INTRODUCTION

To begin with the punch line: we had a fantastic time in this most amazing country and are already talking about going back. Israel is a fabulous destination for any tourist; it is a unique place for any Jew. While we were there we felt no fear. We walked through crowded markets and on streets late at night. We ate in restaurants and outdoor cafes. Security was tight, of course, but not much worse than in Washington these days. And while we were there, violence was further away than it is at home where youngsters were killing and maiming each other in Anacostia and Herndon.

Since we arrived back, however, the troublesome Gaza incursion has been making headlines, adding to the complexity and sadness of the Israel equation. Which is a neat segue into our most global impression. With the exception of the Haredi—the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in their dichromatic uniform—we found little in Israel that is black and white. It is a place of shades of gray (politically, philosophically) and of vibrant colors (physically), of subtle distinctions but also sharp contrasts. Israel is a nation of nuance. Every problem is thornier, every issue more complicated, intricate, convoluted than it appears from this side of the Atlantic. Along side these subtleties are stark contrasts: high-tech secular sophistication and third-world fundamentalism; compassion and anger; hope and resignation. And always the brilliant colors. Azure Mediterranean sky sets off the golden Jerusalem stone. Luscious green produce pairs with vivid red tomatoes. Flowers of every hue are all over, but so are the olive-clad soldiers.

Perhaps the most profound contrast that we witnessed—actually participated in—was the juxtaposition of Yom HaZicaron (Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers) on Monday, April 26, and Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day) on Tuesday, April 27, and the split-second transition from the sadness of one to the joy of the other. Yom HaZicaron began at 8 pm on Sunday, with the mournful sounding of a minor-key siren (not the high-pitched shriek Shelley had expected). We had gathered on a busy intersection in downtown Jerusalem. With the first note of the siren, everything came to a halt. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks. Traffic froze. People got out of cars and buses to stand silently. After a minute, the siren wail ended. Cars and buses started up. Pedestrians resumed their walk. Life continued. A second siren sounded at 11 am on Monday. We were attending an assembly for Kindergarten through High School students in a school gym. Birds had flown in the open doors and were sitting high in the rafters, chirping. During the siren, all was silent except for the birds. Shelley found their song comforting, a note of hope. Each grade participated in the assembly. One high school girl began to read her piece, but was overcome with weeping. She ran from the room, followed by two friends who consoled her. They made a touching tableau that we all could see through the gym door. The death of soldiers is not an abstraction here. It is very real and close and personal. These youngsters were about to graduate, go into the army and off to war.

Promptly at 8 pm, Memorial Day ended and Independence Day began. The switch was immediate. We walked to Ben Yehuda Street, the pedestrian mall in the center of new Jerusalem. It felt like a family version of New Orleans at Mardi Gras or Times Square on New Year’s Eve— except, perhaps, for the security guards screening people entering the festivities. Young people, families, elderly couples strolled by as the crowds grew larger. Kiosks sold food. Vendors offered flags and buttons that sparkled. A rock band played on a stage at the intersection with Jaffo St. (no horas here). [see pictures] A 20-foot Elvis puppet operated by four young men crooned about his blue suede shoes. Stilt walkers in bright get up clumped around the street. Drummers beat out rhythms and performers danced. Children ran around spraying each other (and a few adults) with string foam (a Yom HaAtzmaut tradition in Jerusalem). Crowds grew. Excitement mounted. Joy. Energy. Laughter. Release. The Holy City of Jerusalem relaxed, kicked back and let off steam in a most secular manner.

THE MISSION

There were 28 of us on the mission, 22 congregants, the five Zemels and Louise’s sister Julie from Australia. The official trip was 10 days long—from arrival in Jerusalem on Thursday, April 22 to departure late on Saturday, May 1—but Ed and Shelley spent three extra days in Haifa and Tel Aviv at the end of the tour. We spent most nights in Jerusalem at the Dan Panorama Hotel, centrally located with all modern conveniences and an extensive, lavish breakfast buffet complete with Israel’s signature breakfast salads. We also traveled south to Masada and the Dead Sea, east to Rishon LeZion, and north to the Galilee and the Golan Heights.

This was the second Temple Micah mission to Israel in two years. Shelley had participated in the first mission 18 months ago, which served as an excellent companion piece to this tour. The earlier trip was a fact-finding mission centered around new Jerusalem and dominated by lectures and interviews with politicians, journalists, academics. This trip was much more personal, experiential. We toured holy sites, historical monuments and archaeological excavations. We got out and saw a school, two Reform synagogues, an ulpan, a kibbutz, an army base, a Druze village. We had a backyard barbeque on a moshav. We walked on the streets, shopped in the malls and souk, ate at falafel stands, talked to average Israelis, observed daily life being lived.

We had an excellent guide, Richard Eisenberg, an American from California who made Alyah over 20 years ago. He was knowledgeable, articulate, funny with just the right amount of irreverence. He understood the limits of group endurance and paced the tour accordingly—with lots of bathroom stops and opportunities to support the Israeli economy through shopping. And we found that we all enjoyed each other’s company, sharing the fun and jokes, crying together, accommodating the inevitable idiosyncrasies. We’ve always known that Temple Micah is a great community—this was just one more illustration of that fact.

CHANGES

My, how Israel has changed! Shelley saw many differences (mostly intangible) just in the 18 months since the previous mission. Ed, who hadn’t been to Israel for more than 20 years, was amazed at the physical and economic transformation.

Modernization. What Ed found most striking was how modern Israel has become in the last two decades. By any standard, it is now firmly ensconced in the first world. Cell phones are ubiquitous—and just as annoying as in the US—as are Internet connections. Shopping malls compare favorably with Tysons Corner. There is even an IKEA (located on a kibbutz—which tells you something about changes in kibbutism). High speed trains link Tel Aviv and Haifa and superhighways stretch in all directions. Tolls on a new highway—Highway 6, which had just opened before we arrived—that runs north and south are collected electronically. And just like the U.S. or Europe, the increase in cars on the road outpaces highway construction. Traffic jams are endemic. Construction cranes are everywhere and much of the new architecture is stunning. We visited a reform synagogue in Modiin, a new metropolis still under construction between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It has more than 30,000 residents now, but is expected to house more than 100,000 when completed. Moshe Safdie planned the overall city but five Israeli architects were brought in to design different neighborhoods. We didn’t get much of a chance to see the city, but what we saw was nicely done. One negative by product of living in a planned community: Modiin doesn’t have a movie theater yet because the neighborhood intended to house it has not yet been developed. (If Modiin sounds familiar, that was the Maccabbee stronghold in the Hanukah story and, yes, they’ve found some ruins from the appropriate period, 165 bce.)

Globalization. One proof that Israel is really part of Europe (even though some Europeans might like to deny it): while we were there Israel hosted the “Final Four” for the European basketball championship. And Israel won, beating Russia in the semifinal and blowing out Bologna in the final!! (To be expected: the stars of most of the teams were African-Americans.)

As another illustration of globalization, we were struck by the use of transliterations into Hebrew letters of (mostly American) terms, labels and logos. Some places referred to the center as Merkaz, but other places just used the Hebrew transliteration (without vowels): C-n-t-r. At a De-li K-re-m (yes, that was the name of the shop), Shelley laboriously sounded out F-r-o-z-n Yo-g-ur-t as well as, schizophrenically, Pri (fruit) Sh-e-k (Shake).

Small scale. In a time of globalization with its ease and speed of travel, it is impossible to ignore the incredible compactness of Israel—at least above the Negev, where the people are. From Radar Hill, a promontory on the road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from which Jordan had shelled Jerusalem at the beginning of the 6-day war, you can glimpse the Mediterranean and the office towers of Tel Aviv, the outskirts of Jerusalem, as well as looking into Ramallah and the West Bank and (we are told) on a clear day the outskirts of Amman. From the Golan Heights, most of Northern Israel is visible. One looks down from suburbs of Jerusalem like Gilo into West Bank towns (and the residents of those towns, in turn, look and sometimes shoot up). To Ed, the pre-1967 border seemed like some arbitrary idea of urban planning—like the string foam randomly sprayed onto store windows on Yom Ha-atzmaut. A superhighway has a concrete wall adjoining it not to protect the neighbors from the highway noise, but to protect the vehicle occupants from snipers.

Environment. Noise and other forms of pollution have also become an issue. Like other industrialized countries, Israel has begun to be concerned about protecting the environment. New highways we drove on were designed to minimize environmental impact. There were beautiful nature preserves that we visited, like the Dan River Preserve. Some of the negative actions taken by the early kibbutzniks in their zeal to drain swamps are being reversed to provide for the renewal of wetlands as bird sanctuaries in their migration between Africa and Europe. In at least one respect, of course, Israel has always been environmentally attuned by planting trees (which the group, minus Ed and Shelley that day, did). Indeed, the Green Line, the pre-1967 demarcation is really green. When viewed from afar, there is a sharp distinction between the trees on one side and the arid scrub on the other.

End of an Era. With entry into the capitalist west, a keystone of Israel’s socialist past—the kibbutz way of life—is on the way out. This has been happening gradually over several decades. We spent two nights on Kfar Blum, a kibbutz in the Galilee a five-minute walk from the Jordan River that was started 60 years ago. Judy Kreiden, who arrived at the Kibbutz 20 years or so ago from Milwaukee, described the changes. Originally, kibbutz houses consisted of a simple room. No running water, no kitchen. Children lived together in the children’s houses. They were the first thing to go. Then communal dining. Now Kibbutz houses are updated complete two-bedroom homes, with a government installed bomb shelter adjoining each unit. In the final blow to classic kibbutz socialism, Kfar Blum is in the process of privatizing this housing of its members. This was motivated particularly by the fear that a kibbutz (which is really a communal enterprise) might go bankrupt with the real possibility that elderly kibbutz members would be displaced from homes they had sweated to build and improve all their lives.

Unlike some kibbutzim that have divested themselves of agricultural interests, Kfar Blum still raises chickens and cows—but it is all mechanized and requires the work just of a few older members who manage the undertaking. The economic mainstay of the kibbutz is industry (a factory that makes computerized irrigation control systems) and the resort (which featured rafting trips on the Jordan River, less than a 10 minute walk from our rooms) on which we stayed—managed by kibbutz members but operated by hired workers. It also has a regional school with an emphasis on musical education—they hold an annual chamber music retreat every summer that attracts people from all over Israel. Kreiden explained that kibbutz members aged 28 to 50 have left because there are no good jobs there. “We are missing a generation,” she said.

Intangible changes. The changes that Shelley noticed most in the 18 months since the previous mission were more atmospheric. One dramatic difference was the pickup in tourism. It still is nowhere near the level of pre-Intifada days, but it is making a rebound. Several buses were parked outside our hotel as group after group flowed in (including a large Christian group from Texas). Israeli tourism relies heavily on Christian groups—often from Europe—these days, we were told. In Safed, five buses had to maneuver around each other (although one tour guide said pre-Intifada there would have been 30). Museums in Jerusalem were busier (although not in Tel Aviv—the wonderful Diaspora Museum was practically deserted). A colleague of our tour guide—hostess of our Yom HaAtzmaut barbeque—told how her firm once employed 30 staff. Just about all were laid off as a result of the Intifada. Now they are beginning to hire them back.

Indeed, the whole economy has turned a corner. Tourism, while important, is not the dominant factor in the economy. The bursting of the high tech bubble was even more devastating than tourism. The CEO of an investment company—the son of an old family friend of Ed’s—told us that things had begun to hum again, at least in industries other than tourism. Israeli exports were picking up; foreign businesses were sending executives to meetings here again. But, as in the US, unemployment and underemployment—particularly in the “rural” areas—was still a significant problem, especially among younger people.

The most dramatic difference in 18 months, however, was the attitude of Israelis. In October 2002, a pall hung over the country. People went about their business, but with one eye glancing over their shoulder. Society was scared. Everyone seemed nervous and tense. Shelley expected the same this time, but the general attitude was very different. Everyone seemed much more relaxed, confident. There was a greater nonchalance in people’s strides. Security was quite visible—but almost more pro forma. No one seemed to be anticipating the next bomb explosion; or, if they were, they were going about their daily chores and taking the risk in stride.

Ironically, this short-term ease has come at the expense of long-term optimism. Eighteen months ago, with several peace proposals (such as the so-called Geneva Accords) in the works, people envisioned peace if not soon, at least not too far off. Now, no one we spoke to expected peace or even a settlement in their lifetimes. A wood artist we spoke to, Eli Avisera, expressed the hope that peace may be possible, not in the lifetime of his teenage children, but perhaps of their children. Previously, it was peace in 5 years; now it is peace in 35 years—maybe.

LIVING WITH THE SITUATION

The situation—as we came to call Israel under the Intifada—has affected everyone. Avisera pointed down the street from his house in a Jerusalem suburb and described how a bus blew up “40 meters away.” Evan, the youthful cantor at Har-El, and the congregation’s youth director,  mentioned the suicide bombing on the Number 4 bus, which they each take to get to Har-El. They still take the bus—it is the most efficient and economical way to get around. But they never take it without thinking of the one that exploded. Similarly, Evan said that he and his wife continue to shop at the central food market in Jerusalem, Machaneh Yehuda, but they go very early in the morning, when it is less crowded and, therefore, less likely to become a target.

Rabbi Rachel Sabbath, who grew up in Danny’s first congregation in Minneapolis and made aliyah in the 1990s, spoke to us of the anxiety of raising children in Israel. Her child is still an infant, but she already worries about military service. She admitted that she was glad she had a baby girl because it would reduce her anxiety about military service 18 years from now. “One of my friends says you can’t live here without a healthy sense of denial,” she said. However, one of the joys of living in Israel, she said, is the forthrightness of the society. “Most debate is on the surface. It’s visceral,” she said. And a major debate within Israeli society now is whether all the battles that Israeli soldiers have fought and died in have been necessary, whether some of the Fallen Soldiers mourned on Yom HaZicaron didn’t need to die, particularly in Lebanon—seen by some as Israel’s Vietnam. “There’s a big split. People are asking: Do we need to stay in those places? How can we get out?” she said. “The health of the country is its ability to engage in this discussion.”

Eli Avisera, the wood artist, said he was actually ready to leave the country for Australia—he had actually obtained a visa—not so much because of the violence but because there are very few world class wood artists in Israel and no market for his pieces. Australia has a thriving wood turning community and large market. But his 19-year-old daughter refused to leave. She wanted to stay to do her military service in the Air Force—which, because it is specialized, will require a year of university training before she begins her two-year stint. So the family is staying.

Adam Yakin, the 30-something son of artists Abraham and Hannah Yakin—members of Har-El who hosted six of us for Shabbat dinner—had to change his career because of the Intifada. He had been an actor and producer involved in children’s street theater [with contracts for several hundred performances]. He had spent more than a year developing a new performance and contracted with almost 100 sites to stage it around the country when the Intifada broke out. Because the performances would have required substantially upgraded security, almost all of the performances were cancelled. An entire year of his life and financial investment was wasted. Unable to find acting work, Adam worked on stage construction and opened a gardening business. But he was also affected in a different way. He saw the society growing further and further apart, the hatred and negativity being instilled in children in school. So he got involved with a very special school, Yad be Yad (Hand in Hand), for Israeli Arab and Jewish children that is dedicated to equality and fostering understanding and mutual respect for each other’s cultures and traditions. Each class has both Arab and Jewish students and is taught by an Arab and a Jewish teacher; they observe each other’s holidays. The idea is catching on, he said. It started in 1997 with a single kindergarten class in Jerusalem and first grade class in the Galilee. Those schools now go through junior high and they are scheduled to open their third school in the fall.

Others also mentioned the increasing divisiveness resulting from the Intifada. Indeed, the society which has always been riven psychologically is now divided physically. A Palestinian named Joseph had worked for 14 years for Avisera’s furniture-making business and had helped him build his house. But Joseph lives in the West Bank and can no longer get into Jerusalem. Avisera worries that his children, who had treated Joseph as a close relative, have forgotten their friend and now express prejudice and hatred for all Palestinians. We heard other stories of trusted Palestinian colleagues and employees who were cut off from their jobs and friends because they could no longer cross into Jerusalem. Indeed, someone noted that you’ll know that the Intifada is over when you begin to see the return of Palestinian gardeners and other household workers. Even though business had been picking up in new Jerusalem, in the Old City the Christian quarter was still suffering and only was seeing a glimmer of hope—which could be shattered by the next terrorist bombing. Some told us that the Christians have been leaving the old city of Jerusalem and even Nazareth.

Soldiers. Except for a tiny minority of yeshiva students, every 18-year-old goes into the army after high school—three years for men, two for women. The army is a major education and socialization tool of the government. So, no surprise, everywhere we went we saw youthful soldiers, young men and women, with their machine gun slung casually over their shoulder. They all looked like what they were—normal teenagers and young-20s. In pairs and trios, walking along the street or in the mall, chatting amiably. Sitting on the floor in the train station, talking excitedly into a cell phone. Making a date for when she finally got home that evening? Lounging or sleeping on the train, reading a novel. Staring out into space. Eating a sandwich. Even the tank commander who escorted us around the Army Base we visited was in his 20s, a slim, almost fragile looking young man. Not quite the fierce grim image we see staring out of The Washington Post/New York Times.

Pragmatism. We visited a group called Zaka, a Hebrew acronym for search and rescue. Formed in 1989 in response to a terrorist attack as an Orthodox effort to recover human remains for burial, it has become an integral and volunteer part of Israel’s first response to accidents and catastrophes of all sorts. Indeed, it has evolved into a unit that often saves lives by getting to the scene first on motorcycles and administering first aid. In 2001, a Zaka volunteer who had a pizza business and used motorcycles to deliver hot pizza, suggested a Zaka motorcycle corps to get through heavy traffic on the way to the scene of an accident or disaster. A spokesman told us that most Zaka responses are to car accidents not terrorist attacks. And, it has helped rescue victims of natural disasters (such as earthquakes) throughout the world, including in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority requested its services (and rewarded Zaka with two camels, which were given to its desert rescue unit).

POLITICS

We didn’t talk a lot about politics, even though while we were there the Likud Party held a referendum on Sharon’s proposal to leave Gaza. Most people we asked were in favor of the move. Several said it wasn’t enough, but at least it was a start. However, Carol, a transplanted Long Islander who is a tour guide and was the co-hostess of our Yom HaAtzmaut barbeque, opposed the move—not because she favored settlements, she said,  but because the Gaza settlers had lived there for so long, had established homes and roots, and she thought it terrible to make them leave their homes. Interestingly, her sister-in-law, a sabra in whose backyard we were sitting, favored the referendum and, indeed, favored leaving all the territories. It seemed as if the settler forces went to extraordinary lengths to defeat the referendum, which went down by a 60-40 percent margin in the face of polls that showed that 70 percent of the entire electorate favored the referendum. Everywhere we went were banners in effect calling anyone who opposed the settlements a traitor. On Yom HaAtzmaut, 75,000 people—which is a huge number in a country of only 6 million people (in the US this would be like 2 million plus going to a rally) went to Gaza to show solidarity. The traffic jam was so great that an Israeli government minister missed the rally, as did many Israelis traveling to parks for BBQs on that day. And on the day of the balloting (May 2), people were stationed at traffic lights passing out anti-referendum literature.

We didn’t go to any Palestinian enclaves on the West Bank, although Ramallah, Nablus and other major West Bank cities often seemed to be just a stone’s throw away. On the Golan Heights, we stopped at Qatzrin, the site of ancient Gamla, and saw a movie about the battle of Gamla in 67 CE in which Romans destroyed the city. In an obvious political statement, the movie ended by echoing the Masada vow that Gamla will not fall again (this time, presumably, through negotiations to give back the Golan Heights to Syria.)

Whatever people thought of the disposition of Gaza or the Golan Heights, most of the people we talked to believed that the West Bank territory around Jerusalem will never be given back for strategic reasons and because it has been totally integrated into Israel. Not so Yehuda, Ed’s old family friend, a leader of the Palmach, who believes the only hope for peace lies in returning all of the territory captured in 1967. Not even considering the political divisiveness of such a move, the logistic and strategic consequences would be extreme. Israel is a very, very small country. At Kfar Blum, we were closer to Beirut and Damascus than we were to Jerusalem. As the view from Radar Hill made vividly, chillingly clear, Israel is a very tiny place. The politics of water is also rooted in this geography. The Sea of Galilee represents the watershed for Israel. It is dependent on water flowing from the Golan Heights and Lebanon. Cut off the sources and you cut off the livelihood of the nation. Think “LA”.

RELIGION

Like everything else in Israel, the issue of religion is complicated, subtle and confusing. And that’s just within Judaism. The politically powerful Orthodox continue to run the show—Orthodox Rabbis perform all weddings and funerals while Conservative and Reform Rabbis aren’t recognized; Orthodox schools get government funding, Conservative and Reform schools rarely do. Even so, the dominant religion continues to be Secularism. Yom Kippur is known as National Biking Day. Because there are virtually no cars on the road (the Orthodox Rabbis have seen to that), entire families take advantage of the clear streets to go biking (and not to synagogue). Jerusalem takes Shabbat very seriously. Just about everything is closed. The streets are empty (although you can get a taxi, probably driven by an Israeli Arab). But when night falls, the city is transformed. Restaurants and shops open, young people flood Ben Yehuda Street, and the city starts to party.  We walked back to the hotel at 1 am and downtown was jumping.

Indeed, the joke has been that the synagogue you don’t go to is Orthodox. With the very visible increase in the Haredi (ultra-orthodox Jews, identified as “black hats”) in Jerusalem, in particular, but elsewhere as well, there has been the fear that fundamentalism could overtake liberal democracy. That may be. But we also witnessed the beginning of what could be another trend—the advance of the Reform and Conservative Movements. Both remain tiny minorities, but they are growing and beginning to attract native Israelis. One poll showed that for as many as one-third of the respondents, the synagogue they didn’t go to was Reform! The HUC program for Israeli rabbinical candidates is expanding and many of the candidates are women. Reform congregations are opening up all over the country.

Our first Friday evening, we went to Modiin, the new planned city, to Kehilat Yozma. As a new city, Modiin has a very large population of young families. So, Yozma (Initiative) started not with a synagogue but a pre-school. It was founded in 1997 by Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon, Israel’s first female Rabbi, a dynamic American who made aliyah long ago. The service was lively and highly participatory. Little children were everywhere, but also a few older adults.

Har-El, the Reform Jerusalem synagogue with which Temple Micah has an ongoing relationship, is attracting new members in the age-old way—through bar mitzvah. Evan, the cantor who prepares youngsters for b’nai mitzvah (bat mitzvah, which takes place at age 12, is still quite rare in Israel) said he is lucky to have six months to prepare a boy, more often only three or four months. But once drawn in, some of the kids stay to get involved in the very active youth group and their families join in the life of the congregation.

Despite small inroads of Reform and Conservative, the religious fault line in Israeli society runs between Orthodoxy (not necessarily Haredi) and Secularism. A distinguishing divide seems to be between people who will drive on Shabbat and those who won’t. This is often not a friendly or tolerant divide. There is mutual hostility and animosity. One effort at bridging the gap was the school we visited on Yom HaZicaron (Memorial Day). Called Keshet (Rainbow), the integrated K-12 school is divided evenly between Orthodox and Secular students and teachers. The school is growing, but remains a fragile experiment.

A GREAT PLACE TO VISIT

Notwithstanding the complexities, gray areas, ambiguities and outright conflicts, we discovered Israel to be a great place to visit. For anyone. For any reason. Just about everyone speaks English. The weather is mild. The hotels are modern. The costs are not prohibitive. The food is plentiful and delicious (while still being healthfully dominated by salads, vegetables and grilled meats and fish). It offers some pretty decent local wines. It has a million things to do and see, yet is small and compact and easy to get around. When we were on our own, we took trains and taxis (and would have taken a bus if it had been convenient). Ed even drove the Shapiro-Dorfman’s rental car around Haifa and environs and found it to be a snap. But you do have to be careful to insist that taxi cab drivers turn on their meters (and then take the short route to your destination) or be able to negotiate a reasonable price to avoid getting ripped off.

Shelley loves archaeology and archaeological sites—beautifully preserved, accessibly presented—are, of course, everywhere. Ed, who is not that enthralled by very old things, was captivated by the Davidson Center’s virtual tour of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the extraordinary beauty of the mosaics in Zippori. While the country is ancient, it is also new. Only 56 years old. So many of us remember its entire history—and the monuments to that history bring alive what we studied in Sunday school and what we continue to read in the daily media.

Museums are everywhere and very well done. A land about the size of a large metropolitan area, Israel has the density and intensity of culture that you’d expect in a country 10 times its size. We visited the new Palmach Museum in Tel Aviv. The Palmach started in 1941 as an underground guerrilla group and was integrated into the army in 1948. Instead of the usual cases filled with artifacts, the museum tells the story of the Palmach by putting the visitor into the middle of it. A series of 13 connected rooms—actually stage sets—follows the lives (and deaths) of 10 Palmachniks during the 1940s by means of audio/visual presentations of black and white pictures of real people and events and Technicolor reenactments by actors. It is amazingly engrossing.

Israel has always had a lot of classic culture—music, dance, art, theater. With the influx of Russian immigrants, it now has even more. Rishon LeZion, a city not many Americans have even heard of, for example, has its own new performing arts center with a world class symphony orchestra. The Tel Aviv Museum of Fine Arts features an impressive collection of Impressionists. And the artists’ village of Ein Hod is itself a piece of modern art. Residents have to be juried in, just to live in this beautiful town not far from Haifa. Huge public sculptures are everywhere. Instead of fences and banisters, houses have wrought iron sculptures. The sides of houses are decorated with ceramic plaques and mosaics. And of course, the artists welcome you into their studios to see their work (and perhaps even buy it).

As Rabbi Zemel has said, Israel is VERY real. There is a dynamism and intensity that is palpable. It is a very young country. But, while in some ways it is still reacting to the severe birth pangs it went through in 1948, the founding generation of independence fighters is now dying off. The next generation—that exulted in the unsurpassed victory of the 1967 Six-Day war and then woke up to the sobering reality of the 1973 Yom Kippur war with its lack of preparation and tremendous casualties—is now in charge. Their children are now a generation of fun loving, cell phone talking, tight jeaned youth, who appear superficially just like the suburban kids in our synagogue. Israel at 56 is churning a melting pot of multiple generations of Jews from Russia, South America, South Africa, from other Mideastern countries, and even Europe.

Maybe you’ll read this to be an advertisement for the Israel Tourist Bureau. That’s not our intention, but so be it. Suffice it to say, Ed and Shelley had a good time in Israel. We’re really glad we went. We intend to go back. We hope that you will join us or go on your own. L’Shana Ha-ba-ah b’eretz yisrael—next year in the Land of Israel.