I first went to Israel in the summer of 2004, just after finishing high
school. Traveling with an organized group of about 40 students, I spent
a week in Poland learning about the Holocaust and Eastern European
Jewry, followed by five weeks in Israel, where I fell in love with the country's beauty and spirituality.
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| Overlooking the Dead Sea from the top of Masada at sunrise (2004) |
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| Jesi, me, Michelle, and Amy in Jerusalem (2004) |
It wasn't long before I went back. A year and a
half later, I returned to Israel on another group trip and saw the
country through a different lens. Rather than the sunny, all-is-perfect image I'd been
shown earlier, my second trip was focused on social justice. My group
learned about various social challenges in Israel, such as integrating
immigrants from Ethiopia and East Asia and caring for the elderly, by volunteering with disadvantaged populations.
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| Our volunteer project was repainting the home of an elderly couple that had immigrated from Ethiopia (2006) |
Just about ten years since my last trip to Israel, it was time to go back. I was overdue, actually. Becky had moved there several years ago and I still hadn't seen her in her adopted, beloved city of Jerusalem. And Jeremy, a friend of mine from Italy, moved to Tel Aviv a year or two ago, too. With direct, cheap flights from Lyon to Tel Aviv running twice a week on Transavia, there was no way I was going to pass up a chance to visit! I ended up fitting in a long weekend trip to Israel in early May, booking tickets to fly out on a Wednesday and back on a Sunday afternoon.
After the pleasure of being selected at random for extra security screening by El Al staff (I hope the other passengers enjoyed their full view of the contents of my suitcase) and a delay of several hours flying out of Lyon, I finally made it to Tel Aviv on Wednesday night. I headed straight to Jeremy's apartment, where he had patiently been waiting for me to arrive for dinner. We caught up over sushi at a great little restaurant near his place before stopping for frozen yogurt on the way back. It was so great to see him; I just wish we'd had more than an evening to hang out!
After the pleasure of being selected at random for extra security screening by El Al staff (I hope the other passengers enjoyed their full view of the contents of my suitcase) and a delay of several hours flying out of Lyon, I finally made it to Tel Aviv on Wednesday night. I headed straight to Jeremy's apartment, where he had patiently been waiting for me to arrive for dinner. We caught up over sushi at a great little restaurant near his place before stopping for frozen yogurt on the way back. It was so great to see him; I just wish we'd had more than an evening to hang out!
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| Clearly very excited about the frozen yogurt. The chopped dates on top were delicious! |
On Thursday morning, I woke up early to squeeze in a short visit to Haifa, just 60 miles north of Tel Aviv and home to the beautiful Baha'i Gardens. I'd wanted to visit the gardens for years, and I was determined not to miss them on this trip!
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| View from the top of the gardens. The train station was all the way down by the water! |
When I arrived in Haifa, I could see the cascading gardens from the train station, so I figured I'd just walk to the base of the site and work my way up from there. Not quite. It turned out that the visitor's entrance is at the top of the gardens, high up on the steep hill. Thank goodness for the tourist office! A woman working there gave me a map and showed me where to catch a bus that would take me to the right place.
I had also naively assumed that
visitors could wander through the gardens at their leisure. In fact, the only
way to enter (unless you are a member of the Baha'i faith) is to join a guided
tour. The tricky thing was that they only offer one tour per day in English.
Quickly realizing that I couldn't go on the English tour, scheduled for noon,
if I was to catch the 1:30pm train back to Tel Aviv to meet my ride to
Jerusalem, I did the, ahem, practical thing and joined the Hebrew-speaking
tour. Unlike my French tour of the UN building in Geneva, I didn't understand
much more than "shalom," but hey, whatever. I still got to see the
gardens up close!
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| Fire hydrant? Or street-side cartoon character? |
After the tour ended, I power-walked back to the train station and returned to Tel Aviv to meet up with Adi, Becky's friend's Osnat's friend (got that?) for the drive to Jerusalem. In a happy coincidence, it turned out that Adi lives right around the corner from Jeremy. Since she was so close, I took advantage of a few extra minutes to walk along the beautiful Tel Aviv beach. I'm so jealous that the two of them live just a few blocks from this beautiful view!
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| Tel Aviv beach! |
The sun was just slipping below the horizon by the time we made it to our campsite overlooking the Dead Sea, and we got to work setting up. With four sets of hands and thanks to the prep work Becky and Osnat had done in advance, we pitched our tents, unrolled our sleeping bags, built a fire, and began cooking in no time. Before long, we were all happy and full, relaxing by the crackling flames.
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| The view from our campsite Thursday evening! |
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| Breakfast outside our tent! |
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| From the left, Adi, Osnat, and Becky |
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| The view away from the water at our campsite!
We had decided to tackle an out-and-back, 12km hike in the Tze'elim Canyon that leads to a small mayan, or spring, tucked away inside a little cave. The desert can be unforgiving (we carried a ton of water with us and took plenty of breaks to beat the unseasonably intense heat), but the landscape was undeniably gorgeous.
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| Adi and Osnat, former navigators in the Israeli Army, led the way! |
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| The canyon has occasional flash floods, and you can see how the water has carved through the rocks. |
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| Our destination! This little mayan may not seem like a big deal, but in a country with limited freshwater, a spring like this is very special! |
Content after an amazing hike, we
turned back to Jerusalem for Shabbat (with a little stop for some ice cream on
the way!). We arrived with just enough time to shower and get changed for
dinner at Becky's friends' house.
As the sun set, a lovely calm descended over Jerusalem. The roads were mostly clear of cars, and we passed other groups of twos and threes strolling to dinners with friends or family. People greeted each other as they crossed paths, wishing their neighbors 'Shabbat Shalom,' a peaceful end to the week.
That serenity set the tone for the rest of the weekend. We had a lovely meal with Becky's friends Friday night, and another delicious lunch with some of her other friends on Saturday. It was so nice to meet the people who have become her Israel family, and I enjoyed the chance to learn more about what day-to-day life is like in a country so full of contradiction and complication. I was there right after the May elections, so it was especially interesting to hear the varying political opinions!
Becky and I took the extra long route back to her apartment after lunch on Saturday, strolling through some charming neighborhoods and the Old City. Inside the city walls, we walked around the Christian and Arab quarters, stopping in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the first time and browsing some of the market stands. Then we headed towards the Western Wall, passing through a heavily Orthodox area with men wearing their distinctive black hats and children playing in the squares.
After catching some nice views of the Kotel from above the adjacent plaza, we descended and passed through the security screening to get closer. Becky showed me the tiny, hidden, indoor prayer area for women that is accessed from the "men's side" of the wall. It's not well-marked, so I don't think many visitors even know it exists. The you-don't-belong-here looks that you get from the men standing outside the entrance don't really encourage women to seek it out, either. The women's area was a narrow, tunnel-like space with some chairs (maybe 20?), a shelf holding a few siddurim, and a small prayer table at the front. A heavy curtain at the front blocked the view of the wall — and the men praying next to it. Argh, frustration. As if they didn't already have more than their fair share of space, it turns out that the men's side of the wall is even more extensive than you can see from the plaza!
On the way back to Becky's apartment, Becky and I took a break at the Waldorf Astoria to rest our feet. Recently renovated, the lobby is gorgeous! We must have looked nice enough for Shabbat because they didn't seem to mind letting us relax on their very comfortable couches for a bit! Then, a few blocks down, I did a double-take when we passed a very familiar looking building. It turned out to be the Fuchsberg Center for Conservative Judaism. The complex includes a youth hostel that was our de facto Jerusalem home during my first trip to Israel in 2004. The picture of me and a few friends at the beginning of this post was taken there! I had had no concept of where the building was in space, so it was fun to finally be able to place it!
We finished off the evening with Havdalah, the brief-but-always-lovely ceremony to say goodbye to Shabbat for the week, and dinner at a cute cafe nearby called Carousel. It was a relaxing way to end the weekend (Saturday night is the end of the weekend in Israel) and my brief-but-wonderful visit.
I reflected on the trip quite a bit on my flight back to France, and I've continued thinking about it over the last several months since I returned to the States. Going to Israel on my own instead of as part of an organized trip was a completely different experience. I tasted a sliver of real life in this country, staying with friends who have moved to Israel and put down deep roots. I got a sense of their rhythms and the joys they have found living there, but also the challenges and the tension. As Becky says, it's a complicated place. But a special one, too. While I don't agree with all of the country's current policies (nor does the entire Israeli population — there is just as much diversity of thought on everything from security to social programs to transportation as anywhere else), Israel feels undeniably familiar and comfortable to me in ways that other foreign countries never have. It's a place that I look forward to visiting again and again throughout my life. I definitely need to stay longer next time, though!
As the sun set, a lovely calm descended over Jerusalem. The roads were mostly clear of cars, and we passed other groups of twos and threes strolling to dinners with friends or family. People greeted each other as they crossed paths, wishing their neighbors 'Shabbat Shalom,' a peaceful end to the week.
That serenity set the tone for the rest of the weekend. We had a lovely meal with Becky's friends Friday night, and another delicious lunch with some of her other friends on Saturday. It was so nice to meet the people who have become her Israel family, and I enjoyed the chance to learn more about what day-to-day life is like in a country so full of contradiction and complication. I was there right after the May elections, so it was especially interesting to hear the varying political opinions!
Becky and I took the extra long route back to her apartment after lunch on Saturday, strolling through some charming neighborhoods and the Old City. Inside the city walls, we walked around the Christian and Arab quarters, stopping in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the first time and browsing some of the market stands. Then we headed towards the Western Wall, passing through a heavily Orthodox area with men wearing their distinctive black hats and children playing in the squares.
After catching some nice views of the Kotel from above the adjacent plaza, we descended and passed through the security screening to get closer. Becky showed me the tiny, hidden, indoor prayer area for women that is accessed from the "men's side" of the wall. It's not well-marked, so I don't think many visitors even know it exists. The you-don't-belong-here looks that you get from the men standing outside the entrance don't really encourage women to seek it out, either. The women's area was a narrow, tunnel-like space with some chairs (maybe 20?), a shelf holding a few siddurim, and a small prayer table at the front. A heavy curtain at the front blocked the view of the wall — and the men praying next to it. Argh, frustration. As if they didn't already have more than their fair share of space, it turns out that the men's side of the wall is even more extensive than you can see from the plaza!
On the way back to Becky's apartment, Becky and I took a break at the Waldorf Astoria to rest our feet. Recently renovated, the lobby is gorgeous! We must have looked nice enough for Shabbat because they didn't seem to mind letting us relax on their very comfortable couches for a bit! Then, a few blocks down, I did a double-take when we passed a very familiar looking building. It turned out to be the Fuchsberg Center for Conservative Judaism. The complex includes a youth hostel that was our de facto Jerusalem home during my first trip to Israel in 2004. The picture of me and a few friends at the beginning of this post was taken there! I had had no concept of where the building was in space, so it was fun to finally be able to place it!
We finished off the evening with Havdalah, the brief-but-always-lovely ceremony to say goodbye to Shabbat for the week, and dinner at a cute cafe nearby called Carousel. It was a relaxing way to end the weekend (Saturday night is the end of the weekend in Israel) and my brief-but-wonderful visit.
I reflected on the trip quite a bit on my flight back to France, and I've continued thinking about it over the last several months since I returned to the States. Going to Israel on my own instead of as part of an organized trip was a completely different experience. I tasted a sliver of real life in this country, staying with friends who have moved to Israel and put down deep roots. I got a sense of their rhythms and the joys they have found living there, but also the challenges and the tension. As Becky says, it's a complicated place. But a special one, too. While I don't agree with all of the country's current policies (nor does the entire Israeli population — there is just as much diversity of thought on everything from security to social programs to transportation as anywhere else), Israel feels undeniably familiar and comfortable to me in ways that other foreign countries never have. It's a place that I look forward to visiting again and again throughout my life. I definitely need to stay longer next time, though!
