Palmach Museum - This is located at the University of Tel Aviv. It's unusual for a museum in the fact that there are no artifacts or displays. You go to a series of rooms where they present the history as though you are actually experiencing the history while it happened. If you have never been, I strongly suggest it. If you ask LO what her favorite places in Israel were, this one is definitely on the list. At the beginning of our tour, a guide came and gave a little history of who the Palmach were. In the middle of this history, LO tapped me and with a very sour look on her face she whispered, "Ima, this is JUST like school." Knowing that there was much history to be learned on our trip - this was certainly a scary way to start. However...at the end of the tour, she again tapped me and exclaimed, "That was AWESOME! It was like Disney World except in Hebrew!" Maybe they should market it that way.
Shuk Carmel - PHD loves to go to the shuks. Our visit to Shuk Carmel was just one of almost a dozen shuks that we went to. We loved listening to the vendors shout out what they were selling and how much it costs and then trying to figure out what they were saying. I think LO's favorite part of shuk shopping was the fact that she got to sample all kinds of foods.
Shawarma - On the Shabbat before we left, we had lunch with our Rabbi. One of the places he told us not to miss was a shawarma place in Tel Aviv. Since I couldn't write it down, I had to remember the place in my head. What I remembered was Ben Yehuda and Boker Sov (yes - Boker SOV like Boker Tov with an "S"). We walked quite a bit down Ben Yehuda and asked quite a few people where Boker Sov Street was. Most just looked at us with blank stares. Just as we were about to give up, someone said, "Do you mean Bograshov Street?" We were only a half block away. And here is we received quite a pleasant welcome from our Rabbi's favorite shawama stand. And oh was it yummy.
The Golan Heights - PHD's cousin Toli arranged a day trip for us to the Golan. We went to the Golan Archaeological Museum, a winery, the Mount Bental lookout, and a pick your own fruit place. We learned about Gamla. We saw Lake Kinneret. We picked and ate as many blackberries as our stomachs could hold. We even got to see the world's largest Israeli flag. At the gift shop at Mount Bental, we purchased a beautiful necklace for LO that has the blessing of the daughters on it. (We plan to give it to her for her bat mitzvah.) We spent some time chatting with the shopkeeper. We explained that we say this blessing over LO on every Shabbat and that we have said it so many times that even LO knows it. LO then came over and recited the blessing for her. The smile on the woman's face was priceless. We talked about how LO knows so many of the prayers from going to services so often and LO recited the Shema and the V'ahavta for her. The woman told us that it gave her goosebumps and she was so filled with joy that it looked like there were tears in her eyes. She then leaned over to LO and said, "You know what? You just made my day." That almost made me cry. That moment made me so proud to be Jewish and feel so blessed to be in Israel.
(more to come...)
1 comment:
Loved this post. It brought back my many trips to Israel. Haven't been in a couple of years, so thank you!
Post a Comment