Filed under: Visiting Israel
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Our family photos of touring in Jerusalem area on Friday, December 22, 2006:
A day of reflection in preparation for Shabbat. We went to Yad v’Shem, which has been remodeled to look more like a bunker with alternating sides for the exhibits. The visitor enters on a montage of scenes from European Jewry before the wall and continues through a history of anti-Semitism, oral histories displays in each room, and major events. More focus on the Holocaust on the edges of Europe – in North Africa, Turkey, Greece, Denmark. Rafi had a microphone and headset and we all wore earphones so that he could talk softly and we would hear his instructions. Someone asked if the walls in the Warshaw ghetto were like to walls that were being put up between the peoples in Israel. I asked if there were any influential citizens that had been Holocaust survivors. A small boy in one of the photos of a concentration camp gathering had come to Israel after the war and became the cheif rabbi. Begin was not considered by Israelis to be a Holocaust survivor because he had come to Israel before the war. The bunker opens into the bright light of a rebuilt Jerusalem on the horizon. We then went to the memorial to the deaths and said kaddish. On the way out, we also went to the hall of mirrors that was a memorial to all of the children that had died during that terrible time.
Har Herzl, a national cementery, where many of the national leaders and many soldiers are buried was close by Yad v’Shem. We walked to see the graves of Golda Meir and Itzhak Rabin and spoke of their lives. Then to Herzl’s tomb for individual and group photos. Herzl’s family’s bones had recently been brought to Israel for reinterrement. The park also had a lovely Hanukiah on a hill near its entrance.
We went to Mahane Yehudah to pass through the crowds doing their Shabbat shopping. Live fish, samples of halava, spices, a river of people. Then to the Jewish quarter via the Christian quarter for lunch and shopping. Fay chose a tallit for her bat mitzvah celebration. Then back to the hotel to prepare for Shabbat and services.
We went to the German section of town for services at a reform congregration – Kol Haneshamah. The congregation president greeted us and told us that like most progressive Jewish community the vernacular is used most often – here being Hebrew. Rafi noted that the breathing in the singing reminded him of Hindu chanting. I spent too much time wondering if the ark was facing the old city. A pleasant service with greetings to many visitors from the East Coast of the US.
Back to the hotel for Shabbat dinner, including gefilte fish and chicken soup. After dinner some card and dreidel playing in the lobby. It was the 8th night of Chanukah and some wanted to go to the wall. I likened it to walking through Central Park from the hotel. Probably would have been a safe 30 minute walk. A better night’s sleep.
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