Jerusalem...and Beyond

Hello everyone -- we are back from the yearly Israeli ritual of "tiulim" (going traveling) during the week of Sukkot. Since the entire country functions at a very minimal level from Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah (three weeks) and there are major Jewish holidays at least twice a week, it's been frustrating on many levels: the kids are out of school and in school and out of school and in school, the parents are watching kids and not and watching and not, and everybody is a bit tired of the lack of schedule. We also quickly exhausted our children's playmates during this time, and our list of friends as well. That said, we decided to rent a car and go on "tiulim" for the first 7 days of Sukkot.

Firstly, I have to give many thanks to Hotel Kirschen, our friends' home in Ra'anana, where our friends graciously let us stay while they were away visiting family in the States. The Hotel provided all the usual amenities, with little "extras" like toys, English books and CABLE TV. Wow! We spent three days based in Ra'anana, which is 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv. We spent the first day of Sukkot with my college friend Ilene and her lovely family. Silvie and Mim loved playing with their youngest daughter who is five years old.

The second day, we met Aaron's cousin Nechama for lunch in Herzliya (one town south of Ra'anana) for lunch, and then took a relaxing walk on the beach (photo below.)


I also had the pleasure of showing Aaron and the kids my new favorite place, the boardwalk in Tel Aviv! We met Aaron's family friend Hadas there, and we enjoyed a really neat two-person trapeze performance on the boardwalk at sunset.



On day three, we left Ra'anana and headed towards Caesaria, the Roman port city built by King Herod.

Here is where I pause and say that we ate at one of the most unique sites in Israel: the Sushi joint IN the GAS STATION. (See photo below.) Rumor had it that this was the best sushi place in all of Israel, so we had to stop. It was decent sushi, but we were so spoiled by having had the second best sushi in NYC, that no sushi will ever taste as good to us.


We saw cool horse racing and chariot reenactments in the Hippodrome at Caesaria, and had a great time climbing around the ruins, enjoying the fantastic view of the Mediterranean, and learning about King Herod's amazing technological feat of literally creating a protected port from just a regular coastline in the first century C.E..




As the sun slowly set over the sea, we made our way slowly towards the exit. There are three entrances to the ruins, and we had parked right next to one of them. Though we had finished our explorations near a different one, we decided to find our way back to the first gate through the ruins. Needless to say, the sun set quicker than we thought and we soon found ourselves walking through ruins along a rough path in near darkness. Aaron found this thrilling, Debra found it scary. (Her night vision is not so good.) After climbing over the remains of a two thousand year old wall, we finally got out of the ruins near the gate we had entered only to find that the gate there was locked! Debra had noticed the sign earlier that said the gate was locked at 4 pm, but Aaron assumed that it didn't apply during this incredibly busy holiday week. Aaron was wrong! (We later found out that there was another gate just beside the locked one that had a turnstile we could have exited through, but it was too dark for us to notice it.)

We walked back a different route along the beach, which was quite beautiful, and out the entrance we had been at 35 minutes earlier. A quick walk across a darkened parking lot and we were safely back to our rental car. Off we went to Haifa, only to get lost again on the way!

We turned in the direction of the highway, and suddenly things looked not quite right. We saw an older man on the side of the road checking his mailbox and we stopped to ask directions. As we rolled down the window, we realized that he was probably pushing 90 and probably hadn't driven anytime recently, but we asked anyway. He screwed up his eyes and said, in typical Israeli fashion, straight, straight, straight, and take a left. We drove through a neighborhood to the end of a road, took a left, and immediately drove underneath the highway we wanted to be on! That's right, there was no on-ramp there. So we took the next left on the surface roads and arrived in Haifa 45 minutes later than we should have. Word of advice to all: only get directions from people who drive!

We spent three nights and two days in Haifa with friends of Aaron's parents, and it was a lovely, relaxing Shabbat. Haifa, btw, is Debra's new second favorite city. Why? It is CLEAN, has a GORGEOUS VIEW of the Mediterranean, beautiful beaches, flowers, and is built gracefully into the hills above the sea. There is a good mix of religious with non-religious such that there is not the overpowering religiosity of Jerusalem. And there are TWO Reform shuls in Haifa. I could live there. It's so NOT Jerusalem!

We went to the beach on Friday and had a great time. The waves were pretty strong, so we didn't spend a long time there, but we had a lot of fun. We built sand sculptures, and Silvie played in the water a lot. We also learned and bore witness to the important Israeli maxim: no matter what your body looks like, or how out of shape you are, it's ok to wear a bikini (or a skimpy speedo for the guys). We don't have pictures but you can use your imagination!









Saturday we hung out, went to the local park and playground twice, and had many, many meals in the Sukkah.





We left Sunday morning for Naot Kedumim, a really neat nature reserve outside of Jerusalem. I'll write about that in a separate post.

Last night, we danced with the Torah at shul for Simchat Torah, and today we enjoyed a lovely meal with our cousins Danny and Suzanne (and their kids).

Tomorrow Miriam goes back to Gan, Aaron has some clients, and Silvia has a few playdates. In the mid-day, we have an appointment with the absorption ministry (Immigration) to continue our immigration journey- wish us luck! Bureaucracy and playgrounds, it's nice to get back to our routine! ;-)

(this post written by both of us)