Paul Goldberg Blog

Israel

I started a post on the plane to Israel. At the rate I’m going I will finish this on the plane back to the USA.  Our flight over was  uneventful and we arrived to be greeted by Laura Nelson-Levy,  our guide for the duration.  We immediately boarded our van,  helpfully labeled “Hawaii Tours” with Shlomo in the drivers seat.  First stop Tel Aviv, Dan Intercontinental.  It is a lovely hotel with great views of the Mediterranean and some quirky problems,  they canceled our room keys while we were at breakfast preparing to depart and then got huffy about getting one room open.  The grandkids were excited and full of energy.  The first morning we set out for a day of touring in the van and on foot in Tel Aviv.
Our First Stop was the Palmach Museum. This is new since we last came to tour and was a
wonderful introduction to the history of Israel’s founding. We continued to talk about it for the next two days. We returned to the hotel and set out by cab to a restaurant for dinner, Gina in the old train station Tachana.  Up early the next morning and up the coast to Cesarea then inland ending in Safed (spelling variants include Tzfat and Tsefat) at hotel Rimonim.

Tel Aviv was no surprise to me.  It is a large modern seaside city with an interesting history that starts in 1909. We did see some of the old Bauhouse architecture which is preserved. Safed was more of a surprise because most of us had never had a chance to wander and explore on our own beyond the artists quarter. We stayed over Shabbat so we had a quiet day to recover from jet lag and the days of intense touring.  The grandkids were amazing.  They were attentive, mostly, and well behaved, mostly.  We were asking a lot of them and meal times were “interesting” as we were making that part up as we went along and had to accommodate vegetarians and meat eaters as well as kosher,  easier in Israel but not simple. We toured where some would expect, up into the Golan, where saw fortifications and vinyards. We stopped at Golan Winery for a tour and tasting.  Yarden is still the best although we did not get to taste it, we just bought and drank some.

We drove back to Tel Aviv airport for our flight to Eilat.  We stopped along the way at Zippori National Park which is known for its mosaic floors, over 40 of them!  This had opened since our last tour.  It is certainly an interesting and wonderful place with early history and Roman roads. Unfortunately our flight to Eilat was at sunset so by the time we got over the Negev it was dark. We enjoyed a walk to a restaurant near our hotel, it is hard to believe there is only one restaurant serving kosher dairy in Eilat. Our touring day included a walk to the Red Canyon and a drive to a viewpoint on Mt Yoash. It ended with a visit to the Underwater Observatory and Aquarium, not real exciting.  Getting into bathing suits and the hotel pools was exciting.

. . . I am sitting in the coach in Livingston realizing I never did quite finish blogging about the trip. We are still working on images. Mine are mostly family pictures as we have so many Israel pictures from prior trips it didn’t seem interesting to take yet another picture of the Wall or other famous places. Here we are in Eilat at the Camel Ranch:

and here are some of us “going down the toilet bowl” at Beit Guvrin
 Azriel followed by Yechiel
 Carol exiting the toilet bowl
 eight of us
 Alexander in the crypt?
and Carol too!
From Eilat we drove up the Arava past Lot’s Wife’s salt pillar and stopping to climb the Snakes Path to Masada, about half of us. I must admit I made heavy going of the climb taking almost an hour and Yechiel stayed at my side so I wouldn’t be alone at the tail end. I did it first in 1974 and I expect that I will not make that climb again. The cable car is a fine way to get to the top and I have nothing left to prove.
In Jerusalem we had our rooms on the 3rd floor of the King David Hotel with the adults facing the Old City and the kids facing the new city. We reveled in the luxury when we had a chance at breakfast and on Shabbat. Otherwise we were on the move. The new place we visited was the Ayalon Institute near Rehovot where there is the remains of a hidden munitions factory that made bullets for Haganah. 2 1/2 million before Independence and as many more as the Arabs attacked following the Declaration of Independence. I never even remember reading about this project which was hidden not more than 200 feet from a British rail line set into the top of a hill with a bakery and the kibbutz laundry on top of it. Only the people who worked in the factory knew it was there. The rest of the kibbutz members were kept in the dark and referred to as “giraffes”. 
We concluded with a visit to the Israel Museum where we stopped at the Shrine of the Book and then had time to proceed with a brief tour of the archaeology section where Laura covered 2000 years in 45 minutes without totally losing the youngest of our group. We had this time because the big event of the day, the Zip Line in the Etzion Bloc had to be cancelled due to foul weather. For our last stop we went next door to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Israel Office. I had kept this as a “surprise” stop. We entered and turned to look at the plaque by the front door that starts with the founding of the organization and concludes with the list of the officers when the building was dedicated. On the list is “Emanuel Goldberg – Secretary” my father. 
we set an objective for this trip to teach our grandchildren and their parents the importance of Israel to our family, to the Jewish world and ultimately to the world. Only time will tell how well the lesson has been learned, but initial indications are all positive. No grandchild of ours will doubt our devotion to Eretz Yisroel and to the Jewish people.