebrew for garbage) - Marlboro packs, coke bottles, espresso cups (we kid you not). But, the garbage bag we brought for our own garbage was not big enough to hold all the litter. We made it to the Oranit caves - pretty dark and dusty but the views from there of Tirat Carmel, Ein Kedem, Haifa University and Mediterranean were spectacular. The directions then said to double back a bit and head down the steep face of the hill - on an unmarked path, to the valley below. We have no idea if we were on the right unmarked path, but we were on an umarked path. Actually, we found that our path was marked - by horses, and the kids really didn't like the idea of stepping in that or even smelling it. We made it down and picked up the junction of 2 other paths and made our way up another hill to where a natural spring comes out of the hill and joins a stream. The directions said that there was a pool in which to "bathe". We found it, through a hole in a concrete wall. We lifted the kids through and the 4 of them had a little walk alone down a path - about 10 feet. (We supported St. Louis-based Energizer by spending 80 shekels on 2 flashlights and 60 shekels on batteries, just for this hike.) We all ventured into a side tunnel and we found the source bubbling out of the wall. We took some great pictures. So, we then double backed (again) and aimed for Pais center to back to our car. Somehow we ventured onto a farm instead of crossing the stream bed and literally came face to face with a herd of cows, some goats and few horses. That wouldn't have been a problem except that Eitan was recently bit by a horse and really didn't like being that close to horses. So we quickly ventured across the stream bed and then we found ourselves at a barbed wire fence (with 3 other horses just down the path from us). Mike spotted a gate about 25 yards up so off through the thorn bushes to "safety". Oh, did we mention that many of the flowering plants in the Carmel region have lots of thorns. Our ankles, legs and hands (especially Naomi's) can attest to the many different types of thorns. The website said our hike should last 2.5 hours and that is exactly how long it took us.

Lunch of cheese and veggie sandwiches (again) and then onward to Akko (Acre). We drove through Haifa traffic and made it to the old city. Akko is an interesting spot for history and archaelogy - from a Phoenician city, to a crusader city, to a Muslim city (home of the 3rd most important mosque in Israel) and a place important to Bahai, to a British prison where Jabotinsky was imprisoned and 11 members of Lehi and Etzel were executed. We visited the British jail, which has been/is being restored to what it looked like at the time it was a jail. It was a little freaky in that they had full size metal statues of guards and as you we turned corners we all jumped a bit. Also, a little creepy in that the gallows are still there and the cells where the condemned prisoners are still there with a carving of the Etzel symbol made by one of the condemned. Below the courtyard, the authorities have excavated the crusader city - home to the Hospitaliers, including large halls, a church, a crypt, etc. It never ceases to amaze us how history is built upon history in this geographically small country. So many rich layers. The kids really reached exhaustion, so we headed back to Netanya. We decided to avoid Haifa rush hour traffic and got a bit lost but found Yokneam (St. Louis' sister city) and made it back to Netanya with 20 minutes to go until Dalia's party - 6 showers and 20 minutes later, we were back on the road (only 5 minutes this time) to just north of Netanya for the party.

The party was on the beach, at an amazingly gorgeous spot, and was a great time for all. Lots of dancing, great d'var torah by Dalia (another one!), a wonderful video with greetings from Jack and Merle, and even skyping back to them so they could feel part of the festivities. Great food - from pizza and quesadilla appetizers, to salads, pasta, quiche, etc. for dinner. Naomi and Ilana really danced up a storm with Dalia, her friends, the Perlmans, etc. Naomi learned all the dances on the spot, and blended right in with all the Israeli girls. The rest of the family joined the dancing too, and Sima especially enjoyed hoofing it to both the Israeli music and the American pop tunes. We are so fortunate that we could be with the Hartstein/Minsk family for Dalia's simcha -- there was something incredibly special about watching Naomi and Dalia and Ilana dancing together in the middle of the crowd, in Israel, so comfortable together, it brought tears to our eyes (ok, just to one of us and you can probably guess who).

Shabbat, June 18

2011-06-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

Dalia's bat mitzvah shabbat was wonderful. We arrived in Ra'anana at the home of Mo and Elisa's friends, the Lefcourt-Ruby's just before Shabbat. They were warm and welcoming hosts, our kids hit it off, and we really enjoyed our conversations with them over the weekend. But we know you all want to hear about the bat mitzvah! Friday night we brought Shabbat in a bit early. Mike and Noah went to the 6 o'clock minyan at the big American shul in the neighborhood. When the crowds spill out of that shul after davening it sounds just like America... The rest of the family went over to Morris and Elisa's beautiful home to hang out until dinner time. The last time we were here Mo and Elisa had just bought the property, and it took a good two and half years to get the house built. But it seems it was well worth the wait. The house is spacious and well designed, and we wish the Hartsteins many happy years there! Mo and Elisa had tables set up in the kitchen and the living room for dinner and lunch, and everything was truly lovely -- the table linens, centerpieces, placecard, bentchers, every last detail was accounted for the coordinated. But of course, what is really important is who was inside the house! If felt amazing to be so warmly welcomed not only by Mo and Elisa, but also by their kids and their relatives. All of their sibling and nieces and nephews were in town, and Elisa's parents, and some of her cousins and aunt and uncles -- it is a real testament to their family. It was so wonderful to visit and catch up and enjoy the good company. We did think of Jack and Merle often, their absence was definitely felt. Throughout Shabbat, Dalia was calm and gracious and so warm to our kids; all of our kids felt comfortable and had a great Shabbat hanging out with the Hartsteins and their friends.
On Shabbat morning we went to Mo and Elisa's shul for davening, and then back to their house for lunch. Dalia's bat mitzvah service was at mincha, in their shul which was filled with women (and some men watching from the balcony above). Dalia read Torah and spoke beautifully (we were provided with an English translation so we knew what she was saying!). And then there was a delicious seudah shlishit outside the shul, which is on the campus of the Open University in Ra'anana. It was just like home, we hadly saw our kids they were all so busy with their new friends. Naomi felt especially comfortable; she really hit it off with Dalia's friends and has decided that she is going to live in Ra'anana. We are welcome to come with her if we would like. As Shabbat came to a close, we were sad to leave but knew that we would see everyone the next evening at Dalia's party and that made it a little easier.

But, the night was not over! After we drove back to Netanya, Moshe Stengel came by to pick us up with his friend Yifat, very nice and interesting, a lawyer by profession. They took us to the Hertzlyia marina area where we walked around and chatted and had some light fare at a cafe. It was great to see Moshe, we have really missed him, and it was also nice to get to know Yifat. Mike and Moshe decided to be partners in a multi-million dollar yacht that they saw for sale. Now, if only either of them knew a thing about sailing. By the time we got home it was 2am. Wow, a long day, but it was so nice to spend it with our friends.

Friday, June 17

2011-06-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

So just after we posted the blog last night and headed up from our neighborhood wireless network on the park bench outside MiniGolf, the restaurant across the street that has nothing to do with mini-golf, we started hearing sirens go past our building on Nitza street. First three or four, then more and more. Once it got to about 15 or 20 we started to worry. As we did not want to return to MiniGolf at 1am, Mike turned on his very expensive 3G network and found out that there was an explosion in the main square downtown - seems to be due a gas leak. Fortunately not a terrorist attack. Unfortunately lives were lost and many were injured. We ate dinner at a place in that building on Tuesday night, when they guy sent us to his brother's and gave us 10% off. Pizza Hut is also in that building, so we will likely not be having pizza delivered to our door this trip.

Mike and Naomi and Sima were up quite late with the sirens and activity, but we still managed to get on the road this morning to Caesaria, Eitan's favorite spot in Israel. Even though we have been there before, the place is still amazing and beautiful. We climbed and explored the Roman ruins -- the hippodrome, a bathhouse, the palace, the ampitheater, and even drove over to the aquaducts. We had lunch at an amazing dairy place in the park, gorgeous view, delicious pasta, salads, and foccacia, only thing that could have made it better is if the bees has stayed away from Naomi who really doesn't like them. At lunch we reflected that Shabbat is coming and we have been here almost a week. Ilana's favorite activity so far was the dig at Beit Guvrin, followed closely by the science park. But, most favorite of all was Tova's wedding. Eitan's favorite activity was also the dig, followed by Castel and the Castel winery. Naomi's favorite was seeing the Perlmans. Noah's was Leket Israel (picking beets) and the dig.

Then back to Netanya where Ilana and Noami finally got to swim in the building's pool. Part of the reason we chose this apartment is thatit has a pool. Of course, we didn't know until we got here that the pool did not open until June 15th, and then only from 1-5pm.

Mark the landlord is still working on wireless, now he says we'll have it Sunday - morning he really is trying...
Soon we head for Ra'anana for Shabbat, and get to celebrate Dalia's bat mitzvah with the Hartsteins. Mazel tov, and Shabbat Shalom.

Thursday, June 16

2011-06-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

We had another relatively early start today, this time heading to Rechovot to participate in Leket Israel. Leket is a program that provides food for the needy in 2 ways: they collect leftover food from weddings, bar mitzvahs, offices, etc. and distribute it to soup kitchens across the country, and they pick produce left in the fields by farmers to give to the needy. We visited them at their volunteer site, a farm owned and operated by an American philanthropist who made Aliyah and donates all of the crops from his farm to Leket. Volunteers work at this location because getting volunteers out to the farms that they serve is logistically complicated -- the project often has only one or two days notice to go pick, and the farms are scattered across the country. This farm allows Leket to utilize a steady stream of volunteers. So this morning we met the Perlmans (yipee! Great to see them, and great for the kids to have entertainment other than their own siblings!) at Leket. Guided by Natalie and Amir, both Anglo new olim and Leket employees, we went to pick beets. The weather was hot but relatively pleasant, and beets are not so hard to pick (Noah figured out that you can kick them out of the ground with a well placed foot) and we enjoyed picking and chatting together. We also saw some of the other crops that this farm produces such as clementines, apples, potatoes, and onions. We found it very meaningful to pick from the land, especially as we had learned the mishnaiot on peyot in Mishnat Pinchas this year. At the end of our picking, they presented Naomi with a certificate in honor of her bat mitzvah and the work we did today, and gave us all cool t-shirts. This was definitely a worthwhile experience and one we would recommend to anyone visiting Israel.

We had worked up an appetite picking, so we headed to the mall for lunch. Oh, the joys of a food court, and the candy stand! Then we went to the Perlman's apartment for a little down time, regrouped, and headed out the the beautiful campus of the Weitzman Institute, where Harris is working this summer. We visited the Science Garden, an outdoor area filled with interactive science exhibits/activities. We played with pulleys, waves, rainbows, bubbles, levers, echoes, etc. The weather has been so lovely, it is cool in the shade, and you know we love science so what more could we want?

After the science garden we followed our GPS through the little streets in a neighborhood on the edge of Rechovot to the Fass's apartment. Hester and Efraim prepared us an amazing BBQ dinner, the kids bonded like they had never been apart, and we had a relaxing and enjoyable visit. It was so nice to have a home cooked meal! We look forward to seeing the Fass family again in a couple of weeks for Shabbat. We capped off the night with a very low traffic trip back to Netanya, and we were home by 9:45 -- an early night for us! Of course, Mike then started work, Sima caught up on email, Nava skyped us from home, and we blogged.

Pictures from today and from the wedding last night are on Sima's Facebook page.

Wednesday, June 15 2011

2011-06-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

We got a relatively early start this morning so that we could make it Beit Guvrin, about 90 minutes away from here, south and west of Jerusalem. After about 30 minutes on the road, we were still in Netanya, stuck on Highway 2. Though we remember traffic being bad when we were here 4 years ago, we just do not remember it bring quite this bad... But eventually we made it to the gas station across from Beit Guvrin where we met the folks from the Archeological Seminars “Dig for a Day” program. With them, and several other families and tour groups, we went into the park. The area around Beit Guvrin has been inhabited by many peoples. Where we would be digging is a city called Maresha, which was strategically important as it sits between the costal lands and the cities of the Judaean mountains that needed protection (Hevron, Yerushalayim, Ramallah, Shechem). Maresha and a string of other cities/towns protected the path from invaders from the west. The park contains about 5000 man made caves. Many of them were formed when rocks were quarried to build houses. The earth here is chalky and very soft, so as houses aged bricks fell apart and needed to be replaced. Then more bricks were dug out from the quarry beneath the house, and the “basement” of the house got bigger. The rooms that we excavated dated to the time of the Maccabean revolt. Though this is a real archeological dig, they can let amateur (read klutzes) like us excavate because there are no strata in these garbage dump basements. We dug for maybe 30 minutes, and found pieces of pottery, bones, and even part of an oil lamp. Our guide then took us for a slither through an unexcavated cave. At the end we were extremely dusty, but the caves were cool and so we were still comfortable and not wiped out....yet. We explored a couple of burial caves on our own -- they were kind of creepy. Lots of hollowed out niches were bodies used to be; the ancient peoples even pulled out the bones and then put fresh bodies on top of decayed ones. Ilana refused to go in and waited for us at the door.

So after a picnic lunch in the shade at Beit Guvrin, we headed up toward Jerusalem to two Castel destinations -- the Castel National Park, and the Castel winery. Neither was easy to find. The GPS is great, but we are finding that lots of places here don’t have an address, or can be spelled lots of different ways, and it makes it super hard to find them. So, we drove on the 395 past Beit Shemesh toward Jerusalem, looking for both the winery and the park which appeared to be on that road according to our map, and both of which the GPS could not locate. After passing by the same winding, twisty, highly trafficked same 5 miles several times, we pulled in kibbutz Tsuba to ask for directions. Using a great pantomine and very simple Hebrew words (including yashar, yashar, yashar), the security guard got us the Castel National Park. Castel was a strategic point that over looks the road to Jerusalem. During the War of Independence, the Arabs controlled the area and used it to fire on the road. The Jews attacked the hill and took it. The arabs then counterattacked and took back the hill. During that counter attack the Arab commander was killed. The Jews planned another attack to take back the area at any cost, to their surprise, upon their attack the position was deserted -- the Arabs had all gone to their commanders funeral. So the Jews gained the high ground. We were able to climb the various potisions overlooking the road -- it is amazing how vulnerable it is. We also climbed through the trenches.

No one seemed to know where the winery was, and Sima had gone to much trouble to force the winery rep to meet with us (the rep didn;t want the kids, didn;t think we haad enough time, but Sima kept at it until she agreed to just talk to us about the winery). So we called the winery to get directions and the directions went something like this: take the 395 to Ramat Raizel, turn but don’t enter the moshav and call her. So, that is what we did. It took 5 minutes of directions over the phone while driving to find the winery, which is completely off the beaten path, with no sign on the road, and no sign on the building or anywhere to identify it. We met with Rutie, the private sales rep, who took us to see the cave in which the wine is stored in barrels. The winery only makes 100,000 bottles per year, and half of that is exported. Rutie then guided us through a wine tasting, paired with cheese and crackers and mini-plums. She brought the kids raspberry juice and cookies also. Even Sima liked the wine, so we just had to order a couple of cases.

Then onto Jerusalem for Tova’s wedding. The drive in was surprisingly unstressful, and Mike did a great job finding a parking spot just a block from the Great Synagogue. As we were approaching the synagogue, a car stopped across the street and who got out, but the gorgeous bride Tova, with her sister and mother. Cars stopped on Hamelekh George (6 or 8 lines, if you have not been there) to let the bride cross and beeped her “mazel tov”. The chupah was on the plaza outside the synagogue and the reception was in the basement. Quick impressions: Israelis and buffets are a disgusting combination; Israelis are not big on ceremony (the kabbalat panim was 2 minutes in total, at the chupah guests were walking around chatting and talking on the phone); when you have a wedding on a major thoroughfare, lots of uninvited guests stop by to watch, take pictures and even stay for the meal; it may not be a good idea to eat the food if you can’t read the menu or understand the waiter (the kids, other than Naomi, downed chicken livers in phyllo dough thinking it was beef and were a bit disgusted upon learning the true nature of their meal). But, seeing Tova and meeting her family was wonderful, and they were so warm and welcoming. We are so fortunate to be able to share this simcha with Tova. Who, by the way, was incredibly happy and calm (and did we say gorgeous?) and designed her own dress. Anyone wanting to hear about wedding planning and dueling mothers-in-law, we can discuss off-line. Sima will be posting pictures on Facebook.

A long and construction filled drive back to Netanya and the kids are asleep. It is 1:45 a.m. and we still have no wifi, so this will be posted tomorrow (again).

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

2011-06-15T14:53:00.001-07:00

Hard to believe that we have only been here one full day. We keep thinking that it must already be Wednesday and by the time this is blogged it will be because we still don't have wifi. This morning started with kids who had to be dragged out of bed, and waiting two hours for our landlord to show up and work on the wireless "problem". But Mike and the kids did squeeze in a walk on the beach, and enjoyed squealing at the washed up jellyfish(es). After the slow start, we picked up the rental car and headed to Zichron Yaakov to the First Aliya Museum. Have to say that driving here is much less stressful with the help of GPS.... The museum is a very interesting place. It follows, through video and models and information, the story of one family who left Europe for Israel in 1882. We all learned how truly difficult it was for the early settlers, who faced a difficult land to farm, hunger, sickness and exploitation by Baron de Rothschild's overseers, and no wifi either. From there, we went to a winery created by the family of one of those first immigrants - the Tishbi winery. The family got its name from Hayim Bialik who visited the vineyards. We learned a bit about wine making, had a fantastic late lunch in their restaurant (sweet potato ravioli in pesto sauce), tasted some wine, ate very expensive chocolate and bought some wine to enjoy here and at home. Sima loved the chemistry talk about wine making and was enthralled with the still for brandy making. It was over 100 years old and brought over from France - absolutely gorgeous. Only Mike tasted the brandy, but at 1500 NIS, even he couldn't quite pull the trigger to buy a bottle.

Then, we GPS'ed it to Nahal Taninim, which was officially closed (don't know why the parks close at 4 p.m.) but we somehow talked our way in even though the only employee there could not speak a word of English (or, he pretended not to). We only had 30 minutes but we saw plant life, birds, a Roman dam and aqueduct and are already planning a return visit. But no alligators or crocodiles. Interestingly, our Hebrew dictionary here lists both as the translations for tanin. Ben Yehuda could have done better.

Back to Netanya where the kids could go to the beach. Noah had his headphones the whole time, the girls swam a bit - shrieking "salt in my eyes" every time they dipped their faces in the water and running to us to rub their eyes with a towel - and Eitan and the girls dug very deep holes. From there, we walked up to the kikar for dinner. In a scene very reminiscent of when Mike, as a boy, visited Netanya with his family, a restaurant owner coaxed us in (not really in, but rather to his outdoor tables). This guy offered us 10% off, free coffee and ice cream. Hmmmm... hamburgers and ice cream. We told him that we can't eat there and he told us that if we keep kosher we can eat at his "brother's" restaurant next door. We were suckered, but the food was plentiful and decent enough. Trips to 2 makolets on the way home for essentials - peppers, soap, cookies, cheese and kleenex. The kids are asleep (or should be) and the adults are watching an episode of Srugim.

Laila tov

Monday, June 13, 2011

2011-06-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

We arrived. We had a most amazing welcome, being greeted by Sarah, Shani, Chaim Weiss, Libi and Yona Brief - we felt like celebrities. The plane ride was uneventful - each of us got to watch our own movies. We will leave it to you to guess who watched Harry Potter, Just Do It, and Gulliver's Travels.
Chaim kindly negotiated our rendezvous with Mark, the Russian/Israeli landlord, who generously picked us up, crammed us and our luggage into his van and took us to our apartment at 24 Nitza Street in Netanya (in case you want to Google map it). The apartment is great, with beautiful views. 2 small problems - the kitchen may be superficially kosher (there is a par eve sticker on the salt), with one set of silverware and pots and pans. We are eating out! And, no wireless which will make blogging very difficult and may make it impossible for Eitan to deliver his campaign speech via Skype tonight We are sitting on the kikar - enjoying the breeze. 3 of us had pizza and 2 had shwarma. Sima is just not hungry.

Our feelings today have mostly revolved around stress - travel, travel, travel and no kitchen or wireless. And, the ATM stopped working right after giving out the receipt for the money we were supposed to get. Can't read the receipt so we hope we are not debited for the money we never got.

We are trying something new and we are posting pictures on Instagram - you need to follow soberlander to see them.

Sunday, June 12, 2011 - travel day

2011-06-12T16:39:00.000-07:00

Things started off as planned - one of the kids' suitcases was overweight at 7:50 am so Sima quickly repacked suitcases. We had a bittersweet goodbye at the airport. While we are all so excited to go to Israel, it was very hard to say goodbye to Yaara and Nava. It is hard to think that this may be the last time all 8 of us would be together for a long time. We know we will see Nava in just over a week and Yaara is going to have a great time at Camp Stone and then we get to see her again for Camp Derech Eretz. Thanks Mom for driving us to the airport - Yaara and Nava just had to shlep luggage.

The flight to Philly was delayed but otherwise uneventful. In Philly, we could not fit into one cab so we found Fahad, who had a Lincoln Town Car for hire. Mike practiced for the shuk and negotiated an only slightly extravagant price for driving the 6 of us to the Liberty Bell and agree to pick us up from dinner and take us back to the airport. We did not have much time, but we saw the Liberty Bell (through a window - no time to stand in lines) and had a quick tour of Independence Hall. Mike got to show off his penchant for knowing stupid trivia about random facts. We saw an excavation of the first President's house - look kids, 200 hundred year old ruins. In Jerusalem, that is downright modern.

We then met Jonathan and Aleck Zimbalist at Mama's Vegetarian Restaurant. We all needed falafel and hummus just to get us in the right frame of mind. Fahad was just on time and we are just waiting to get through the second security clearance. Of course, nothing will be like the 20 minute security check while people pawed through our backpacks at Independence Hall. Kids are anxious to go through security, so signing off from now. Next post will be from Israel!

Getting ready

2011-06-09T22:17:00.001-07:00

Well, we are busy getting ready. Clothes, ipads, iphone, travel phones, garmin. We are bringing more computing power and technology than the US had at its disposal in planning D-Day.

Sunday, July 8

2007-07-09T13:21:00.001-07:00

We finally stopped this morning and checked out this really cool playground that I have been eyeing. It is in south Netanya and it has a huge wood climbing structures. It also has exercise equipment that is colorful and suitable for kids. Our kids gave themselves quite a workout. That turned out to be a fun little trip. Then we met Sami and her kids at the Wingate Institute. Happy Birthday to Mati. Our quirky pink guidebook told us that there is Jewish Sports Hall of fame there, and to call ahead for admission. So Donna called and was told to tell them at the gate that we were guests of Effie and to come into the administration building. We had passed by Wingate Institute many times as it is right off the highway, just South of Netanya, but we had no idea what it was. So it turns out that Effie is the head of PR, and he gave us a private tour of Wingate, which is the primary athletic training facility in Israel. Wingate runs all of the sports education training programs for teachers, runs youth sports programs, and is the home base of the Israeli athletes training for the Olympics. All of the Olympic athlete’s medical care is run through Wingate, and many athletes train on site. Effie brought us to the gym where the women’s volleyball team was practicing. Their goal is to be in the Olympics in 2012 and to win the gold in 2016. So in ten years we can say that we saw them way back when... The gymnasts train in Tel Aviv, so we did not get to check them out (though Maayan did see Israel’s top male gymnast last week when she was working out in Tel Aviv). The Wingate facility is colored by the tragic loss of eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Munich. Many of the athletes had trained at Wingate, and the murdered coaches were all on staff there. In the middle of the campus is a memorial to those athletes, one of the buildings is named the Hall of Eleven, and reminders of the tragedy are throughout. So after an extensive and very interesting tour of the campus, Effie took is the to the un-air-conditioned Hall of Fame, where we cheeked out bios of Jewish athletes from the 1700’s until 2005, and saw some memorabilia including a Sandy Koufax jersey, and lots more tributes to the Munich 11.

After our tour, we all drove over to a nearby mall and shopping area (how strange it will be to go the mall without having the car and purses searched first). We had a yummy lunch and ran a few errands, culminating in a trip to the only Ikea store in Israel. It is huge. And I mean huge. And it is set up so that you have to walk through the entire store if you walk in at all. Near the entrance there is a play area a movie theater so that you can dump the kids. If you choose to take them with you there are play areas interspersed throughout, as well as puppet shows, clowns, and a kosher restaurant at the end for a reward after you make it through. For me, it was a living hell – a big store with no exit in sight. And a crying kid. But the other six kids enjoyed trying out all of the furniture.

We came back to the apartment to pack, and the kids and Donna went down the street to a place called Mini-Golf to play mini-golf. But it turned out that Mini-Golf is just a restaurant, no golf to be found. So they played soccer and did gymnastics instead. We all went to the kikar for dinner (again, ice cream followed by falafel/shwarma and corn) and said our goodbyes to the kikar. It is sad, we will miss this place.

Tomorrow we will say good-bye to Donna (sniff, sniff), and then load up and go to Renana and hang out with the Hartsteins. They are going to take us to the airport. Being with them will make a hard day much easier. This trip has been an education for us all – from map reading and driving, to Zionism, to ancient history and the history of medinat Yisrael, to archeology, to a language course, to a hiking and fitness experience, to opening ourselves to different cultures, to baseball in a foreign land. Such richness. We have to work at insuring that these experiences do not fade, but become a part of us and our life in America. We have been blessed. Wish us a niseyah tovah.

Shabbat, July 7

2007-07-08T08:33:00.002-07:00

We had a very nice Shabbat of davening at home, reading, games, and a nice long evening walk in the park. Having Donna with us was a real pleasure – it made the day go so much faster. We are starting to think about the things that we are going to miss when we leave.
Noah: IBL, shwarma, the kotel, seeing signs in Hebrew
Naomi: Donna, the apartment, all the cute dogs, the kotel
Eitan: IBL, the kotel, all the cool Jewish history, Caesarea
Ilana: our favorite restaurant with the big huge couscous, the apartment, the pizza, and the meatballs
Sima: traffic circles, the freedom that the kids have, the hustle and bustle late into the night, all the beautiful places we have been, learning Hebrew, kosher food everywhere, and especially Pizza Hut delivery

Things we will not miss: traffic, cats, dirt, lack of air conditioning, people yelling at us, small washing machines, clothespins, the ElDan rental

By the way, the dogs here are the ugliest I have ever seen. They are little and mutts and they are the strangest combinations of features. Truly unattractive. But Naomi loves them; she has a very big heart. There are also stray cats everywhere. They are like squirrels.

Friday, July 6

2007-07-08T08:33:00.001-07:00

This morning Donna went to Tel Aviv to meet a friend, and the Oberlander’s cleaned the apartment for Shabbat before heading to Maayan’s Bat Mitzvah party. The party was just outside of Jerusalem at a moshav called Yad Hashmona. It was a lovely venue. The directions to get here were something like this. Get off at the Chemed interchange, go and do a U-turn and get back on the highway going the other way. Get off at the gas station, go behind the gas station and turn left and then follow the road till you get there – and we made it without one wrong turn! The guests were mostly Jacqueline’s family, the food was delicious, and Sami gave a very nice speech, though it was in Hebrew and we didn’t really understand. Then we drove back to Netanya and the drive was a pleasure. Fridays there is no traffic, and we blasted Sarit Hada the whole way. Donna was already back at the apartment and got ourselves ready for Shabbat. the kids are so excited to have the Israeli version of pigs in blanket – here it is called Moshe b’teva. Shabbat shalom.

Thursday, July 5

2007-07-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

I won’t bore you with all the driving stories from today: turns we couldn’t make, streets we missed, times we couldn’t turn around, etc. Suffice it to say we spent alot of time in transit but did not hit anything, and Donna was sick of driving and she wasn’t driving. We left the house at 7:45am, and just returned at 10:30 pm. So where were we?

Our first stop was the Palmach museum in Tel Aviv. It is an experiential museum that takes you through the story of one fictional Palmach brigade from 1941 to 1948. The story is presented mostly through film, and with lots of special effects. As you walk from one room to the next you are singing by a campfire, on a long training hike, blowing up bridges, on a boat etc. The museum got rave reviews, but I think that something was lost in translation (all of the dialog is in Hebrew and they give you these little telephone things that translate some of the narrative, but most of the dialog is not translated). The kids liked it because it was cool – I thought that it wasn’t very substantive. Donna and Ilana skipped this part – Donna has already been twice, and Ilana would have been bored silly.

Next we headed to Rehovot and the Ayalon Institute. This was the code name for an operation that ran from 1943-1945 in which a group of people who were working to start a kibbutz were recruited to produce bullets in a secret, underground factory. Above the factory was a working kibbutz. The factory was accessed through a laundry on one end and a bakery on the other. The secret of the factory was kept so well that only the kibbutznicks who worked in it knew it existed. They had all kinds of elaborate ruses to trick the other kibbutznicks who were on the kibbutz; they thought that this group worked in agriculture in a far away field. The secret was kept for many years, long after the Israel was a state and the factory had been moved above ground, and the workers had gone on to start their own kibbutz, Maagan Micha’el. We toured the laundry, saw the secret passage to the factory, and then entered the restored factory through the bakery. It is an unbelievable story. They even did laundry for the British soldiers in the very washing machine that covered the entrance to the factory.

Next stop, a water park in Holon where we met the cousins. Maayan went to a gym to work out, and the rest of the kids slid and swam for several hours. We headed out at dinner time and stopped at Yarkon Field to watch the Ranana Express v. the Petach Tivkvah Pioneers and eat Burgers Bar. I told the kids that they could collect 2 foul balls for the family – that they should not be greedy, as there were more kids at the game this time and I thought it fair that everyone get a ball (after all, we already have 4 from last game). At the end of the game as the kids were getting balls signed, a player asked if any kid did not have a ball. Noah and Ilana were holding ours so Eitan raised his hand and the player gave him one. Naomi also said that she didn't have one, so a player gave her his wristband, but some other kid snatched it. The guy then took pity on her and gave her a bat (it was cracked). She was the envy of every kid there! It turned out that the guy who gave her the bat had just acquired it during the game, he had swapped bats with a teammate named Scott, whose mom had been sitting near us. Both guys signed the bat for Naomi, and they all took a photo together (Scott’s mom is going to e-mail it to me).

Kids fell asleep in the car. We are home and tired. Lila tov.

Wednesday, July 4

2007-07-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

I clipped a bus today. Just a tiny bit. There is a little scratch on the side view mirror, hardly noticeable. The bus driver yelled at me. The check out lady at Supersol Deals (the equivalent of Sam’s Club) yelled at me too. A woman yelled at Noah in the Supersol justifiably, he was pushing the cart around a corner too fast, and a six pack of 1.5 liter bottles flew off the bottom of the cart and hit her in the leg.

Other highlights of the day had a naval theme. We drove to Haifa (the train turned out to be too much of a hassle) and went to the National Maritime Museum and the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum. The former was pretty dry and filled with screaming campers (Naomi was mistaken as one of them by a madrich and herded to the group). They had many model ships on display, strangely enough they also had bios of the people who built the models. On display were some very cool very old maps, and some ancient relics from the sea. They also had an exhibit on pirates. We made it there for about 45 minutes and then headed next door to the much more interesting clandestine naval museum. This museum is the equivalent of Latrune for ships, and with shade. In the back lots of old boats, boat missiles, torpedoes, and boat guns, and even a mock up a sub control room complete with working periscope are on display; you can climb on almost everything. The also have on display a boat that carried ma’apilim, and a movie about the ma’apilim that we could not stay to watch. Inside they have various artifacts from the navy and stories of many battles at sea. We were very impressed by the resourcefulness of the navy – they reused parts of ships that they had captured to build new ships, recycled missiles, etc.

Then we tried unsuccessfully to get lunch in Haifa (that’s when I clipped the bus). We wound up driving down to Caesarea to visit Eitan’s favorite ruins at eat at the beautiful restaurant in Old Caesarea where we ate the first day of our trip. On the way to Caesarea we had a brief detour near Atlit – we saw a castle like ruin from the road, protruding out into the sea, and tried to drive to it but wound up at a military base. So we left that ruin unexplored.

We then had our next great adventure at the Supersol Deals, which is an equivalent to Sam’s Club. We bought lots of hard salami and dried meat to bring home – it is so much cheaper here – as well as teddy bear and dino shaped chicken nuggets and our favorite yogurts. And we made it out alive.

We decided to have ice cream for dinner at this delicious looking ice cream place in the kikar, Tony’s Ice. Noah and Eitan had shwarma for dessert, and then all the kids had corn on the cob for an after dinner treat. We bought the corn from the corn man on the street and I was shocked to find that the corn was 7 shekels each. So I paid 7 bucks for corn that would have cost one dollar at home. But with the savings on the salami, I think we still broke even.

I am appreciating our home base in Netanya more and more each day. Not only is it well situated geographically, it is also so kid friendly. The rides and activities and food in the kikar are all just a short walk away and in a relatively contained area that gives the kids lots of room to run and explore and be independent. Noah and Eitan feel totally comfortable going to buy shwarma by themselves, the kids go into the makolet to get their own drinks, they can walk around on their own. despite the traffic and grime, this was definitely a good choice.

Tuesday, July 3

2007-07-03T10:07:00.001-07:00

Today we took to the North, heading first to Nahal Me’arot, a national park in the Carmel mountains south of Haifa. The park is a large reserve with many caves, some of which were found to have evidence of early man (from about 20,000 years ago). The mountain was formed from a coral reef -- the entire area used to be under the sea. When the Carmel mountains were pushed up from the earth, the rock from the reef and the caves were exposed. The park ranger directed us up some stairs, toward the biggest cave, and told us to push the button for English when we get to the cave; there is a movie. By the way, there was no one else in the park and we had to get the ranger from her office to let us in, which should have been a sign. We got far enough in the cave to see some coral fossils in the cave wall and find the button for English. A big booming voice started speaking, and lights flashed on part of the cave wall. We could hear animals that sounded like bats squeaking from inside the vacuous cave, and it was very dark inside except for the lights that illuminated different sections as the booming voice described various parts of the cave. Absolutely no one else was around. The kids went running out of the cave in terror, and Donna and I weren’t so keen on going in either so we made a quick change of plans and did a hike instead. It was supposed to be a short easy hike, but it was probably the hardest one we have done. It went up, around, and down a very rocky mountain and involved some real climbing. We had to carefully follow the trail markers – it was easy to get off course. Ilana was again a little mountain goat and we all took turns helping her, and the weather was relatively cool, so it was a good hike.

After the hike we drove to the Atlit detention camp, where Jews who tried to enter Palestine illegally (ma’apilim) were held by the British. The camp was in use by the British from about 1933 until 1948. Donna (thank goodness for Donna!) had called ahead and found out that there was an English speaking tour group coming, and we joined them for the tour. The tour guide gave us a brief history and of the camp, and then took us into the disinfection barracks where incoming ma’apilim were stripped and sprayed with DDT. Their clothes were steamed, and they were taken to the living barracks. Men and women were separated, but could leave their barracks area and meet once a day on the center road through the camp, which they called the “Boardwalk.” The kids thought it was very sad that families were separated couldn’t imagine having to live apart from their dad (kids under 13 stayed with the women). Three barracks buildings have been restored, and one is furnished as the barracks were them and contains some original carvings made by the ma’apilim into the wood of the barrack wall. They also showed us a movie about the Palmach liberation of ma’apilim who were in the camp (I think in 1946), and who were about to be deported. The Palmach snuck in several of their members as Hebrew teachers; their job was to prep the inmates. Under cover of darkness two Palmach units cut the fence, and the members inside woke the ma’apilim. In about 15 minutes they got all 210 ma’apilim out, and began a walk over Mount Carmel to kibbutz Beit Oren. They walked through the night, but were discovered by a British jeep. The British came to collect the ma’apilim at kibbutz Beit Oren. But when the British arrived, they found that hundreds of residents of Haifa had come down to the kibbutz and surrounded it, so that the British could not get to the ma’apilim -- they in effect formed a human protective barrier. An incredible story, and of course I cried. The guide also showed us a sample of the database that is being compiled of the stories and history of the ma’apilim. It was a very moving experience – we all were touched by the trials and the strength of the ma’apilim who made it to Eretz Israel.

Next on the agenda was a walk through a Roman aqueduct outside of Binyamina. The aqueduct was constructed about 2000 years ago to bring water from the natural springs in the Alon area to the important port of Caesarea. The aqueduct was originally 23 kilometers long and ran both below and above ground. The part below ground, where we were, was originally constructed using access holes dug about every 50 meters to the required depth of the aqueduct. Then a narrow, arched tunnel was dug through the rock from hole to hole. The tour takes you on a walk down about 150 meters of the aqueduct tunnel. The depth of water ranged from just a few centimeters to waist high on an adult. Apparently during the winter, the water level can be several feet higher, basically filling the channel. As we walked, we could see original chisel marks and little alcoves where the diggers put candles to provide light for them to work. There is even a spot where the Romans started to curve the aqueduct (the cut out is there) but the rock was too hard, so they continued digging in the original direction, and made the curve about 5 meters later. At the end we were wet and happy, and ready for glida. Line of the day: as the water first rose to waist high, Naomi yells out “this is the time to go to the bathroom!”

Now we are back at the apartment for a brief rest, and tonight we are gong back to our favorite restaurant, Merrakesh, and then to the kikar to enjoy the bouncing things, bungee ropes, and arts and crafts.

The kids have been fantastic – they are living history lessons and really appreciating their experiences. They loved Atlit and were more attentive and involved than many of the adulates on the tour. And they are applying and remembering their experiences. In the aqueduct the guide pointed out a place where water was seeping through, and they asked if the rock was limestone as they have learned that limestone is porous. They have learned how to follow trail markers on a hike, and they know which direction they are headed by the order of the colored stripes (thanks, Donna). They are thinking and putting pieces together, it is really rewarding. Though today especially, they missed their dad and his encyclopedic knowledge of history. They know that they could have soaked up even more if he had been with us!

Monday, July 2 – Yokenam!!

2007-07-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

We were out the door by 7:30 am to meet Orit from Etgarim by the side of the road just outside Zichron Yaakov. We followed her to Yokneam, which is in a beautiful green, hilly area. We drove through what I believe are the outskirts of Yokeam, passing through some neighborhoods of mid sized homes with land (yards are hard to find in many cities here) interspersed with animal sheds and crumbling buildings. Eventually we reached a JNF park area. On the dirt road into the park, we hit a construction delay (always construction!) but made it to the park well before the gan was scheduled to arrive. We met the madrichim from Etgarim, Gilad and Pasha, and their supervisor Sharon. Noah and Eitan tried out the zip line, which went up about 25 feet and all seemed to be in working order. The gan arrived, ten kids with three teachers, and we all did the program together. These kids had been working with Etgarim every two weeks for the school year. This was their end of the year activity; most of the time the ropes are set up on trees near their gan. The kids were ages 3-7. Pasha had been the madrich of the kids all year and the were so excited to see him and so affectionate, and he was just as happy to see them. They clearly have a special bond. The other regular madrich had started a summer course and could not be there but Gilad and Sharon were immediately enthusiastic and involved, as were the gan’s teachers. Together, kids and adults, they were a team.

So the program was like this. We did an intro activity all together, and then we divided into two groups – one for the zip line and one for the ropes course. Ilana, Eitan, and Naomi did all the activities with the kids. Even Ilana did the zip line! Noah helped to spot the kids on the ropes course. Then we all made pita together (much like at Eretz Bereshit), and we went on a te’ul down a wooded path, past a few caves and a spring. The kids all took turns playing and splashing in the water, and running around and listening to their echos in the under the large rock overhangs. It was work to keep the kids all on course, but their joy was infectious. Donna was especially engaged with the kids in the gan, she has a natural talent with children (proof—she can manage mine). Gilad showed the Oberlander kids some other fun things along the way, such as a tunnel that ran parallel to the path but was covered by arches of what looked like hay, a log on which to walk across the spring, various small caves and cutouts in the rock, and after the gan kids had left a spring pool that was under a rock overhang and had a cave in the back. Naomi, Eitan, and Ilana all explored that area thoroughly with Pasha and were soaked and happy. The Oberlander kids had fun, and are still talking about how cute the kids were.

During the first part of the program, more and more people started showing up: Arkady the partnership 2000 Yokneam coordinator, the regional director of Etgarim, a representative from Yokneam’s education department, the Israeli JFed of St. Louis oversight person, and a couple of women I think from the Jewish Agency. To me (and to Noah) it seemed to be getting a bit ridiculous. Orit was insistent that this was a big deal for Etgarim; if I understood correctly they had not been matched before through Partnership 2000 tzedakah projects. They do most of their fundraising in Israel. Also, they were very touched by what the boys had done – starting an organization was to them something very special. We had some time to chat with all of these folks. We learned that Yokenam has 48 total gans, 4 of them serve kids with specials needs, and the gan that we were with today serves the most severely affected children. Lily, one of the teachers, also told us because of the challenges that these particular kid face, they do not get to experience outdoor activities such as these very often. She spoke passionately about how important these activities are to the kids’ development. From the Yokneam rep, we learned that the population of Yokneam has quadrupled in the recent years, and 80% of its population is 40 years old or younger. I had always pictured it as a development town down on its luck, but that it clearly not the case anymore. From Arkady we learned that we were not the only St. Louisans to visit Yokneam in the last week: the Green Family was there, the Serota family was there just a couple of days ago working on another tzedakah project, and five teens just arrived as shlichim for the summer camps. Apparently a couple of those kids knew us (maybe from Ladue) and wanted to come today but could not miss camp. We also had some good conversations with the other JFed and Jewish Agency folks. The reps did their jobs – we left feeling very connected to Yokneam and its residents, and feeling very good about the Yokneam community. Etgarim presented Noah, David, and Atian a packet and certificate, Yokneam education department gave them each a Bar Mitvah present of a tallis/tefillin case, and somebody (I’ve lost track of who) gave our family a couple of books about Yokneam and about Israel and some T-shirts for Naomi, Eitan, and Ilana. We will be packing an extra bag to bring all of it home. And it was very nice to have Donna with us for all of it; it was more of a community event.

After leaving Yokenam, we stopped in Zichron Yaakov for lunch. We were hoping to get to the First Aliyah museum, but by the time we finished lunch it was too late. So we walked around a bit and then headed out. On our way our of town we drove into Kibbutz Maayan Tzvi which shares the same hill with Zichron, and where Sima stayed for five months in 1988. It is still has the same breathtakingly beautiful view that it had then, but a few other things have changed. The dorm and all of the other buildings in the area where Sima lived have been knocked down, and they are in the midst of all kids of construction. It looks like they are building single family homes –an area of private housing on the kibbutz land. The views are incredible, the location fantastic, and the houses look very nice. Mike, are you interested?

Naomi’s highlight of the day – she found a license plate by the side of the road in the park in Yokneam. She loves it and has washed it off and is taking it home with her. Wait until Daniel Fredman sees this one!

Only in Israel story of the day: While we were in Yokneam, El Dan the rental car company called and told me that though they know I have rented the car until the 9th, I have to bring in the car today and exchange it for another. OK. I don’t ask any questions and I tell them that I can do it in Netanya between 3 and 4 pm. Then they call back and say that I have to go to Petach Tikvah to make the exchange. I tell them no. They say OK. When they call a third time I am beginning to get curious about what is actually wrong with this car that I am driving and why they need it so badly. They assure me that it is safe, and the best I can figure out from them is that the registration expires tomorrow. So I take the car to the office in Netanya, and they tell me that because the gas tank is only half full I am going to get charged extra. I told them that I was doing them a favor and I was not going to pay any extra to fill up the car. So they called the boss, and he agreed that they would fill it up at gas station price, and made a note of it on my contract. Then I went home and parallel parked the car with only inches to spare on both sides. I took a picture. I felt very Israeli. And by the way, El Al has still not found our car seat.

Back in Netanya, we met Elisa and the kids. We strolled along the promenade, played in the parks, and had dinner in the kikar. The girls did various dancing and gymnastics moves everywhere we went – they were so fun to watch. The time flew by, we said goodnight. Now everyone is clean and well-fed, and hopefully going to bed. Goodnight!

Sunday, July 1

2007-07-01T12:54:00.001-07:00

Today was a day of caves. First we drove to a stalagtite cave on a big hill overlooking Beit Shemesh. We were driving on our own, without Donna, as we were meeting Sami and the kids and Donna there. We made it no problem through Tel Aviv and Beit Shemesh (Noah was excited to drive through Beist Shemesh, now he has been to the home city of every IBL team) and made it to the sign that directed us from the last highway to the cave, which according to the directions was supposed to be a turn “into the driveway.” After twisting our way up a mountain for several miles, I pulled over to call Sami and make sure we were on the right track. No cell signal. I looked at the map, and saw that the road we were taking was leading us to within a couple of km of the territories. So I decided to turn around and head down the mountain and get a cell signal. Once down, I got in touch with Sami and Donna and realized I had been about 500m from the entrance to the park where the cave is. So back up the mountain we went. And then back down the mountain we went, down about 200 steps to get to the cave entrance. Before entering the cave, we were shown a movie that unintentionally made us laugh by using lots of scientific terms and explaining the rules of the cave, including the rule that photography is forbidden every day except Fridays. The cave was amazing – we learned about all kinds of cave formations and how they are formed, and on our tour of the cave they showed us formations that looked like Moses on Mt. Sinai, smurfs and their mushroom smurf house, a wizard, a crocodile, little mermaid, snow white and the seven dwarves, a giant’s feet and finger, broccoli, a princess in a castle and much more. Then we headed back up the hundreds of steps to the car, Ilana whining for ice cream the entire way.

We then visited a small memorial to the space shuttle Challenger that was right by the park entrance,, and stopped by a section of the Old Burma Road. When Latrune and the Jerusalem/Tel Aviv highway were under Jordanian control from 1948-1967, Jews could not get supplies to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. So they built a secret road, out of the range of Jordanian guns, that they used to get food and water to Jerusalemites. This was the Burma Road, really more of a dirt track. We ate lunch in an area that was supposedly next to a section of it, there really wasn’t a marker or anything. Thank goodness for our quirky guidebook, which points out spots such as this as well as locations and times for Israeli dancing in every city across the country.

From there we went to Sataf. Sataf is a not so long hike down the side of a mountain and to a reconstruction of ancient farming techniques among some ruins. The JNF oversees the area, and they have planted terraces with irrigations trenches and are growing squash, what looked like corn, and a variety of other crops. The entire agricultural area is shaded by trees, many of them fig trees, and there are two old cisterns that contain water from natural springs. Of course, people were swimming in them despite a large swimming prohibited sign. One of the springs can be followed back to its source in a cave that is accessible by a very narrow tunnel with a small trickle of water flowing through it. It was a very dark but short trek into that cave; Mati’s big flashlight guided us well. The trip in was fun and involved lots of good family teamwork balancing lights and footholds, but the cave itself smelled like BO from the 20 yeshiva boys that been crammed in there before us and we did not stay long. Then a hike back up and finally GLIDA! My favorite image – we are sitting eating glida on these comfy chairs and cushions at the snack shop overlook and I look up and see a very messy Eitan chasing a ream of napkins being blown by the wind (he had gotten them to clean up, but dropped them all).

The Oberlanders plus Donna then headed back to Netanya. Donna and I got brave and tried an alternate route to minimize traffic, but we discovered that in Israel at 5:00 there is always traffic. It took two hours to get back to Netanya. The kids and I went to the kikar for dinner and had French pastry for dessert (lots of French here). Donna stayed home as she is not feeling great (don’t worry Dorit, we are taking care of her and she is already feeling much better). It is a beautiful cool night, the weather did finally break, so we were able to walk around and comfortably enjoy the evening. The kikar is like a street fair at night, with little kiosks set up, some selling things, some for paining and other crafts for kids, and they even have a few big inflatable jumpy things and a few other rides. The highlight of the evening – as we were leaving the kikar, having eaten and bounced our fill, we saw the Na Na Nachman van! It has been one of my personal goals for the trip to see the Nachman guys jump out and dance, and we got very excited until we realized that they were not going to dance, they were just blasting music from the van and selling things. Maybe next time....

We are now back at the apartment -- there is more music blasting this time from an outdoor wedding at the hotel across the street with an overly loud DJ. Hope that the kids and Donna can get some rest; Noah and I plan on walking back to the kikar to use the free wireless and post this. We are waking up early tomorrow to go to Yokneam! Lila tov.

Alert from the kikar!! The Nachman guys are dancing now! The crowd is joining in!

Shabbat, June 30

2007-07-01T11:21:00.001-07:00

We had kabbalat Shabbat in the apartment, led very nicely by the children, and then ate our take out dinner. After dinner Eitan threw up violently. We called it a night. Shabbat morning the kids did not want to go to the shul in the hotel across the street, so I went by myself at 9:45 thinking I’d catch the last 45 minutes or so of shul. Walking into shul, I decreased the average age of attendees significantly, but shul was basically over. They really know how to daven fast here. I came home to find the kids davening, very loudly and enthusiastically. Their loud enthusiastic behavior continued long after davening was over and I eventually had to send them outside to our little patch of grass to play “World’s Strongest Man” with a six-pack of 1.5 liter water bottles. Thankfully, Sami and the kids showed up in the late afternoon and we all headed down to the beach. The water was unbelievably rough, but the beach was packed with Shabbat beachgoers. While sitting in the sand, we were buzzed by two motorcycles, a jeep, and a horse. The horse and rider (bareback, in a bathing suit) then galloped over to the stairs and gracefully climbed the cliff (next to the stairs, not on them). You never know what you’ll see if you sit on the beach long enough.... We all came back up and ate dinner, and after havdalah, Sami and the kids headed back to Jerusalem. It was a bit strange, to celebrate Shabbat in Israel by ourselves, without a community, but all in all it was a good day.

Friday, June 29

2007-06-29T05:33:00.000-07:00

Today’s major accomplishment – a successful trip to the grocery store in the mall - without Donna! Donna and Mati took a bus to Jerusalem earlier this morning. Oh, where to start with this one. The clueless trip through the parking garage, fighting for a parking spot? The kids thought it was a good thing their Abba wasn’t here for that, he would not have enjoyed the “adventure” at all. Walking into the mall and seeing all the food you could want? Not in stores, not even in kiosks, but just out in the mall there were stands ranging from a take-out, full meal buffet, to another with 20 varieties of olives, and on and on. Having no clue if any of these were kosher, and also having already gotten take out food for Shabbat early this morning with Donna at a place recommended by the real estate agent, we did not partake. We successfully got Naomi earrings and Eitan and Ilana books, and Sima finally got an iced Aroma (and it was delicious) and then headed to the SuperSol. We have a new appreciation for Schnucks. We could not find a cart, the store was mobbed, and we had to look at everything carefully to make sure it was actually what we thought. The tradeoff is that everything is kosher, and oh what finds we made – teddy bear shaped schnitzel, the Israeli equivalent of beef jerky (we have already finished two packages), ton of pre-packed cold cuts, lots of bisli, cheetos, animal shaped pasta, Clicks, ect. We left with hands full and happy. We also figured out that the reason the parking garage had initially been such a challenge is because we started off in the area where the Supersol connects to the garage. So Noah and Naomi waited by the door with the food, and Eitan and Ilana and Sima quickly navigated back to the car (up two floors in the mall, down to -4 in the parking garage, and then driving back to floor -2 to get to the Supersol door, I love that floors are negative numbers), blocked traffic, threw the kids and the groceries in the car, and headed out with our parking validated. What could be better than that? We got home and helped a nice couple from Houston jump their car. Now we are headed out to the kikar to wander a bit and to look for a wireless connection to post this. And to stop at the makolet to pick up the things we forgot at Supersol. Wishing you all a Shabbat shalom, Sima and the kiddos.

Thursday, June 28

2007-06-29T05:32:00.000-07:00

Highlight of the day for Sima – ordering pizza from Pizza Hut for dinner and having them delivered to the door in 20 minutes. No cooking involved. You just can’t get that in St. Louis. Highlight of the day for the kids – getting their official IBL baseballs signed by the Netanya Tigers and the Petach Tikvah Pioneers players. Yes, we went back for another dose of Israeli baseball tonight. The game was at Yarkon field in front of a crowd of about 75 (including us, but not including the players). The Oberlander kids and Mati (who came back from the water park with us and is sleeping over, more on this later) screamed and cheered and chatted with the players and got lots of foul balls.

For the first few innings, Noah and Mati were rooting for Netanya, and Eitan, Naomi, and Ilana were rooting for Petach Tikvah. Netanya was up by 5 after the first two innings, and Naomi asked Donna to take her to the bathroom to wash off the “Go P.T. Pioneers” she had written on her hand – she was changing allegiances. Donna told Naomi that you just can’t change allegiances without a reason, and Naomi looked Donna squarely in the face and said “I have a reason, Petach Tikvah sucks.” Spoken like a true fan. Naomi had soon chosen a favorite player from the Tigers and really wanted him to sign the foul ball she had chased down. The kids ate Burgers Bar from the concession stand, even after the Pizza Hut dinner. After the game the fans and players mingled. We found out that the players all live in the same dorm, that on Saturdays when they do not play they go on teulim across the country, and on Thursday nights they do not have laundry service. Naomi’s favorite player did sign her ball – he even wrote her a little note. Each of the kids got a ball, and they got lots of autographs. On the way home 3 out of 5 fell asleep in the car. All in all a lovely evening.

The sleeping in the car was also most likely related to our day’s activities – six hours in a water park. Sami and Jaqueline Agam found a water park on kibbutz Shafayim which is just south of Netanya and was actually open, and even better yet, we could get discounted tickets for it. The place was amazing – a big pool, a wave pool, a kiddie pool with sprayers and jungle gyms, and every size and shape of water slide imaginable. Plus lots of shade for sitting and relaxing. All of the kids (and often the adults) swam and slid all day long. Even Ilana, under the careful supervision of her siblings and cousins, went down a really big water slide, repeatedly. Her only obstacle was the Israeli teen age girls next to them in line who thought Ilana was adorable and kept trying to pick her up and kiss her. Ilana did nt like that so much. It was a perfect way to beat the heat, and the day flew by. The heat wave is supposed to break tomorrow. We shall see what actually happens as nothing in Israel seems to go the way it is supposed to...

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

2007-06-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hot, hot, hot. Too hot to hike or do anything outside in the sun. So we begin to look at the long list of places to go that we have compiled, Donna, Sima and Sami (by phone) start what seems at first an easy task - find a kid-friendly, relatively cool for the day. First call is to Shvil Tapuzim near Hadera, highly recommended by several different people. It has "activities for the family including mini-golf, go-karting, adventure playground, pool, art workshop, trampoline" - it sounds perfect. But when we call ahead (the equivalent of a pilot trip), what do we find? It is only open on Shabbat. Next try is Emek Kefer Playtime. Again, attractions for the entire family - again, only open on Shabbat. So then Sami suggests we try out Beit Khamotai near Givat Brenner - they used to go there when they lived in Meskeret Batya and it is open all the time. We get there (an hours drive from Netanya due to taking the not-so-scenic route through Tel Aviv) and it is only open to groups and on Shabbat. Noting a theme, we give up for the moment and go into Mekeret Batya. The country there is beautiful and like nowhere we have been yet in Israel. The green rolling hills and farmlands look almost like the US, nothing like the desert hills of Modi'in which are not so far away. After driving by the Agam's old house, we stop at the old town well for a picnic. All of the gears and wheels are still attached to the well and it is functional. A tour group is also there and as a few men push a horizontal wooden beam in a circle it turns a vertical pole which terms various gears, and voila! The buckets are pulled up out of the well and into the roof above and then back down again. It really was cool. And the entire area was covered with bushes blooming beautiful pinks and reds. It was a lively spot for our noodles and plums, and it was really nice to see the town that we had heard so much about over the years.

After the brief respite, we hunt again for an activity. Sami has called ahead to Kibbutz Tsova, which has a family-themed park that is ...... actually open! To us! It has big inflatable jumping things, bumper cars, a train, all kinds of climbing structures, and more. The kids are off and running. As we walk in the door a madrich calls Tamar and there is Tamar Gerson! It is a small country. So the kids jumped and ran around and rode bumper cars until Noah has 4 blisters on his fingers from steering and Eitan's feet and legs are completely black (from what, I don't know). And then we said our said goodbyes and headed back to Netanya.

Once back we met up with Elianna and Shani, the 2 new St. Louis Sherut Leumi girls. We had dinnner and good conversation with them. Sami made some phone calls and found a water park that is closed the 25th and 27th but open the 28th and is not far from Netanya. So, hopefully, we have a plan for tomorrow.

Monday June 25, 2007 - Sima's Addition

2007-06-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

While Mike was traipsing through malls "looking" at shoes, what was happening with the rest of us? Sima started her day with an early morning pilot trip for Israeli bond cashing in Netanya. Wonder of wonders, at the very first bank she entered, she was directed upstairs (only an up escalator, no down, just like in Jerusalem) and then to the back room and straigth to Shirley. Shirley looks over the bonds and says it will be no problem to cash them, and makes an important for 9 a.m. the next day with Sima and Mike. A very successful pilot trip.

Meanwhile back at the apartment, the kids are hanging out with Donna, and Naomi's stomach is not feeling so well. Sima returns. Naomi throws up. Donna and Eitan head out to the makolet to pick up some provisions. Naomi sits on the couch, miserable. Sima is a laundry whirlwind, continuing to work on the seven loads laundry she has done in the last 24 hours. The apartment's washing machine is VERY SMALL. And there is no dryer. Apparently, they actually hang clothes on a line to dry here. But, there is no line outside. Only having read about this in books, Sima is a little weary of this idea but has quickly become an expert at how to hang 6 days worth of 6 people's laundry on 4 clothes lines with 20 clothes pins.

When Donna and Eitan return, Noah and Eitan head down to the sport shop next door to buy a ball (it is impossible to go to the beach without a ball). They successfully buy what they think is a small soccer ball, but is actually a handball (whatever that it is), and are very happy to have Mom and Donna reprimanding them not to play ball in the house. Naomi seems to be feeling a bit better, so we head down to the beach. There is a beach access just down the street from the apartment, but the waves there are quite rough. About a 15 minute walk down the shoreline is a protected beach, which is basically a huge U-shaped swimming pool. We walk down there and set up shop. Ilana is very happy in her innertube. Eitan digs in the sand. Naomi swims and then comes to lay down on her towel and rest. Noah is bored, he forgot his book. Noah walks up the steps to the kikar (town center) and explores, and comes back and is still bored. Naomi throws up again (we bury it in the sand, so watch where you dig in the sand in Netanya). So Sima takes bored Noah, sick Naomi and now grumpy Ilana back up to the apartment. The trip home is interrupted a few times by Naomi lying down on the sidewalk to rest and refusing to get up. When we got home, Naomi cleaned up and went straight to bed. Donna and Eitan returned a bit later, and a bit red. A typical day - errands, boredom, barfing and endless laundry.

Tuesday June 26, 2007 (and Monday June 27)

2007-06-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

This is Mike only - sitting at Ben Gurion, staring at Duty Free and Chabad (the McDonalds was before security). Traveling alone is a lot easier than with 4 kids in tow.

Today first - it is Sami's birthday! And, to celebrate, she came to Netanya with her kids with the sole reason being to take me and Noah to visit Hela and Mundek, very (very) close friends of the family. Hela and my grandfather were friends from Poland and Mundek carried my father across one of the borders in Europe after the war. Mundek looks good; Hela is looking old and frail and her memory is failing. We had a nice visit with them. Of course, they served us fruit and pastries and cold water and soda. We told them what we were doing and we heard a bit about them. It was nice having that connection.

Before Sami came, Sima and I went to the Bank. Guess what? We were only kept waiting 35 or 40 minutes for our 9 a.m. appointment. Then, it took forever, but we actually got our money. Sami met us there. We had a little cake for her back at the apartment. While we were visiting, her kids, Sima, Donna and our 3 youngers went to the beach. Sami and kids left, and we went to the beach. We all got burned. Can't wait for this flight with a burnt stomach. We walked to a section of the beach with wave breaks, so it was extemely calm. We had to walk awhile and we saw several jelly fish (no big deal) and one dead real fish (big deal for Eitan!). We only say one woman topless (big deal for Noah and Naomi, but for very different reasons) but since she saw us coming her little dog made for a very creative bikini top. The kids played in the sand, floated, jumped, swam a bit and had a great time. But, I think they are done with the beach for a day or 2 as Eitan had to sleep with wet towels on his back last night (he wore his shirt in the sea today). Oh yeah, he lost another tooth!

Then we showered, changed and I packed and went out for Moroccan food at the old Pizza Hut. They did an amazing job in the interior and it was good food. We also so a bride and groom taking picture by the waterfall, etc. Then I got in the taxi and left. I will miss the little buggers and even Sima and Donna.

Yesterday .... so long ago, let's see if I can remember. Oh yeah, I spent 7 hours driving around looking at shoe stores: Givataiim, Ramat Gan, Petach Tikva, Givat Shmuel, Petach Tikvah. Lots of shoes. There is a brand of shoes in Israel called Caligula! Who woulda guessed. While I was having fun, Sima and the kids went grocery shopping and to the beach. When I returned to the apartment the kids were kinda pooped, so just Sima and I went to Zichron Ya'akov; one of the first cities settled by settlers from Aliyah Aleph in the 1880's. The main street has lots of quaint shops, artists, restaurants, etc. We bought the kids some books, Donna a watch to take into the sea and had dinner at a restaurant owned by the Tishbi winery. Getting gas on the way out was a story in and of itself that is best left untold.

I forgot to mention that we saw Mo and Larry Hartstein at the first IBL game - Mo emailed me a pic of Larry and Ken Holtzman.

Going to board soon. Hopefully Sima will continue the blog on her own.

Sunday - June 24, 2007

2007-06-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

Shabbat was wonderful with the Gersons. Dov played his piano piece from the recital earlier in the day. Naomi had an immediate attraction to baby Yakir and held him, looked after him, and carried him around the house. Tamar and Ilana hit it off, and of course Elisha played baseball with Noah and Eitan. The boys all went to shul, and the girls walked to shul but didn’t quite make it as they stopped at the playground. Dinner was just us and Gersons. We kept telling Elisha that Lori’s chicken was the best in the world, but he didn’t quite believe us. Our kids slept with the Gerson kids and they were all adorable.

Shabbat morning we went to shul – even Sima was able to make it. The shul just received new seats – made on Kibbutz Lavi. Beautiful to look at, and even quite comfortable, but difficult for traffic. If you blinked your eyes, you could be in Teaneck, or Silver Spring, or Chicago. In Hashmonaim, we heard much more English than Hebrew. The people were friendly, and clearly the groups of children that we saw all over enjoyed living there. The yishuv was begun about 20 years ago but there is a lot of new construction. On Shabbat, the kids can walk anywhere they want as there is no traffic (except the one security truck). On Saturday afternoon, Ilana and Tamar went to play at a little girl’s house. They decided to have a pj party, so the little girls walked home by themselves, got on their pj’s and walked back. We had lunch with the Gersons and another family – the Silton’s from Albany/New York. There were so many connections – Akiva Silton knows Mike Sherman, a good friend of ours from Albany; went to Yeshiva with Avi Orlow, a good friend of ours; knows the Zimands from St. Louis; his sister is friends with Panina in Silver Spring; and his mother, Faye Goldsmith, is from South Bend. A number of Dov’s friends came over in the afternoon and Noah knows two of them from Camp Moshava last year.

Sat. night we went out with Lori (Seth went to bed) – now we know where we were supposed to be in Modi’in on Friday.

This morning we woke up and said goodbye to the Gersons (but not for long …….) and went back to Latrun so Mike could take pictures of the boys on tanks. Sima and the girls went to a café instead. Then we went to Park Kofim (Monkey Park), where we saw lots of monkeys and the kids could climb on ropes like monkeys. Ilana made it through the whole course with just a bit of help (we have pictures too, but Sima can’t log in to get the photos on the web, so we will try to get a flash drive tomorrow to put the pictures on Mike’s computer). After that we drove to Netanya. Easy drive (yeah!) and then we felt a breeze. It was close to 100 degrees this a.m. and we were a bit hot and crabby around the tanks and monkeys. Donna met us in Netanya (yeah!!).

The apartment is great – right near the center of town and across the street from stairs to the beach. We went for “lunch” at 3:15 to get pizza from ….. Pizza Hut. Much better than McDonalds. Mike, Donna and the boys then traveled back south to Petach Tikva to watch the inaugural game of the Israel Baseball League at Yarkon Park in Baptists’ Village (there was no beer, or mixed dancing). Again, all we heard was English. We spoke to Ken Holtzman, the manager of the Petach Tikvah Pioneers, who used to pitch for the Cubs (and A’s and Yanks) and who grew up in St. Louis and used to work at the JCC. He told us that he only had 45 minutes with his team before the first game, doesn’t know their names, and has 2 pitchers older than 50. (His team looked horrible and lost 9-1.) We met up with Seth and his boys and they sat right behind us. Lori called Seth and told him to tell Elisha to stop ……….. biting his nails. We were on TV every time there was a righty batter. The park was small, the crowd was excited, we sang Hatikvah before the game. The game only goes 7 innings, so Mike created his own 7th inning stretch at the beginning of the 5th. He even started a hearty rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and half the crowd joined in. (Of course, the PA then led it in the middle of the 5th, but by that time half the crowd wasn’t interested in singing it again. Oops.)

During this time, Sima did laundry, took the girls shopping for groceries and took them to the beach for a quick stroll and dip. The girls were in their pjs after having cereal for dinner. The boys would have none of that so we took them to a place ½ a block away for quiche and salad (and milkshakes).

Friday - June 22, 2007

2007-06-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

Today was not our favorite day. But, it got a lot better once we arrived at Hashmonaim and saw Seth, Lori and the kids. They are growing up so nicely (not Seth and Lori) and Yakir is absolutely adorable. Naomi has taken a liking to him and is helping carry him around the house. Even though it has only been a few hours, we miss Donna already.

Back to the beginning: we woke up pretty early to get a decent start on the day. We just had one thing we wanted to do in the city before we left – cash in our old Israel Bonds. So, off we trudge to Bank Discount to get there near opening time at 8:30 a.m. – nice Englishman/Israeli told us that the person who normally does it at the bank is not in that day and tries to find someone to help us. Then he tries to find us another branch that will help us. 25 minutes wasted. So, we noticed that the list that we got from the Israel Bond Office in Chicago lists a bank right across from our hotel – so we walk down. No luck there either. But Kobi, formerly of Connecticut, is nice to us and calls Bank Hapoalim up on King George and they say that they can cash the bonds. Back up the hill (it is now 9:30 or so). We go to Bank Hapoalim and the first person we go to (above her it said “General Bank Services”) tells us that Bank Hapoalim doesn’t cash bonds. We turn around and go to another woman who tells us the same – and tells us to go to Bank Leumi down the street. We tried to explain that we called and were told that Bank Hapoalim will cash the bonds – to no avail. So, off we go to Bank Leumi. Just to find that we can’t find the door. Why? Simple, because the bank is closed. Mike is swearing (not even under his breath) as we cross the same urine-soaked corner for the 3rd time to go back to Bank Hapoalim. This time we don’t even go to the Gen’l Banking Service “apartchiks” (bureaucrats), we go straight to the upstairs to find someone in (middle) management. We are told by a nice woman that indeed Bank Hapoalim does cash bonds, and we should go back down and talk to Monique or Esther and points to where we were before. So off we go back downstairs – but, we can’t find a down escalator (only ups). Things are really starting to get frustrating and we are finding no humor in this, but we find stairs down. We go down to this waiting area and interrupt one woman training another and ask for Monique or Esther. We are met with somewhat blank looks and told that there is no Esther and that Monique will be back in 5 minutes and they point to the desk of the first woman we approached! The one who told us that Bank H doesn’t cash bonds. Mike is really pissed; Sima is silent. We take a number and wait to talk to someone else. Now we know how Kafka could have given life to K in The Trial. We end up talking to a nice woman who explains that indeed Bank H does cash bonds, but not on Friday. She tries to explain, but Mike doesn’t want to listen (he figured it out). The office in Tel Aviv is closed on Friday and they need to get clearance for any transaction. Sunday won’t work as the currency exchange is closed and they can’t get a current f/x quote to pay shekalim for the dollar-denominated bonds. So, we figure we’ll take cash out of the cash machine (we need to pay for the apartment on Sunday). We put in one card in the Bank H ATM – we tried getting 2,500 shekalim. No go. We tried 1,500. No. 1,000. No. 600. No. We try another card – same drill. So, guess what? We go back to Bank Leumi and pop in one card and out come 2,500 NIS. Then another card and out comes another 2,500 NIS. (We are close to how much we need for the apartment.) You’d think we’d be happy? Relieved? No, hot and tired and bothered and it is 10:00 a.m. or so. We take a cab back to the hotel and the cabbie has the nerve to be upset that we don’t have change to pay the 13 NIS. Tough, take the 50 and give us change and you get no tip! We are getting to understand why Israelis are……….Israelis. (Lori helped us understand – everything in Israel should be thought of as a “pilot trip”; then, once you figure it out, you can do it for real next time. Sima will try a “pilot trip” to cash the bonds in Netanya on Monday while Mike is at work – touring shoe stores in Israel – and then we will go on the real trip the last day Mike is here, Tuesday.)

We grabbed some breakfast and head up to finish packing. We say goodbye to Donna as she heads to her grandfather’s for Shabbat. We actually were able to cram our luggage into our very-mini van and head out. We almost make it out of town uneventfully until Mike “almost” runs a red light and has to slam on the breaks to avoid getting into a really messy accident. (Blood pressure cuffs should be mandatory in all rental vehicles in Israel.) We get on Hwy 1 towards Tel Aviv to go to Latrun – the old British then Jordanian Police fortress that overlooks the valley from Jerusalem and commands the passes into Jerusalem. The Israelis tried 5 times in 1948 to capture the place, but to no avail. Not until 1967 did Israel capture it. Now it is a memorial to the armored corps. There are a lot of old (and new) tanks there and memorials. But, to get there, we actually have to get off at the Latrun interchange. Problem is that the signs say “Latrun Interchange” for kilometers and then when you get to the interchange there is not a sign for Latrun, only signs for Ashqelon, Be’er Sheva, etc. Stupid us go right past the exit and have to go 15 km more to the next exit where we can turn around. It was a quiet car ride. We finally got there and it is hot, and the girls don’t want to get out, so we stop for maybe 10 minutes and since the place closed at 12:30 anyway, we figured we might come back on Sunday. If only to take a picture of Eitan on a tank.

So, we head to mini-Israel, which is only 5 minutes from Latrun, very cool and very expensive (especially when Donna has the coupon in her magical, Mary Poppins bag). We “toured” Caesaria again (Eitan was psyched), Haifa, the Golan, Galilee, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, etc. They built exact miniatures – really exact. Down to the mosaic on the side of the wall by the building in Rosh Hanikra to get down to the grottoes (Noah noticed that). They had all of the main attractions, but Eitan and Naomi noticed that they didn’t have a mini mini-Israel.

We left there at 2:00 p.m. (closing time as Shabbat starts at 7:30 p.m.) and try to get the kids pizza in Modiin on the way to Seth and Lori’s. We get horribly lost in Modiin and finally find a little strip center with a makolet. We get the kids ice cream. Mike is so visible miffed that a nice teenager tries to help us. He tells us that we are nowhere near where we want to be and a nice girl tells us how to get to the road to Hashmonaim. Eitan has his first projectile vomiting experience in Israel, but is able to make it all 4 times straight into a garbage can. He smiled afterwards. Noah was fascinated by the DVD machine so Mike goes over to take a look and asks Noah to see if he can read the titles. On the far right is Miki (that’s Mickey Mouse) and Mary Poppins, the middle section has action, adventure, drama type stuff and then Mike looks to the left…..and, quickly turns Noah around and sends him back to the other kids and calls Sima over. There, out in the open, are several rows of porn with some interesting titles (not for reproducing). Mike was fascinated that one of them was advertised as “All Israeli.”

We found the road to Hashmoniam, or so we thought. We found our way all the way to Hwy 6 and figured out that we missed a turn off somewhere. We call Lori. She helps us and we find our way. We are here. We are clean. We are doing laundry. We are happy.

Shabbat shalom.

Thursday - June 21, 2007

2007-06-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hands down the highlight of today was seeing our cousins! (Actually, our nieces and nephew, and of course our sister who arrived in Israel yesterday.) We began our day going to Eretz Bereishit (Land of Genesis) – a place out in the Judean hills in between Allon and Kfar Adumim that is set up to be like Abraham and Sarah’s time. When we arrived, Sami and her kids and mother-in-law had just pulled up and Naomi shrieked, “Let me out of this van this instant! I want to see my cousins right now!”

We walked into a tent and we were met by Eliezer; Abraham’s most trusted servant. It was the 7 of us, Sami and her family and one other family from Detroit (with an incredibly loud and obnoxious kid). Eliezer explained his relationship to Abraham, their trip from Ur Kasdim to the land of Canaan, etc. He then offered us “clothes” to wear when we went back in time. We then went outside and many of us mounted camels for the trip to Abraham’s tent. Mike walked with Ilana, but everyone else rode (that’s right, everyone – including Sami’s mother-in-law). When we got to Abraham’s tent we were brought water with these strange clear little rocks that made the water cold and some dates, apricots and raisins. We were told that Abraham was off negotiating a treaty with Lot’s shepherds and some other interesting stories. We then went outside where there was a fire going and the kids used balls of dough to make raw pita; Eliezer then put those on the round metal on the fire and made pita for everyone. We (except Mike and Ilana – there was nothing going to get Mike on one of those animals, or Ilana either) then rode camels back. We learned a lot on the trip back, like that camels can drink 200 liters of water in 3 minutes and store fat in their humps. Once the camels where back down on the ground, Ilana jumped on for a quick picture. There was still nothing to get Mike on the camel.

After Eretz Bereishit, we came back to the hotel and met Sami. We wanted to be back so early because we wanted to make sure that we were able to park the car. Many of the streets in Jerusalem were being blocked off during the day in preparation for the Gay Pride Parade (more on that later). We then walked to the center of town to buy more souvenirs (a shofar for Eitan was the big prize for the day – he can make some sounds), shawarma and falafel. Donna, Mike, Noah and Eitan then went visit a Sofer (ritual scribe) to discuss buying Noah his tefillin. The Sofer is out of the country, his son who is getting married in a couple of weeks was not interested in helping us, and the other employee there decided that maybe he could talk to us for a few minutes. Turns out he knows our friends Michael and Selina Rovinsky and is related to the Nitsuns. We will call the Sofer from the US and buy Noah’s tefillin via phone/Internet.

We all then got back together and Donna took the kids back to the hotel to swim and we and Sami walked around looking for souvenirs for Sima (we bought a few). We saw a beautiful havdala set; it was only 45,000 NIS (that’s about $11,000). We decided to wait for a nicer one and moved on. (Actually, it was 1 of 50 made by an artist and 2 of them are on display in Museums in Germany and Chicago.)

We came back to the hotel walking down the middle of Keren Hayesod (usually an extremely busy street) as it was closed to traffic for the parade. We hung out with the cousins and waited for the parade. Turns out that the parade was supposed to cross in front of the hotel but the route was changed to a block away. We went over to see it, and there really wasn’t all that much to see. 8,000 police (including border patrol) to control a crowd of several thousand folks. The scary thing is that some guy who claims to be “religious” was caught trying to plant an “improvised explosive device” along the parade route. Whatever one may feel about the parade, the folks in the parade or what they do in private or public, we just can’t understand how someone who claims to be religious could do something that could kill people (perhaps us!).

We then tried to go to dinner, got blocked a few times, but ended up getting to Norman’s – this place we have heard a lot about (some good, some bad). Norman’s is “famous” for its “sumoburger”; an entire kilo of hambuger (2.2 pounds!). If you eat the whole thing (130 sheks; approx. $30), you get a t-shirt and free refills on your drinks and you get your name in a book. Mati (our nephew) got some burger that had a name that was “only” 500g (it was huge). He ate almost the whole thing, and took the little left with him to eat on the way to the car. Sami and her kids left as it was getting really late. Our take on Norman’s? Good food, a bit pricey, too many Americans (including the waitstaff) and the service was so bad that it alone could keep us from going back.

We then made our way back to the hotel and the kids crashed. We go to the Gersons’ tomorrow and we hope we can blog before Shabbat.

(We forgot to say that we went to Little Italy last night – a restaurant recommended by the Harsteins – thank you for the recommendation!)

Wednesday - June 20, 2007

2007-06-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Today we dragged the kids out of bed and got an early start to the desert. Getting out of Jerusalem was thankfully uneventful. As we headed east we passed by Maale Adumim, where Sami, Moshe, Mati and Maayan used to live. It looks quite different from how it did 14 years ago, when Sami and Sima hung the border for infant Mati's room in the not quite yet finished apartment, and the area was just being built and was way out in the boonies with no good road. Now the main highway goes right into the community and it is incredibly built up. We continued on past a couple of checkpoints, but despite our best efforts to get questioned (eagerly looking out the open windows) no one wanted to talk to us. I guess it's not very suspicious to travel in a minivan full of kids with Eldan car rental stickers all over it.

We made it to Masada by 8:30 and we all took the cable car up from the beautiful new-to-us visitors center. Up top, we went to the synagogue to do our morning davening. It was a powerful and very hot experience. After davening, we walked down to the North palace and through the bathhouse and storerooms, all the while suffering from the heat. Then Mike, Donna, Noah and Eitan took the snake path down, while Sima, Naomi, and Ilana took the cable car. Only one person fell on the snake path, but we won't say who. After a few refreshing drinks, we headed to Ein Gedi.

Ein Gedi is an oasis where two streams come together in the middle of the Judean desert. We hiked a trail called Nahal Arugot, which follows one of the streams up the mountain to a waterfall. We saw a few ibexes (or goats, or something like that) on the way up to the hike. The hike started off dry and hot as we walked over to the wadi, but then we got to the stream. The first part of the stream was warm and filled with long strings of algae -- Naomi kept picking them up and calling them mermaid hair. We then came to an area were water was literally gushing out of two rocks and into the stream at about chest level. Totally cool. The kids loved putting their heads into the spurting water, and watching the snails that lived on the rocks just below the water. We walked up the water and reached a shallow pool that was fed by a very small waterfall, where Naomi, Eitan and Ilana "swam" for a while. Then we continued along the side of the water, up and down the gorge and over some rough terrain. Ilana was a little mountain goat, but it got to be a bit much so we turned back before we hit the waterfall. This time when we reached the pool we were so hot (the temps were about 100F) we all jumped in the pool fully dressed to cool off, and we were bascially dry by the time we reached the car.

Next we headed across the road to a public beach on the Dead Sea. Mike told Eitan to stick a finger in and taste it - Eitan spit, gagged, spit some more and was not happy. He gladly accepted the open bottle of fresh water that Mike offered him. The kids each stuck a foot in the water and had enough. The water stung their various scabs and blisters and they screamed until we were able to get them washed off with fresh water (though they didn't seem to disturb the peaceful bathers in the sea). We think we have the loudest kids in Israel.

Our trip back to Jerusalem took about 45 minutes, and once we were in Jerusalem it took about 45 minutes to get back to the hotel. Too many one way streets and streets that you can't turn onto and streets that curve in the opposite direction of the way you want to go. During the long trip, Naomi and Eitan were going at it in the back and he punched her in the mouth and her other front tooth fell out! She was so happy -- all's well that ends well. The only other adventure of the day was that while Naomi and Ilana were showering Naomi tried to wash out Ilana's hair with a glass and dropped it, cutting her own ankle in the process. Fortunately the hotel has a medic (who is also the parking garage attendant) who came to look at it and took off the nice butterfly bandages that Donna and Sima had put on the cut and replaced it with a huge piece of cotton held by a big white bandage wrapped around her leg. End result -- the cut was not serious. After a nice Italian dinner at a restaurant near the hotel and filled with Americans we are all ready to hit the sack.

Tuesday - June 19, 2007 - 3 Tammuz

2007-06-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

The highlights always seem to revolve around seeing people. Today, Mike spent some time visiting with Rabbi Bienenfeld at Cup O' Joe. (We did find out today that Avi Borow works there in the mornings, but we have not seen him.) Rabbi Bienenfeld looks good, is keeping busy, is setting up meetings to try to become busier and is a wonderful advocate for making aliyah. In case anyone is wondering - he was wearing a tie; but he had good reason as he was coming from a meeting with a member of the Knesset.

This morning we went up to Mt. Herzl. Part of the excitement was how we got there - we took the 18 bus. The kids liked to stand and sway, and we liked it when they sat. First, we went to see Herzl's grave. Then, there is a new museum that is interactive, non-traditional and very engaging. You start off walking down a street in Vienna in the 1890's, go to a room where there are several movie screens - on one is a dramatization of the Dreyfus affair and on another is a modern director interviewing an actor to play Herzl in a play. We learned all about Herzl and the earliest days of modern Zionism through the actor learning about Herzl. In the museum are Herzl's desk and other furniture and some personal belongings.

Afterwards, we went to visit the graves of other Zionist and Israeli leaders, including Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meier and Yitchak Rabin. We also visited some of the memorials and graves in the military portion of the cemetery. It is awe inspiring the number of young men (and women) who have given their lives for this land and our people. Among the highlights (can we write that?): seeing the rows of boys who died in Lebanon since 1982; Hana Senesh - interred with 2 of her female companions who parachuted into Europe; the memorials for the unknown, last of kin (meaning, they were the last of their family), terror victims, ma'apilim (illegal immigrants) aboard the Salvador and other "common graves" for those who died in battle but were only able to be buried years later; and the memorial for the Dakar. The Dakar was an Israeli submarine that disappeared in January 1968. All 69 sailors were lost at sea. For 31 years, the Dakar remained lost; but, in 1999 the sub was found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The memorial is reminiscent of a submarine, and very moving.

From Har Herzl we went the science museum. We took cabs for the first time this trip. Mike's trip cost 32 sheks/Sima's and Donna's only cost 22 sheks - hmmmm.... The science museum was engaging for the kids - even Ilana. There was a whole exhibit on optical and other sensory illusions. They had a lot of interactive activities (in Hebrew, English and Arabic). Then we went for lunch on the campus of Hebrew University in Givat Ram (across the street). After walking up, and up, and up, and up (Jerusalem is built on hills), we got to the main gate to the campus and the bus stop for the 9 bus back to "town." The kids and Sima went swimming (on the roof of the hotel); Mike saw Rabbi Bienenfeld; and Donna went to see a friend.

We went to dinner at Burgers Bar - the boys were in heaven. Since Naomi wasn't going to eat a burger, she complained and complained. We offered to get her pizza; nope. We asked her what she wanted and she said that all she wanted was a carrot. On the way to dinner on Emeq Refaim we came to a juice bar. So, we asked for one gezer gadol bli mitz (big carrot, without juice). The guy looked at us as if we were absolutely nuts (aren't we?). We explained. He washed a carrot and gave it to us. When we asked him how much, he smiled and said One Shekel (about 25 cents). That was Naomi's dinner.

Back to the hotel, but instead of walking down noisy, dirty streets, we decided to walk through noisy, dirty Liberty Park. The kids played on an alligator thing with a group of Arab girls. We are glad our kids were polite; we may have done a teensy, weensy bit of bridge building.

We put the kids to sleep (after watching the World's Strongest Man Competition on ESPN) as we are heading south tomorrow - to Masada, Ein Gedi and wherever else the wind takes us.

Monday - June 18, 2007 - 2 Tammuz

2007-06-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

Yet again we will start with the highlight - we ran into our friends Joe and Orit Strauss at the Kotel. They looked great, were in a protracted conversation with someone asking for tzedakah, got Mike to give him $20 for them and then another $10 from us. They walked a bit with us out of the Old City and told us about their son, Irad (sp?), and his induction into the Golani brigade last week. Irad is now up at Tel Faher (do you remember from an earlier blog? The Golani overlook, where there is a memorial for the Golani Brigade, where there was a battle at the beginning of the war in 1967) setting up for some big ceremony this week. We called him on his cellphone and had a nice, but short, chat.

We woke up a bit later than we wanted, had another giant breakfast - this time, we each were able to get pancakes and omelettes, on top of bourekas, cheese, fruit, etc. At this hotel, the kids were able to squeeze their own juice - mitz tapuzim (orange) or mitz eshkoliot (grapefruit). That was an activity in and of itself. We then started walking "to town" - we took the kids to the Great Synagogue - they have a huge and amazing collection of mezuzot. We were right next to Boaz Genut's office and were going to pop in to say hello when Mike checked his email and Boaz had emailed 20 minutes earlier. Unfortunately, he was on his way to a meeting, but hopefully we will see him.

We then walked to Machane Yehuda, a huge and amazing outdoor/indoor market. We bought candy, some grapes, some nuts (American peanuts, of course), more candy, dried fruit, more candy. Eitan kept burying his face into Sima's stomach every time we came near a fish vendor. He just can't bear to see a dead fish. Of course, we didn't quite like seeing all of the flies on the dead fish either. Donna ran into a friend who goes to Wash U - Jerusalem is such a great place! We bought the boys some cheap kippot, and then had to buy them 2 expensive ones (not all that expensive) - Noah got a Chicago Bulls kippah and Eitan got one with ....... guess ......... come on, try a guess...... you got it ....... fish! We bought Ilana a cute dress and Naomi a beautiful skirt (same price as the pricey kippot). Lucky for us Donna knew where to go to get nuts and fruit from a vendor who uses gloves.

We then walked down Ben Yehuda. This street is named after the father of modern Hebrew and used to be The Place for people to congregate. It was not all that crowded, but then again it wasn't Saturday night either. From there we went back to the Old City and went to Migdal David (the Tower of David). They have a really intersting museum of the history of Jerusalem through all the periods of history. It is amazing to think about all of the times this city has been conquered and rebuilt. (At the next stop, a guide told the story of a professor from Hebrew U, who went to the Israel Museum on every Tisha B'Av to yell at the statue of Hadrian (the Roman emperor) - he would yell, "We are still here, where are you?") We spent a lot of time at Migdal David - lots of climbing, lots of vistas, lots to see. One change from the last time we where here - we used to see lots of antennas on the roofs of the houses in the Old City, now all we see are satellite dishes.

We then made our way through the Armenian Quarter back to the Rovah and got the girls pizza and got our first shwarma for the trip. The boys were in heaven. Noah almost inhaled his, and had to slow down. Eitan's ended up on his cheeks, nose and chin. (And, fortunately, it didn't make Mike sick.) We then headed to a play ground in the Old City, near the outer wall. The kids played (and played), we walked a bit along the ramparts, and relaxed. Then, we went back to the Kotel for the tour of the underground tunnel by the Kotel. Noah, Eitan and Mike went to visit Rabbi Shmuli again, and davened mincha right next to the Kotel. Then the tour - the kids were great in the narrow spaces. Enthralled by the huge stones. Rather amazing to be that far underground to what is modern Jerusalem and at street level of what was ancient Jerusalem. Also amazing to be at the place closest to the holiest place in our tradition - the rock that we believe was the foundation rock for the world, where Avraham bound Yitzchak and where the Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) stood.

This city is incredibly dusty and dirty. Garbage is everywhere and we carried most of the dirt with us on Eitan's feet. We tried to wash Eitan's feet, but only got down a few lawyers, so we walked back to the hotel. After showers/baths, we gave Donna the pleasure of putting the kids to sleep and we are sitting at Cup 'o Joe on the corner of Keren Ha'yesod and Jabotinsky, enjoying the breeze, the smoke, the screeching breaks, blaring horns and near misses, and of course free Wi-Fi.

Sunday - June 17, 2007 (Rosh Chodesh Tammuz)

2007-06-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

We'll start with the highlight of our day again - we are not quite sure if it was the Kotel or seeing Donna. We'll call it a tie.

Shabbat was wonderful - we hung out with the Hartsteins, went on several walks, went to several playgrounds, played battleship, talked, laughed and relaxed. Motzei Shabbat (that's after Shabbat) Mike took Eitan and Noah to Burgers Bar - a hamburger place where you watch them grill the burgers, choose the sauce, toppings, etc. Believe it or not, only the boys got burgers as we were going out with Mo and Elisa. We went to a creperie and had a great time.

This morning we (meaning Sima) finished laundry while Mike took the boys and Ilana for haircuts (Ilana just got her bangs trimmed). We stopped at a bakery for donuts, bourekas, pretzels/bagels. We then went to a makolet (corner market) for plums and Bamba (think cheese puffs, but peanut butter instead of cheese - yuck!).

We then made the compulsory pilgrimage to that culinary hot spot - McDonalds. In typical Israeli fashion, it was supposed to open at 11:30 and we got there at 11:35 and had to wait 10 minutes for it to open. 3 Happy Meals and 3 Big Macs (no cheese) later, and we were all unimpressed. But, the little ones got to play in the McPlayground. We did have a McKebab (we have a picture prove it) - not recommended unless you are really hungry and you have already eaten your shoes and belt.

Then, the trip to Jerusalem. The drive was beautiful, but traffic is really bad. Once we hit the city limits, Mike's blood pressure hit the roof. Too many one-way streets, narrow streets, streets changing names without notice, motor bikes zooming in and out, and a general feeling of despair. Mike hit rock bottom in the parking lot of the hotel. It was a good thing we made it, as everyone else was worried that Mike would have a heart attack. Luckily, he/I didn't. We met Donna in the lobby (yeah!) and made it to our rooms. After settling in, we made our way to the Old City via the Jaffa Gate. It is still a bit weird that we avoided the Muslim Quarter completely (even so far as that when we are at the Cardo - the ancient Roman main street that has been excavated and now has art stores) - as soon as we hit the Muslim Quarter, we turned around. How did we know? You know - you can tell by the stones, the people, the smells, the lights, everything.

Donna put together a "scavenger hunt" for the kids. She wrote out clues about sites in the Old City and the kids took turns reading them and then we went to see them. It is amazing to see the Hurva Shul being rebuilt. As we approached the Kotel (Western Wall), the kids each wrote out notes to put in the cracks. Eitan was going to put in a prayer about his fish, but then decided to write "Moshiach Now". (To explain - Sima's Israeli cell phone must have been used by a Yeshiva girl before her, as she keeps getting text messages like "Meet at the chader ohel with your blue sweatshirt. Moshiach Now"; or, "Pizzas have been delivered. Moshiach Now" or "If you are not here in 10 secs, you cannot come in the middle - Moshiach Now" or "Don't forget your signing notebooks tonight - bring your key to Malky tonight and get 5 shek! Moshiach Now!"

One of Noah's teachers, Rabbi Rubenfeld, gave us a note to give to "the Kotel rabbi" named Shmuli. We were wondering how we were going to find him. Mike took the boys to the men's side, and Sima, Donna, Naomi and Ilana went to the women's side. Mike and the boys davened mincha in the inner room next to the Kotel Plaza. Afterwards, they walked over the Chabadniks trying to get guys to put on tefillin and Mike approached one and asked if he knew Shmuli. And, guess what, of course he did. He called Shmuli on his cellphone and 30 seconds later Shmuli showed up. Turns out that Shmuli and Rabbi Rubenfeld are best buddies and we had a nice chat.

We then made our way back up the Old City and by Donna's dorm and to a makolet to get drink and snacks. We exited (you never quite leave) the Old City via the Zion Gate and made our down the snake path. We walked towards the German Colony for dinner. On the way, Donna told us that she missed her brothers. Six witnesses! She said it and we heard it.

Emeq Refaim is hopping. We ventured towards the end of the street to Pizza Meter to find out that it is closed. We went back to Pizza Sababa. Everyone thought it gross that Mike ordered a piece of corn pizza; Eitan then wanted a bite and took such a big bite that he got Mike's finger too! After pizza, we just had to go to Aldo for ice cream (not sure what all of the fuss is about).

We then walked back to the hotel and bumped into Tom Green and his family. We learned that there was a katyusha attack in Kiryat Shemonah. We were just there 2 days ago. Tom knows several of Donna’ s relatives, but Donna didn’t!

That’s it for tonight.

Friday - June 15, 2007

2007-06-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

We'll start with the highlight for the day - we are at the Hartsteins in Ra'anana! Mo and Elisa look great and are cooking up a storm for us. The kids are amazing and are growing up so wonderfully. You got to love Israeli landlords - they give you 4 walls and nothing else. No oven, stove, light fixtures or even toilet paper rolls. But, the Hartsteins have made their house into a real home. Sitting here and looking at the same artwork that was in St. Louis brings back so many memories.

Today was not our favorite day. The drive from HaGoshrim to Rosh Hanikra was beautiful, but the kids didn't really enjoy it. Noah wanted to watch a movie, but instead did his math homework (he took a test after we printed it at the Hartstein's). Naomi and Eitan played their handheld games and Ilana slept. Sima and I spoke to Sami and watched the changing landscapes. We even saw an eagle swoop overhead.

Rosh Hanikra is the furthest point on the Med.coast and has some beautiful grottos that were created by the pounding of the sea on the soft stone. To get to the grottos we had to wait in a long line with all Israelis for a cable car for the 45 second ride down. We didn't know where to buy tickets, everyone was cutting in line and it was hot. But, once we got down to the grottos, it was beautiful. The sound and smell of the sea. The breeze. The long line to get back up.

At the top, we walked to the border crossing (another photo op). This time we saw some Israeli soldiers. We also saw a lot of UN "troops" waiting to cross. They were wearing patches from Italy, Estonia, Russia, Australia and Noah says he saw one from Italy. One of the vans had a case of French wine in it. It took all of Mike's might to prevent him from going up to the Aussie and asking him to actually do something about preventing Hizbullah from rearming as opposed to getting drunk. We then got glida (and diet coke) of course. The kids now have favorites; the boys like Extreme im aguyot (some cone with ice cream and vanilla cookie crumbles) and the girls like Nibs (bite size vanilla ice cream coated in chocolate).

We then drove south and took a turn off towards Ma'alot because Mike saw something in a guide book about the ruins of a Crusader castle called Montfort. The Knights Templar build the fort in the 1180 somethings and Salah al-Adin destroyed it and it was rebuilt and redestroyed. To make a long story short, we never quite got there. But, we did have a hike (note the absence of adjectives) (and the presence of expletives says Sima) and were able to see the ruins from afar. The hike was hot and a bit arduous (especially for Mike who was carrying Ilana on his back all the way down - and then up - the rock path).

After that, we got back in the car, drove to the coast and then headed south. We passed Akko and drove through Haifa. Only Eitan was awake at that point so he got a few great views of the Ba'hai Temple and and Israeli destroyer in port. We saw the Intel and Microsoft buildings in Haifa and then continued south passed Caesaria, Hadera and towards Tel Aviv until we took the exit for Ra'anana. As we passed through town, we saw Mo on the side of the street. Sima stuck her hand out and almost gave Mo a hi-five.

We are here, now clean and very happy. Shabbat shalom all.

Thursday - June 14, 2007

2007-06-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

We had an extremely busy day and we really thought we would have tired the kids out by now - but, no luck. It is 9:30 p.m. and the 3 younger ones are still awake - at least Noah had the good sense to go to sleep.

We actually set a wake-up call for 7:30 a.m., and still didn't manage to leave HaGoshrim until 9:30 a.m. Breakfast was at the kibbutz, and we skipped the shakshooka for a change. Sima still made cheese sandwiches for lunch, though. We first headed to Lake Agmon (Hula Lake) in the middle of the Hula Valley. The guide books tell you not to visit unless it is between November and March, when all of the migrating birds make the Lake their winter home. But, we had a great time riding bikes along the 10 Km path around the Lake. We all rode bikes - Ilana rode a "bike" that was pulled by Sima, and Ilana actually pedaled for 2 or 3 minutes. We didn't see any herons or raptors, but we saw and heard a lot of different birds. Most importantly, Naomi had the chance to ride a bike, and she just loves to ride bikes.

After the bike ride the kids (and Sima) had ice cream and Mike had his ubiquitous Diet Coke. (Sorry Dugie, it wasn't Cabernet.) We then headed to Naot Mordechai, a kibbutz in the valley. Why Naot Mordechai? But, of course to go to the Naot/Teva shoe outlet store. Not only did we set a record for spending the most money at the store, but Mike actually ran out of steam looking at shoes before Sima did. 15 pairs of shoes later (you can ask Sima how many pairs were for her) and we were able to leave. We then headed to Nahal Senir.

Nahal Senir was one of the coolest places we have ever been. Nahal Senir is also called Hasbani and is one of the 3 streams that forms the Jordan River. So, since we already hiked along the Banyas (Nahal Hermon) and the Dan, we now have hiked along all 3 streams that form the Yarden. The hike starts off normally enough, until we approached a large "wading pool", where we encountered 100 or so yeshiva boys on a tiyul. We left to get ahead of them, and as we began the hike we found ourselves waking in and beside the stream. Stupid us (?) stopped to take some family pictures in the stream (you be the judge after the pictures are posted) and the boys caught up to us. Really stupid us let the boys walk past. Watching these kids and their teachers navigate their way in water, on rocks and through mud worries us for the future of Israel. We are soft, fat, spoiled Americans - and, we had a much easier time with the hike than they did. (And, what do these rabbis think they are going to do with 1950's era single shot rifles that probably can't even fire anymore?) Even though we waited a good long time (their noise made the hike unenjoyable), we quickly caught up with them. We traversed a 6-9 inch wide ledge by the stream and "fought" our way through them to get in front of them. Mike, carrying Ilana, still was able to help some of the boys. Walking in the stream was amazing, and climbing over and around rocks and roots and branches was thrilling. We all loved the hike. The end, however, was not great. We had to walk down a path to the car. With the sun beating down on us, the views of the Galil and the valley were the only saving graces.

As if that were not enough, we came back to HaGoshrim and Mike took Noah, Naomi and Eitan on a "kayak" float trip. It was actually a big inflatable/boat raft with Noah in the front with an oar, Naomi and Eitan in the middle, and Mike in the back. We floated down the Hasbani (Nahal Senir) for about an hour and a half. It was peaceful, beautiful, fragant and warm. And then, we came across the older brothers of the kids we ran into at Senir. We don't know if they were actually their older brothers, but they too showed no skill at outdoors activities. It cracks us up that we are more accomplished at these types of activities than anyone in the world. We kept getting slammed, splashed, sprayed, yelled at in Hebrew - all for actually going down the center of the stream (when possible). We saw lots of families and groups of kids hanging out on the banks - picnicing, playing, swimming. At one point, a young girl (14 or 15) and boy (12 or 13) were in the middle of the stream yelling to us (in Hebrew). It sounded like they were in trouble so we "stopped" as best we could and they jumped in. They weren't in trouble - they were just "joy riding" by climbing in strangers' rafts and floating to their friends. After we said l'hitraot to those new friends, we came across a group of 20-something males drinking (or something else). One of the guys saw the boys UNC hats (Michael Jordan) and started singing the UNC fight song - neither of my boys knew what he was doing. So, Mike sang Hail to the Victors in return and had a brief, yelling conversation with some guy from North Carolina. After the float trip, the 4 joined Sima and Ilana at the kibbutz pool - a huge, beautiful pool. Naomi was so happy to swim.

After changing, the family humored Mike and let him drive up north (yes, there is still north to go) to Metulla - the farthest north "city" in Israel. 450 families living along the border with Lebanon. Sima and Mike both remembered visiting the Good Fence along the border with Lebanon - a gate that let Lebanese and Israeli Druze families travel to visit each other and for other reasons (like letting Lebanese into Israel for medical care). Well, the good fence is no longer good. As we approached we saw a large sign that said Atzor! (border approaching). No soldiers though. We know that if we went 25 or 50 more yards (meters) around the bend we would have seen a lot of soldiers. We took a quick picture of the boys by the sign and turned back to go to the Dado Elazar overlook, named after David (Dado) Elazar who was chief of staff of the IDF during the Yom Kippur war. Even though it was hazy, the overlook gave us tremendous views of Metulla, Har Hermon, the Golan, K'far Giladi, the Hula Valley, etc. It was strange looking into Lebanon and thinking about what was going on just 1 year ago this month.

After that, we went to dinner at a place called Aysh Baysh - all meat, all grilled. Noah ordered something called Cherev Entrecote (cherev is Hebrew for sword). We were not quite sure if that was a cut of beef, but when the waiter brought out a sword skewered with steak we got it. We skipped the chicken hearts.

Thinking back on the day, we are struck with how few non-Israelis we encountered all day. At dinner, the menu was all in Hebrew and we figured most of it out (with the help of a nice waiter who spoke some English). We are finding our way. Tomorrow will be busy, with going to Montfort (a crusader castle) and Rosh Hanikra (caves in the North-easternmost city in Israel), and then down to Ra'anana to the Hartsteins. Hopefully, we will post before Shabbat.

It will be very sad to say goodbye to the Golan and northern Galil. The breeze, the sky, the streams, the mountains, and even the rocks. Eitan proclaimed today, "I love Israel, except for all of the rocks!"

Wednesday, June 13

2007-06-13T12:39:00.001-07:00

Hi, this is Sima. We forgot some important news from yesterday -- Naomi lost her front tooth! It happened at Tel Dan while we were eating lunch, right after the hike! How many American kids can say that they lost a front tooth in the holy land???

Ok, for today -- we meant to get an early start this morning, but the jet lag snuck up us and I was the first one up at 10. So after a quick breakfast at the tables outside our room overlooking beautiful HaGoshrim, we headed off to Katzrin by way of the Golan and the viewpoint at Quneitra. On the way, lots of gorgeous views and lots of Israelis driving really fast on very curvy roads in big trucks. We let everyone pass us and held our breath at each turn. We did the quick version of the Katzrin tour -- went to old Katzrin and explored a shul and two homes that were from the Talmudic times. One of the homes had been fully restored and was very cool -- the kids were imagining what it would be like to sleep in the loft and to cook in the stone ovens. Then a quick stop at the Golan winery for a picnic lunch on the lawn and Mike to do a very fast stop in the winery gift shop, were he made a few purchases.... Next we headed to The Jordan River park, an expansive park on the north shore of the Kineret. We did a mini-hike along the Jordan, the kids enjoyed the splashing. By then it was very hot, and a mini-hike was all that we were up for. Naomi and Ilana were begging for the beach, so we stopped next a kibbuts Ginosar, along the went shore of the Kineret. Some kibbutzniks there found an ancient sunken ship in 1986 (when there was a horrible drought and the Kineret was really low), which with a lot of help from experts in antiquities they were able to dig and and remove from the mud, and bring to the kibbutz. They have a museum there that explains the process and the possible origins of the boat -- really cool. AND, the museum is right next door to the beach! So after a perusal of the exhibit and some glida (ice cream), we spent some time lounging in the shallow, hot water of the Kineret. Naomi and Ilana were very happy... We continued down the shores of the Kineret to Tiberias for dinner at a gorgeous Chinese restaurant right on the shores of the Kineret. We ate outside, overlooking the water.

Some observations -- most of the tourists we have encountered up here are Israelis; we have heard very little English. That may be why every Israeli we meet seems to ask us when we are going to make aliyah. They've given us lots of good arguments why we should and Naomi is all for it (she did not need much convincing, I think this trip may determine her future...). Our Hebrew is steadily improving, Naomi keeps reminding us to use it and I find that I am much more willing to speak and make a fool of myself now than I was 20 years ago when I was here last. Eitan is intrigued by all of the archeological sites we have visited. Their stories fascinate him and we find ourselves reading and re-reading to keep up wth his questions. Noah says his favorite thing so far has been the hike at Tel Dan, but he very eagerly awaiting our visit to the Naot/Teva outlet tomorrow. A true consumer he is. And Ilana is enoying everything -- she burst out today with "I love Israel!!!!" This trip is truly a gift, and we are all so grateful for it.

To see photos from the last couple of days, try going to
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AYuGThs1btmIS

Some other info and correction

2007-06-12T14:47:00.001-07:00

Mike here - sorry about the typo - machsanit is the word for magazine in Hebrew. It was weird seeing it just lying on the ground. I made the kids stay away. Stupid, I know. The bullets aren't going to fire themselves.

Forgot to mention in the last post - Naomi has decided to only speak Hebrew while she is here. We need Sami and the kids to get here fast!! There are only so many times we can respond to Ani rotzeh (correction to rotzah for Naomi) lishtot mayim. (For those, like me, who don't speak Hebrew, that means I want (male form) to drink water.) Naomi did teach Ilana to say Ani TZRICHA fluffy. That is I NEED fluffy (her blanket). Noah just wants to know what we are doing tomorrow, next week, next hour, where we will be eating, what we will be eating, when we will be eating. (Mom and Dad - now I know how you felt all those trips with me and Mitch.) Oh, and he wants to play catch - glad we brought our gloves. Eitan is just happy being Eitan.

Airplane Trip and First and Second Days

2007-06-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sima and I are sitting in the lobby of the guest house at HaGoshrim. Actually, Sima just left to check on the 4 kids we left watching TV. Let's start by saying this - Israel has certainly changed since the last time we were here (1993). A lot for the better, and .....

When I (Mike) was a kid here, we were lucky to get one Israeli tv station and maybe something in English from Jordan. Now, the kids can choose from Nick, to History channel, to French, German and I think even Turkish language stations.

The airplane rides - thanks to Dad Medow for driving us to the airport. Checking in at Lambert at 6 a.m. was not nearly as easy as one would think. One very slow (old) man to check bags for every person flying AA that morning - and there were a lot of folks flying. He "ran out of bags" for the car seat (meaning, he was being lazy) and, guess what ...... our car seat never made it to us in Israel. (No worries, for 3 bucks a day Eldan will lease us a car seat and probably anything else we would need.) Fortunately, the regional jet to Newark was not taking us to Ben Gurion - not much room, but the kids managed to play the DS3 (gameboy type thing) the whole couple of hours. At Lambert, we ran into some friends who were also coming to Israel - Joe and Orit Straus. They are coming for several reasons, including their son's swearing in ceremony (he just finished basic training) at Golani Junction on Wednesday. We may go if we can.

Newark was a breeze. Security was great, but we encountered another sign of change. On top of saying that no one gave us anything, that we packed ourselves, etc., the security officer asked if we ordered an Israeli cell phone. Sima handed ours over and the security officer began pushing buttons - and my wife was worried that we are going to get charged for a call! And she said so! After davening mincha with a bunch of charedim (and Joe and a couple of other folks), we boarded the plane. We shoulda ponied up for Business Class! The 3 girls sat in one row, and the 3 boys were a row behind. The movies on the plane were horrible, the seats uncomfortable, the food was bleh and there was a kid wailing for almost the whole ride. (Sima just came back, with a 4 year old in pj's on her hip and it is 10:45 p.m.) The wailing kid was not ours, but we do know the kid's grandparents from St. Louis. And, a nice steward told us that we received a telex on the plane - one of our bags didn't make it. You now know which bag didn't make it, but on the plane we did not. We all took it in stride and knew that things would work out.

At BG airport, we picked up our real luggage and Sima filled out paperwork for the lost carseat. (Still have not heard from El Al.) We rented our van from Eldan, and that was a trip. The van is tiny - no room for luggage. Have no idea how we will fit Donna and her luggage too.

Sima drove first - we went north to Caesaria. What a change there too. We remember it as an ice cream stand, some tourist shop and an ampitheater. Now, there is a whole area with restaurants, bars, shops and a multimedia presentation on the city and its history. We also toured the excavated ruins - including the ampitheater being set up for a concert, the hippodrome (it was cool walking down the length and imaging the racing horses). The gladiator fights we tried not to imagine. We looked at the sea, had a decent Italian lunch and watched a cool movie/presentation on how Herod built the harbor. They are still excavating underwater.

We then got back in the car, only got lost a bit, and headed to HaGoshrim. Drove through Afula, skirted Nazareth then up to Kiryat Shemoneh. The kids slept the whole way up. Had dinner at the kibbutz after Sima took the kids swimming while Mike was on a conference call. The kibbutz guest house is actually many buildings. We are staying in Spanish House and have adjoining rooms. The kibbutz is beautiful, lush green gardens, has a nice lodge with big buffet meals, and really interesting sculptures throughout the grounds.

The kids slept until 9:30 a.m. today. Had a so-typical Israeli breakfast. The boys liked the shakshooka and bourekas for breakfast. Ilana didn't eat. Sima made cheese sandwiches for lunch. Then, off to the Banias Falls. We all hiked to the Falls - but, another change (not for the better) - the authorities no longer let folks swim/wade in the spring/falls. We crossed the river and walked a bit to an overlook. Noah and Mike took off down a hike that (if we had a map at a time) took us 2/3 of the way to the old Syrian officers' pool. But, of course, that is closed too - so we were not too upset that we turned around. We bought some nectarines, plums and cherries from a guy with a stand by the entrance - the best meal in Israel so far.

Then, off to Tel Dan - we didn't do the longest hike that would have taken us by newly unearthed remains of the ancient city of Dan, but we did hike around the Nahal Dan and went to a wading pool, where we encountered 50-75 boys (shrieking, frum boys as someone might characterize them) playing, horsing around with sticks and throwing rocks. We gingerly played and when those kids left we thought we might be alone, but then 2 minutes later another group of kids came by (they seemed better behaved, but we still left). The kids loved the hike. They loved walking on rocks in the spring, they loved seeing the lush greenness, didn't like the few bugs, but loved the breeze. We had lunch there (cheese sandwiches and fruit - were you paying attention). Then, on to Nimrod's fortress.

We are still not sure if we were there before. We both believe we were, but don't remember. It was really cool for the kids. Seeing the thick walls, ramparts, towers, arrow slits, cisterns, etc. We even "discovered" the secret tunnel that leads from the northwest tower out of the fortress. How anyone ever conquered that place is beyond us. We ran into several tour groups of people taking classes on how to be a tour guide.

After that, we decided to go to some off the beaten path places. We read somewhere that there is a memoral to Sayeret Egoz near Nimrod's fortress - so off we went. It was a nice sign. Not beautiful, and only in Hebrew. It was near some Muslim "makom kadosh", but we have no idea what. The only interesting thing is that we found a full machnasit on the ground. Machnasit we learned is a magazine of bullets - we found that out from soldier we met at our next stop.

Tel Faher - not a Hebrew name (we believe). It was a Syrian post that was captured on June 9, 1967 as one of the first battles for the Golan. 32 boys died taking that piece of rock. Yitzhak Rabin said something to the effect that after seeing the Syrian fortifications up close, it was a wonder that the Israeli forces carried the day. At the post there are memorials to the "Barak"company that took Tel Faher as well as to the entire Golani Brigade. It was eery walking in the Syrian trenches and looking out of the gun holes of the Syrian bunkers. The IDF left a half track at the entrance and the kids climbed up (Ilana with some help) - kids means all 4 plus Mike - and Sima took a picture. (When we figure out how to post pictures, we will.) We were the only people at Tel Faher - we could hear the flags flapping. As we were finishing our visit, several bus loads of Israeli soldiers (not in uniform) showed up for a tour.

After that, we decided to try to find some dinner. After driving around Kiryat Shemoneh for awhile, Sima called 1 of the 2 kosher restaurants we believe are in town. She had some "communication difficulties" so we abandoned that idea (for tonight, at least). We found the other place (a dairy place, so Noah and Eitan are not too happy) in a mall at the Northeast corner of the town. A mall! With a Supersol, Burger King, Steinmatzky (book store, where Sima bought a dictionary because we both forgot the Hebrew word for mushrooms), a shoe store with some truly hideous shoes and a candy store. Then back to HaGoshrim - kids to watch tv and Mike to work.

That's it for tonight/today - laila tov!

First Entry

2007-06-12T12:27:00.001-07:00

We have no idea if this will work, but it is worth a try. If this works, we will post again.

Mike and Sima