Grandparental Reunion and Exploring Israel

Neither Melissa nor I have written for a while and the throngs have been demanding the next installment. Ok, we received one email from someone who derisively accused us of being too lazy to write. I think that there a few reasons that we have not written for a while. First, quite frankly, we have been somewhat busy. Second, it’s been more complicated for us to distill the essence of our Israel experience. After four and half months of traveling in places where no one would mistake us for locals (shocking, I know), now we’re frequently stopped and asked for directions. This is both good and bad. On the one hand, it’s nice to not feel like an outsider. Indeed, at the risk of sounding parochial, as a Jew, Israel is perhaps one of the few places where I feel an insider. On the other hand, once the actual locals hear my 3rd grade Hebrew (and that’s an insult to third graders), there’s no confusing my status. More importantly, though a Jew, as diaspora Jews, we are very much outsiders by our failure to contribute to the creation and protection of the state. Thus for us, or at least for me, in Israel, paradoxically, I feel both at home and like a foreigner. This schizophrenic state has created some degree of writer’s block in me, and I think Melissa, as well. That’s my justification and I’m sticking with it.

About a week after we arrived in Israel, my parents flew in to spend a week with us. We were all excited to see my parents after 5 months of traveling. It was a wonderful reunion followed by some great sightseeing around Israel. First, we hung out in Jerusalem. Ever since I lived here 20 years ago, I have loved Jerusalem. It’s truly a magical place. You feel the weight of history as you walk through the city. Indeed, the weight is sometimes oppressive, but mostly, I find it enthralling. You need only kick a stone to uncover some great archaeological find. However, once you do so, you will be attacked by various interest groups, whether crazy religious Jews, fanatical Christians or zealous Arabs attempting to prevent you from further digging. This is a microcosm of life in Jerusalem. It brings together three of the world’s major religions in a demented ménage a trois. Sometimes it’s exhilarating but mostly no one knows what they hell they should be doing.

On our first full day together, we visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum. The name, Yad Vashem, comes from a passage in Isaiah, in which Gods promises to provide a “memorial and a name.” When I previously lived here, I visited it many times and each time I found it jarring and emotionally charged. I still retain vivid images of the pictures of children, whose bodies were lost to the Holocaust, but whose spirit is preserved at the museum. Several years ago, the museum was rebuilt. When I was originally there, the building was simple but the experience was intense. While, objectively speaking, the new museum is visually stunning, I was somewhat taken aback by the slickness of the structure. It’s a highly stylized and admittedly well thought-out building, but in some ways, the building, in my mind, distracts from the exhibits and the meaning of the exhibits. Though, I’m sure that many would disagree with me. Nonetheless, the power of the museum is huge and sharing the experience with my wife, children and parents was moving. As you walk through the museum, you are on a path that takes you from the early days of seeming happiness in pre-Nazi Germany, through the initial phases of terror and deportation, to the attempted implementation of the “Final Solution” to the birth of the State of Israel. As you walk through the museum it’s impossible to not feel anger, despair, horror and then, finally, pride at the birth of Israel against such extraordinary odds and coming off one of the greatest tragedies confronted by humanity.

Before we left Jerusalem to travel with my folks, Melissa came up with the stellar idea of going to the Kotel (the Western Wall) at 4:00 am for Shavuot. A brief word about the Wall: It’s essentially the sole remaining part of the Second Temple which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. It’s not a wall of the actual temple, but part of the retaining wall that surrounded the Temple. It’s considered the holiest site in Judaism. However, over the Wall is the Dome of the Rock which is considered by Muslims to be the third holiest site of Islam, and parenthetically, where Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac. In any event, Shavuot celebrates the day that God gave Moses the Torah. You’re supposed to pray all night until dawn, ostensibly the time of delivery of the Torah by God. So at 3:30 am, we got up and walked, first to the Conservative Yeshiva, where we met up with friend and future Rabbi, Scott Perlo, and then headed to the Kotel. The walk was amazing, as the dark streets were filled with Jews descending on the Old City. When we got there, we went to a special area of the Kotel, where men and women are permitted to pray together. As I’m not the best pray-er, I decided to head to the main area of the Kotel with Maya. It was spectacularly frenetic. The sun had started to rise and the sky was huge and brilliantly lit up and people were praying feverishly. I felt as if I had been returned to the time of 50 AD. Oddly (or maybe not?), among the thousands of Jews, we ran into the lovely Tali Stolzenberg-Myers, which was a pleasant surprise. Maya and I then headed back to Melissa and Emma, where we found Melissa deep in prayer and Emma whining about how tired she was. I joined Emma in whining. Though, while I would not repeat the excursion, it was certainly an interesting experience.

The next day we started two days of touring around Israel. My dad decided to hire a guide. When we met our guide, Meir, Melissa and I were initially a bit concerned. At the risk of sounding ageist, he looked as if he were 100 years old. However, he ended up being wonderful, in a grandfatherly way, albeit partially deaf and slightly forgetful. We started the day with a drive to Beit Shean, which is an amazing architectural site from the Roman period that was discovered only 20 years ago. As I said, all you need to do is kick some dirt to discover major ruins. The Cardo was so complete that it really made you feel as if you were transported back to Roman times. I felt that I wanted to try my hand at being a gladiator. I’m sure that I would have fared quite well as a gladiator.



Next, we saw Maimonides’ tomb. Quite frankly, and perhaps sacrilegiously, I’m not altogether into tombs and I’m more moved by Israel’s fallen military and political leaders. However, I guess it was a nice tomb, as tombs go.

From there, we went to our lodging for the next two nights, which was on a beautiful kibbutz on Lake Kinneret, known also as the Galilee. This kibbutz’s claim to fame is a fairly astonishing archeological discovery. A few years back some fishermen discovered an ancient boat in use at around the time of Christ. What’s most interesting is the different marketing approaches that the Kibbutz uses to attract visitors. For the Jews, it’s an ancient Jewish fishing boat, perhaps the remnants of a boat used at the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt. For the Christians, it may actually have been Jesus’ fishing boat. This brings us to another interesting fact about Israel; that, currently, a huge amount of tourism comes from Christian Evangelicals. Quite frankly, it makes me a bit uneasy in that I just don’t know where they stand. My understanding is that they see control of Israel by the Jews as the precondition to the final apocalyptic event, but I don’t think that the Jews come out of their apocalypse all that well.


The next day we visited the beautiful and ancient city of Tzfat. From there we went on the obligatory and moving tour of the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights was the setting of some of the most vicious fighting of the 6 Day War in 1967. The 6 Day War was the war that was supposed to finally push the Jews into the ocean. Instead, Israel obtained a military victory that was unprecedented, in the modern era, for its speed and scope. There has been much talk of the 6 Day War, as it is currently the 40th anniversary of the war. The legacy is complicated. On the one hand, it firmly established that Israel was a strong and self-sufficient country that was not going to quietly into the night and, for both better and worse, reunited the holy city of Jerusalem. On the other hand, the land that it captured, in particular the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, threaten Israel’s status as a democracy and pose thorny obstacles in its quest for peace. However, when you visit the Golan it’s impossible to not marvel at the victory against Syria, given the huge strategic advantages enjoyed by Syria. The Golan is sprinkled with various monuments to fallen Israeli soldiers. I felt both proud over the accomplishment and great sadness over all of the bloodshed. From there we went out for Chinese food, one of the few restaurants in Tiberias that is open on Shabbat.

The next day was more ruins: Acco and Caesaria, both of which are spectacular archeological sites. We had a wonderful day.




Finally, we ended up in Tel Aviv. Our final night in Tel Aviv was quite special and I’m about to name-drop, so take note. We had dinner with Ada Karmi Melamede. Ada, who I’ve known for about 20 years, is the mother of one of my closest friends. She recently won the Israel Prize for architecture, which is the equivalent of the Israeli Nobel Prize. Her work includes the Israeli Supreme Court, which, with her brother, she designed both the exterior and the interior. It’s a stunning structure. For more about her work, click here. Her family is the first in Israeli history to have three members win the Israel Prize, her father (who was the first recipient of the Israel Prize for architecture) and her brother also won the Israel Prize for architecture. We thoroughly enjoyed dinner with her, as her perspectives on Israel, architecture and everything else are honest, interesting and thought-provoking.

After dinner, we said a tearful goodbye to my parents, who were leaving at the crack of dawn the next day. It was great seeing them and enjoying the wonders of Israel with them.