Between April 22 and May 5, 2004, we had a truly wonderful trip to Israel. We flew by Air Canada from Washington National, via Toronto, to Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv. We landed in late afternoon and switched to our tour bus for the ride up Route 1 to Jerusalem, the city on a hill – or, rather, many hills – whose buildings of tan Jerusalem stone were being washed by the last rays of the sun setting behind us. It was a gorgeous beginning.

Our American-born Israeli guide, Richard Eisenberg, was excellent.  For 11 days, Richard and Albert, our French-speaking driver, shepherded us and the 26 other members of Temple Micah (including Rabbi Dan Zemel, his wife Louise, and their three children).  For the last 3 days Suzanne and I went off by ourselves to Eilat and Tel Aviv.  But more of that later.

JERUSALEM, THE NEW CITY:  For most of the tour, Jerusalem was our home base.  We stayed in the Dan Panorama Hotel, one of several modern hotels in the New City, which stretches west and south of the walls of the Old City.  The hotel was just 100 yards or so from one of the prettiest and most prestigious neighborhoods in all of Jerusalem: Yemin Moshe, built in 1860 on a  hillside facing the Old City.  Yemin Moshe is named for its founder, Sir Moses (Moshe) Montefiore. 

Yemin Moshe’s connected two-story townhouses (occupied now by academics, artists, and jurists) are all built of Jerusalem stone along paved footpaths (cars are barred from the paths and alleyways); they have tiny wrought-iron balconies facing the Old City and are brightened by a profusion of gardens, window-boxes, planters, and hanging vines with riotous blooms of Prussian blue, Chinese red, and Royal purple.  We roamed through Yemin Moshe twice, on our free Saturday mornings, and it was absolutely lovely.

JERUSALEM, THE OLD CITY: With the group, and on our own, we criss-crossed the Old City three times, weaving through the souks of the neat-as-a-pin Christian Quarter and neighboring Armenian Quarter, the cluttered and dark Arab Quarter, and the re-built, lively, child-centered Jewish Quarter.  

Some highlights in the Old City: The Tower of David and its Museum, which combines archaeology and history through photography and dioramas to tell the dramatic tale of the founding and growth of Jerusalem from about 3,000 BCE (the Bronze Age) through 1967 CE; the subterranean ruins of an ancient Roman/Herodian “mansion”; the parade of priests in black robes and conical hats in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; the extraordinary new Davidson Center, next to the archeological sites by the south-west corner of the Temple Mount, which presents a computerized virtual tour of the Second Temple as it must have looked in its prime some 2,000 years ago; and the visits (through security gates) to the Second Temple’s remaining Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. 

MEMORIAL DAY IN ISRAEL:   Our group went to the Western Wall to observe the evening program for Israel’s Memorial Day, a day set aside to remember the several thousands of men and women who died fighting for a Jewish homeland, going back to 1921.  Their names are read all day long on Israeli radio. 

That evening’s memorial program was marred by yet another example of the Muslims’ religious fascism. As reported throughout the year, Muslim worshipers periodically leave the Mosque of Omar (the central, golden Dome of the Rock) and the Al Aksa mosque (at the southern end of the Temple Mount platform) and walk to the edge of the Western Wall, where they throw stones down onto the heads of Jews worshiping at the Wall below.  (The week we were there, the Israelis prohibited any Muslim under the age of 45 from attending either Mosque.) On Memorial Day Eve, however, the Al Aksa minaret loudspeaker – turned up to full volume – blared out the Muslims’ long evening prayers, effectively drowning out much of the Memorial Day program below.

On Memorial Day itself, Sunday, April 25, we went to Yad Vashem, the memorial park dedicated to the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  In addition to a museum and a children’s memorial, the park has a very moving “Valley of the Communities.”  This is an outdoor labyrinth of pathways lined with 20-25-foot walls constructed of Jerusalem stone. Carved into the stone are the names of hundreds of cities, towns, and villages that had once been home to the Jews of Germany, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, and elsewhere in Europe. It is an overwhelmingly sad experience to walk within these narrow memorial canyons and look up at the hundreds of names of lost communities of Jewish men, women, and children.

On Memorial Day we also visited the K- 12 Keshet School in Jerusalem to attend a memorial program written and performed by the students themselves.  The songs and the readings – poetry and prose – were in Hebrew; while we didn’t understand all the words, the emotions behind them were distinctly palpable. The children themselves were genuinely moved. In fact, the young woman who rose to read the last piece in the program got through just the first few words; then she dissolved into tears and slowly walked out of the gymnasium (where the program was held) and stood sobbing by herself outside.

ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY: The next day, April 26, was Israel Independence Day, when most public buildings are closed. We toured Ammunition Hill, a key Jordanian position in Jerusalem taken and held by the outgunned Israeli Army in 1967. We then went into the countryside for one of several visits among Israel’s network of 61 protected archaeological sites, nature preserves, and national parks, which are dotted throughout Israel proper and the West Bank.  We went into the Judean Hills and toured the ancient chalk and limestone mines (now enormous manmade caves burrowed into the hillsides) that yielded the building materials for centuries of settlers.

In the evening, some of the group went to a big outdoor celebration in Zion Square in the New City (fireworks, rock bands, stilt-walkers, etc.), while the rest of us were given tickets to a cabaret show in the Jerusalem Theater, a few blocks from the hotel.  Most of the cabaret songs, led by peppy guitarist-entertainers, were Israeli pop and rock tunes; but in the middle was Bob Dylan’s “City of New Orleans” in Hebrew! Entry to the theater, like entries to all restaurants, coffee shops, museums, etc., was through security, checking handbags and running an electronic wand up and down your legs.  Fortunately, Israelis, who have been in the homeland security business for quite a while, practice racial-ethnic-ageist-sexist profiling, so they tend to wave through a 74-year-old American tourist and his lovely blonde, blue-eyed companion.

INTO THE DESERT AND ONTO MASADA: On another day that week we left the hotel early and went east into the Judean Desert.   This is the West Bank and is an endless moonscape, dotted – miraculously – by occasional acres of green: fruits, vegetables, and flowers grown by Israel’s remarkable agronomists.  (Europe loves Israel’s fresh flowers and is its best customer.) Passing just south of Palestinian Jericho, we turned right and headed south for Masada. 

Masada is a 1,400-foot, flat-peaked mountain (we’d call it a mesa) about a mile from the western shore of the Dead Sea and, until this century, accessible only by a narrow and tortuously routed Snake Path.  Here King Herod built a mountaintop palace/retreat with a surrounding village between 40 and 4 BCE.

Seventy years later, in 66 CE, the Jews rose up against Rome in an unsuccessful revolt. A group of Jewish Zealots escaped through the Judean Desert and, joined by some Essenes, they captured Masada from the small Roman garrison stationed there.  Meanwhile, the new Roman Emperor, Titus, crushed the Jewish revolt, re-took Jerusalem, destroyed the Second Temple, and, in 72 CE, sent nearly 15 thousand of his legionnaires to wipe out the remaining one thousand Jewish Zealots dug in among the Herodian palaces and storehouses on the top of Masada.  After a siege of several months, the Roman army stormed Masada, breached the outer walls, and, instead of facing the remains of a desperate, ragged army, found the bodies of all the Zealots, killed by their own hand to escape the humiliation and slavery of certain Roman captivity.

Our tour group, on the other hand, stormed Masada by cable car and then strolled through the villas, palaces, storerooms, bathhouses, and fortifications, pausing now and then to look east to the Dead Sea and beyond to the Jordanian mountains on its eastern shore. Those are the Biblical mountains of Moab, where Moses, at the culmination of the Israelites’ 40-year Exodus from Egypt, looked down at the Promised Land – and died.

A SWIM IN THE DEAD SEA: While in this Dead Sea-Judean Desert area we also stopped by Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and later visited – and swam in – the Dead Sea.  The water’s mineral content is so dense that it is literally impossible to sink. I repeated my swim of 1971 and found it to be fun once again.  But, alas, in trying to flip from my back to my stomach, I thrashed and splashed and got salt water in my eyes. Fortunately, Suzanne was floating nearby and led me, blinded, back to shore and the fresh-water shower.   It still was great fun, and the buffet lunch at the huge Caesar’s Premium resort across the highway was also a great treat.  

The line of luxury resort hotels here at the Ein Bokek seaside oasis were also new since 1971. As we saw here and elsewhere, Israel has somehow managed to evolve a varied, colorful, and joyful culture, despite its desperate, purdah-shrouded neighbors, who find Israel’s success unforgivable.

AN AMERICAN-STYLE BARBECUE:  On the way back to Jerusalem we swung by Moshav Segula, where we were treated to a starlit garden barbecue dinner by American-Israelis who were just delightful. Segula is a cooperative agricultural community about 20 miles north of Gaza; but in the relaxed, hospitable ambience of our hosts, we could have been 20,000 miles from Gaza and all its terror.

I should add that at no time or in no place throughout this trip did we for a moment feel threatened or even ill at ease.  Yes, the Palestinians were just “over there,” but we were “over here” in the midst of a Jewish state that was obeying the admonition in  Deuteronomy 30:19: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed.”

NORTH TO THE GOLAN: Later in the week our group took off on a two-day tour of the Galilee in Northern Israel and the Golan Heights itself. Our home base was the hotel at Kibbutz Kefar Blum, about 8 miles due east of the Lebanese border. While up in this area we visited the Golan Winery (the riesling dessert wine is its best) and the Naot sandal factory, where our group bought dozens of pairs of quality sandals at incredibly low prices.

We also stopped for a woodland hike through the Dan Nature Reserve, the national park that contains the rushing headwaters of the Dan River, which races south to become the more sluggish but better known Jordan River, then settles in the Dead Sea before trickling away into the sands of the Negev Desert.  In fact, the name “Jordan” actually comes from “Yer Dan,” or “from the Dan.” After days of touring through the hot, dry southern desert, we were now stunned to be rolling through a lush green, fertile countryside, which had been converted from valueless swampland by Jewish pioneers right after World War I.  In the distance, we could also still see snow on Mt. Hermon, Israel’s other watershed and site of its popular (one-chairlift) ski resort. 

That particular night we all ate sea bream and trout at a screen-enclosed fish restaurant built on stilts above a tributary of the Dan River.  Full of good food and wine and with the soft flutter of the flowing Dan still in our ears, we barely made it back to our rooms at Kefar Blum for a deep night’s sleep.

LUNCH WITH TANKS:The Galilee and the Hula Valley, sources of most of Israel’s fresh produce, had been targets of Syrian artillery stationed on the surrounding heights.  That changed with the Six-Day War – and I can’t believe that any Israeli government will ever give the Golan back to Syria.

Israel’s tanks and air cover conquered the Golan, and we had lunch one day at the mess hall of the 83^rd Tank Battalion, one of the IDF (Israel Defense Force) units covering the Syrian-Lebanese border.  After lunch we were given a tour of the base and even invited to climb up and crawl over several of Israel’s Merkava tanks (the Hebrew word means “chariot”!). 

The base also has a separate building that houses memorials to the tankers who lost their lives defending Israel in its wars with its neighbors.  This persistence of memory is one of Israel’s greatest strengths: the military and its civilian masters never forget why they have fought and won – and must fight and win again. As I walked about this base I couldn’t help but think of the American soldiers in Iraq who, that very day, were risking their lives for a very uncertain and not at all memorable reason, and it made me very sad.

5,000 YEARS IN 45 MINUTES:  While in the north, we also toured Tzippori National Park, about 5 miles north of Nazareth. Tzippori is a preserved site of a hilltop city that may have been first settled by Israelites around 100 BCE. Tzippori had a continuous Jewish population and periods of Jewish governance throughout the Roman/Herodian occupation, the Jewish rebellion of 66 CE, the Byzantine period, the Islamic and Crusader periods, and periodic Arab occupations until its incorporation in 1948 into the new State of Israel. The site has ample archeological evidence of these shifts: Israelite synagogues and ritual baths; a 4,500-seat Roman theater; Roman and Byzantine villas with exquisite mosaic floors; a Crusader Citadel; a church, mosque, and a convent; aqueducts and a massive central reservoir. 

Such national parks as this – like the Old City of Jerusalem itself – make Israel one of the few places left on earth where, in the space of 45 minutes, you can walk through and around the tangible, physical evidence of 5,000 years of human history.

ROUTE 6 AND THE FENCE:  We left the north via a lunch stop at a Druze village and then took Israel’s new Route 6, a six-lane, north-south autobahn with entrance and exit ramps only at each end.   The key reason you can’t get off or on is that Route 6 runs along the so-called Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank.   At one point, where Israel is only 11 miles wide, we rolled by the western boundary of Tulkarm, the Palestinian refugee city that has produced many terrorists and suicide bombers.  But we couldn’t see much of Tulkarm, because the concrete slabs and electronic surveillance equipment of Israel’s security Fence were in place – thank goodness. The Fence, whether in wire or concrete, is visible for most of the length of Route 6.

IMPRESSIVE YOUNG PEOPLE:  During this tour we had other high points as well.  For example, we visited with the mayor’s staff of Rishon LeTzion, Israel's 4th largest city and to whose social services office Temple Micah contributes.   For our visit, the staff brought together a group of young people – high school and early college age – who have started an international youth organization to promote intercultural, interethnic, and interreligious understanding. They’ve reached out to their peers in the West Bank, Europe, and the U.S. and already have an agenda for making good things happen.

Rishon LeTzion has been the victim of suicide bombers, and these kids have every reason to build their own personal fences for protection against their surrounding enemies.   But they aren’t. I listened to their plans with a lump in my throat, because I was also thinking of another Jewish young person, Anne Frank, and that oft-quoted entry in her diary: "It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” The young people in Rishon LeTzion, as elsewhere in Israel, remain life-affirming and optimistic; despite their often weird clothes and brassy attitude, they are nevertheless continuing a hallowed national/tribal tradition.

ABSORPTION AND CLEANUP:  One day we also stopped in at a local Ulpan, or absorption center, where immigrants learn Hebrew and other skills in order to live and work in their new homeland.  Among the two dozen people in the classroom we visited were immigrants newly arrived from Panama, France, Russia, Uzbekistan, Argentina, and America.   The Middle East’s only democracy is also its only true melting pot of peoples and cultures.

We also visited the offices of ZAKA, the organization of several thousand volunteers who rush to disaster sites (suicide bombings, collapsed buildings, automobile accidents, etc.) and collect the bodies and body parts for proper identification and ritual burial. There we were told that automobile accidents rack up a much higher annual toll of deaths than do Palestinian terrorists.  Israelis are terrible drivers; in fact, there is a slang pejorative Hebrew word used to describe drivers who are polite and let you cut in or in some other way graciously avoid a mid-highway confrontation! They are considered to be the weaklings of the road!

DINNER WITH AN ARTIST:  On our final Friday evening in Jerusalem, we all went to Sabbath services at Har-El (The Mountain of God), a Reform Jewish synagogue a few blocks from the Dan Hotel and another recipient of Micah contributions.  After services, we were split up and parceled out for home-cooked dinners at different congregants’ homes.

Suzanne and I were among six Micah members who were assigned to have dinner at the 150-year-old home of Avraham Yakin, a prominent artist whose home was filled with his oils, watercolors, drawings, etchings, and print portfolios.  His wife, Hannah, is also an accomplished artist, but with a more limited output. (You can see Avraham’s work on www.israelvisit.co.il/Yakin.) There were 11 others at the table with us – including 5 of Avraham and Hannah’s 8 adult children – and we filled up on a dozen different dishes that Yakin himself had prepared.    At the end of the evening, one of our couples, Shelley and Ed Grossman, bought a lovely print right on the spot. 

When we left the Yakin’s home, it was almost midnight and the temperature had dropped to a windy and chill 50 degrees; we hailed cabs and rode back to the Dan.

THE MISSED ART SCENE: My single regret of this particular tour, which was really excellent on every other account, was that we had no time or no plan to experience the very lively arts and entertainment side of Israeli life.

For example, during the week of April 23-29, our tour week, the several dozen theaters in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Ramat Gan, Herzliya, Be’et Sheva, and elsewhere were presenting such theatricals as The Sunshine Boys, The Vagina Monologues, The Zoo Story, Rhinoceros, Our Town, and Cabaret.  On the concert stage the Israel Philharmonic presented Mozart’s piano concerto #9; the Jerusalem Symphony gave a program of theme music from the movies (Exodus, Gone With the Wind, Ten Commandments, etc.); other smaller groups were presenting Brahms quartets, Chopin and Lizst piano pieces, lieder by Schumann and Kurt Weill, tangos and love songs from Buenos Aires; and a program of favorite opera arias and duets. 

Elsewhere dozens of clubs and little theaters were presenting Cuban jazz, reggae, drumming, Eli Gorenstein signing Frank Sinatra hits, Dan Toren and the Blues Messengers, the Jungle Brass doing electro-acoustic, Israeli rock, plus outrageous stand-up comedy.  The world-acclaimed Batsheva Dance Company was performing the work of their resident genius, Ohad Naharin.  And Israel’s art museums and galleries were all bursting with new shows. 

This kind of agenda can only be sustained if the public has the interest and the energy to support it. And Israelis obviously do. You can travel from Casablanca to Beirut, and you won’t find such an energetic environment of music and art. Ramallah Civic Symphony? Cairo Philharmoninc? Damascus Grand Opera? Puh-leeze!!  Israel is more than just a democracy; it’s a total civilization – the only one in its neighborhood.

RELAXING IN EILAT:The rest of the Temple Micah tour group went home on Saturday, May 1, but Suzanne and I flew down to Eilat for a couple of days of R&R, including snorkeling in the Red Sea in one of the world's best-kept tropical water preserves (1,000 species of coral, even more of fish!).   From our Reef Hotel on Coral Beach ($80 per night, with a big buffet breakfast), we just walked into the water and, before it even reached our knees, we could already see dozens of varieties of colorful tropical fish and coral. With a snorkeling or scuba mask we saw even more.

Down the road from our hotel, and just a couple of miles from the Egyptian border, is the Underwater Observatory, a truly unique aquarium that was built out in the water and about 20 feet below sea level, in among natural corals, home to a zillion species of tropical fish. Its large, picture windows look out at the sea life in this natural preserve, which is fascinating and quite beautiful. A visit to the Underwater Observatory alone is worth the price of a trip to Eilat. 

We also walked around the upscale end of the city, a $5 (25 shekels) cabride away, and marveled at the size and services of the luxury hotels (the King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, the Herod Sheraton, the Paradise, etc.) clustered by their beach.  The Red Sea has almost no tide and has high evaporation; as a result, its water, while not as dense as the Dead Sea, is nevertheless almost as buoyant.   Wind-surfing is very big there: you flip over, you don’t drown. In the evenings, after a nice local dinner (of fish, of course), we sat out on our 3rd-floor balcony sipping a decent local red and looking across the benign Red Sea to the twinkling lights of Aqaba, Jordan’s sleepy little port city a couple of miles east of Eilat.  It was a most relaxing interlude.

TEL AVIV, JAFFA, AND HOME:  On Tuesday we flew back up to Tel Aviv, parked our luggage at a local travel office, and took a cab to the suburb of Kefar Saba for a meeting with Udi Ohana.  Udi operates www.conceptwizard.com, one of the most creative sites on the Web. Everyone should visit it.Suzanne hopes to subcontract some client work to Udi in the coming months. After our meeting we returned to Tel Aviv and went up to Jaffa (Old Yafo) to look in on the galleries and workshops of the artists and craftspeople who live there.  Although tourism is picking up, the crowds are still not big enough to support this artists’ neighborhood as the tourist attraction it once was before the intifada; many galleries were empty or locked up.

We walked around, then had a snack and a drink at Alladin’s, my favorite restaurant in Jaffa; its patio has a beautiful panorama view of the Tel Aviv beachfront below.   As it grew darker and colder, we called for a cab and returned to Tel Aviv to reclaim our bags and have a light supper at a beachside bistro called “Masada.” Then, at 10 o’clock, 3 hours before our homebound take-off, we grabbed another cab for Ben Gurion airport. We flew home on a 1:00 AM flight (Air Canada, routed through Toronto), arriving in DC, exhausted, late Wednesday afternoon.

TWO VIOLENT EVENTS:The U.S. State Department advises Americans not to go to Israel because of the violence there.  While the Micah tour was going on, there was no violence. However, on Sunday, May 2, some thugs belonging to Islamic Jihad shot and killed at point-blank range a pregnant Israeli mother (in her 8^th month) and her 4 young daughters as they sat in their car in Gaza. The murderers were later found and killed in a shootout with Israeli soldiers The official radio station of the Palestine Authority called the incident “heroic martyrdom” and the murderers “heroic martyrs.”  No Palestinian official condemned the shooting of the unarmed mother and her daughters as the cowardly, despicable act it was.  

When we returned to DC we learned that an 8-year-old girl was shot in DC, the victim of a gang shooting gone wrong.  The killer has been caught and everyone has condemned the senseless murder. The only thing missing is the “even-handed” State Department’s advisory against traveling to Washington, DC.