Bar Mitzvah Pics!

This is Dara -
It's been a whirlwind the last few days here in Israel but we wanted to get some pictures of the bar mitzvah up so people could share in the joy.  I don't have a ton of pictures since a wonderful new friend in the tour group graciously volunteered to be our "official" photographer for the event and took most of the pictures on her own camera ( Thanks so much, Marlene!)  I'll post a few more (especially of the proud grandparents and aunt and uncle) when I get them.

It was a wonderful, moving, meaningful service.  It was held in a room in our hotel in Tel Aviv with the entire tour group attending and participating.  Ari did an amazingly exceptional job (and I'm only a little biased).  We all laughed and cried and really felt that this was something very special that we were all sharing. 

Saturday night, after a free afternoon in Tel Aviv, we took the entire tour group (plus some cousins that we haven't seen in almost 20 years!) out for a delicious Israeli dinner at a fabulous restaurant that had been recommended by an Israeli friend (we took over the entire restaurant).  It was fun and a perfect ending to a perfect day.

Tomorrow morning we head out early to do an archeological dig and some spelunking and then we head up north to a kibbutz for a few nights.  I'm not sure if we'll have internet access from there so if you don't hear from us, that's why...but we'll be keeping up with the blogging offline and will post when we can.

Mazel Tov, Ari.  We love you very much and are so proud of you.

Happy, but still a little nervous...this was right before the service.

Ari reading his haftorah during the service, wearing his Bubby's (great-grandmother's) tallis to honor her memory.

The girls (Ellie and her two cousins) leading a song during the service

The kids' table!

The friends' table!

Proud Nana and Pop-pop, Aunt Marcy and Uncle Craig, and cousin Chava

Can't be a bar mitzvah without the hora!!  Mazel Tov, Ari!  Now you can relax and enjoy the rest of the trip!

The long-lost cousins, Dov, Chava and their littlest, Ori - it was so great to see them! (We haven't seen them since 1993!)

History, history everywhere

Imagine you were having a problem with the water not draining out of your bathtub.  After checking with your plumber that your pipes weren't clogged, you called the sewer department.  After (what I'm sure would be) a lot of back and forth arguing, they finally agree to send someone out to check on it.  The guy they send out ends up stumbling into a 1000 year old secret tunnel that the Knights Templar used to sneak holy land pilgrims from the port to their fortress.  Certainly couldn't happen in America but did happen in Akko (or Acre), Israel.  And not in the old days -- in 1993.

That is the way things are here.  This small stretch of land has been trod upon, traversed and fought over for so long by so many people that you can't throw a cat without hitting some interesting, unbelievable artifact.  As Dara mentioned in the last post, we went and saw the ruins at Zippori.  2000 years ago, the Romans had a nice little town here.  The main street was well paved and lined on both sides with columns.  Behind the columns were sidewalks made of beautiful mosaics.  There was an amphitheater overlooking the valley and an aqueduct that brought in fresh water.  It made me feel like I was walking on the set of the History of the World, Part I movie.  Ari kept on saying, "Put a few columns out in front... turn any hovel into a showplace!"

I guess that since in school you learn history sequentially, I just figured that the Egyptians came first, then faded away, then the Greeks ruled during their Golden Age, then they faded as the Romans came to rule the world.  By being here and seeing the places and learning about it, I have started to realize that it is much more complicated than that.  Maybe this is obvious to others, but not to me.  It was not nice and neat with the great civilizations taking turns, one at a time.  Yes, the Egyptians came first, but they rose and fell and rose and fell over the centuries and were still going strong even while Socrates and his buddies in Greece were inventing democracy.   And the republic in Rome was prospering during this time, too, then becoming an empire.  Throw in the Phoenicians, Persians, Seleucids and many others and you end up with a web of plot lines that make soap opera writers jealous.  I suppose that is why they keep it simple in middle school and leave the complicated stuff for PhD's.

And in Israel, that is just the middle of the ancient history! In Pennsylvania, if a house is 200 years old, it is really old.

The day after we went to Zippori, we visited the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa.  Now, to really throw me for a loop, we jump to recent history -- the Baha'i religion is only about 150 years old (as they say, the newest of the world religions) and the gardens were started about 20 years ago and completed in 2001.  After the gardens, we went to Akko which, although it has older and more recent history, too, is mostly know for its Crusader days.

So that is the way Israel is.  This tiny piece of land has seen so much history, with documented cities, rulers, civilizations, wars, etc. back 6000 years at least, (the oldest thing we've seen so far was from around 300 BC)  that it is hard to believe the whole country isn't a museum.  But it certainly isn't.  There is hustle and bustle and all the signs of modernity all around, even mixed in with the ruins and antiquity.  So please excuse me as I jump around from the old to the new to the not so old to the not so new.  We've been in Israel for 3 days so far and have packed in a ton of stuff, even though we've been going slowly.  The next 11 days are going to be even more packed.

Our new favorite town - Zichron Yaakov - quaint shopping/restaurant pedestrians-only street.  Every meal we had was delicious...and the weather so perfect we ate outside each night.

The really cool playground in Zichron Yaakov where every item spins in some way - a child's dream, an adult's nightmare.

Yes!  They have ReMax in Israel too!

What, no Scottish food?

A classic - the Hebrew words spell out Coca-Cola

In Netanya, the street signs are in Hebrew and French since there are so many French transplants in this beautiful seaside town.

The biggest pomegranates we'd ever seen!  In a market in Tel Aviv.

We're not in the US anymore...great street sign.

First Days in Israel

 So we're a little behind in our blogging. We meant to send out our initial post before we left on our trip, but we didn't have our act together (or, rather, we were so busy getting our other acts together, the blog kept getting pushed back). We have switched from Travelblog (from our last adventure 4 years ago) to Blogger and we are still getting used to the way it works so please stay with us as we figure it out. It seems you need to sign up to be a follower when you access the blog in order to be notified when we make a new post (see button to the right that says Follow) - and you may have to have a Google, or Yahoo or one or two other platform account (I think Facebook also works somehow) to sign up to follow. We're researching to figure it out...email us or send us a comment if you need help, have questions, or know more about this than we do!! (Thanks!)

Ari is also keeping a blog so you can check in with his blog to get his perspective on our activities. The link to his blog is: http://throughariseyes.blogspot.com 

As I mentioned, we were pretty crazy leading up to our departure. Dara has been working for weeks to get everyone's bags packed and get the house packed up. As for bags, each person only gets 1 bag and a carry on. Each bag has a weight limit of 44 pounds (one of Dara's going away presents from her friend Melyni at work was a luggage scale – great gift!). Dara found these great bags (at Kohl's, of course, her favorite store) that are suitcases/duffel bags with wheels that also have straps so you can carry them like backpacks. So the kids (Ari is now 12 ½ and Ellie is 9, for those of you who have been out of touch) will have to pull their own weight, so to speak. So what do you pack for 3 ½ months of travel that will fit in 1 bag? Not much. Basically the same clothes we would have packed for a 2 week trip to Israel, plus books and stuff for the homeschooling (including Ellie's clarinet which she insisted we bring along.) We'll see how well we did as we go. After 2 days, so far so good!

As for our house - We were lucky enough to find a great house sitter, Meghan, who will take great care of our house and Simba, our 16 year old, deaf, hyperthyroid, snoring, loud-meowing cat, while we're gone. When I saw loud-meowing, I mean she is really loud. One of the symptoms of hyperthyroidism is being very vocal. That combined with her deafness is enough to keep all the mice out of the neighborhood. But, she's also friendly and soft and warm at night...there's a reason we've kept her around for 16-plus years. Thanks for taking care of things and easing our minds Meghan!

We both did have to make employment changes for this trip. Dara took a leave of absence from her job at State Farm with the intention of, probably, going back part-time when we return. The women in her office are great and she'd miss them. Me, on the other hand, will not miss the teaching. It did not work out quite as I had hoped when I started teaching 4 years ago. Philadelphia kept moving me from school to school and subject to subject so I was never able to get in a groove. In addition, upon our return from Costa Rica, I started a business installing solar panels. For the first two or three years, it was just a sideline and worked out well with teaching since it was the busiest during the summer. Over the past year, however, the business has really blossomed (pun, although weak, intended) and when we return we'll see if we can make a living with that, with Dara joining me to help with the parts that could use some more attention (i.e., the stuff I don't enjoy doing...hope she does!)

So, anyway, the last week or so was a blur as we made final preparations for the trip and tied up loose ends. One day before our departure, Dara went to the school administration building and officially withdrew Ari and Ellie from school and registered them as homeschooled. Mark ran around southeastern Pennsylvania and finalized a bunch of solar projects. We hopped on the plane feeling like we'd pretty much tied up all the loose ends...pretty much...

So, we arrived in Israel a few days ago – on Sunday, 12/19.  Our flight worked out very well – it left Philadelphia at 9:15PM Saturday and arrived in Israel at 3:00PM Sunday. Leaving late in the day made it easy for us to sleep on the plane (which we all did) and arriving late in the afternoon meant we didn't have to keep ourselves up for too long to fight off the jet lag.

The tour we are taking in Israel with the Kol Emet synagogue group doesn't start until Friday. Ari's bar mitzvah is the first Saturday of the tour. Dara's parents and Dara's sister and her family are coming on the tour with us. Mark's parents also wanted to come to Israel for the bar mitzvah, but were not interested in being part of the tour group. So instead, we came to Israel with them five days before the tour started so we can spend time with them, then we will all meet up with the group for the bar mitzvah. After that, Mark's parents will head home and we'll continue on with the tour. Make sense? I hope so.

Quick update from Dara:

The past two days have been great: beautiful weather (about 70 degrees), amazing sites (so far), good food.  Zichron Y'aakov is a quaint, up-and-coming, hip town with a downtown pedestrian area that has a cobblestone street and many chic restaurants and wine bars. We've hit Zippori (incredible Roman-era mozaics, including the most beautiful one in Israel), Haifa (toured the Bah'ai Gardens, had dinner in the German Colony), and wandered through the old city of Akko (old fortress on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea with narrow passages through stone walls aging back to 1100 AD or earlier in parts – people still live there and they're still discovering new tunnels and buried rooms all the time). I'm attaching a few pictures of our latest stops.

Good sport, Ellie, with her suitcase and carry-on after arriving at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport - that's it for 3 months!

Ellie writing in her journal

In front of the Beit Maimon hotel in Zichron Ya'akov

Our Roman lass

Walking down a real Roman street in Zippori - cerca 3rd century CE

Amazing Roman-era mozaics - some made of more than 1 million pieces of stone placed individually by hand!!

The most beautiful mozaic in Israel - named the "Mona Lisa" of Israel

Playing around on the stage in the Roman amphitheatre

What now?

So - Can you believe it's been 4 years since our last post from Costa Rica? In case you weren't an avid reader of our last adventure blog, here's the link: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/TheBortmans/ ...weren't the kids so cute back then? And, boy, do we have so many great memories of our year there. Sometimes it seems like it was all just a dream. Time for another dream -- we are off on another adventure!


Since Ari was young, we've discussed the idea of having his bar mitzvah in Israel. This seemed more appealing to us than the standard party. Not that the party wouldn't be fun but, we figured that if we're going to spend a lot of money, lets make it a more memorable family experience (the strongest memory I have of my bar mitzvah is the food fight my friends started in front of the Jenks Center, where the party was hosted. Ok, it wasn't really a food fight, it was more just Emile and Pooh chucking rolls at Eric H., but my dad came and yelled at them just the same. That and I do remember the first line of my haftarah.)


A trip to Israel would fit the bill and we'd been mulling it over for a while. In all honesty, I hadn't mulled it over hardly at all. I am not a very good muller. It really hadn't crossed my mind -- party, trip, bar mitzvah -- nothing further ahead than tomorrow's lunch, if I can even think that far ahead. It was really Dara that had been doing the mulling and I did a lot of nodding in agreement.


As it happens, last summer we found out that Carrie, the education director at Congregation Kol Emet and one of our favorite people in the whole world, was organizing a trip to Israel at Christmas this year. We figured this was close enough to Ari's 13th birthday (he'll be 12 1/2) that we couldn't pass it up. Carrie was Ari's first teacher, she's lived in Israel and she is passionate about the country. We know it will be a great trip.

Once we decided that we were going to Israel, our imaginations started wandering. Years back, when the idea of going to Costa Rica hatched, Dara and I had independently and concurrently come up with the idea of going somewhere. The same thing happened this time. We figured we were going to be so far away, it would just be a waste to rush right back. In a follow up post, maybe I'll go through the permutations that led to our final plan but for now, it looks like this:


Two weeks in Israel, mostly with the synagogue group (with our parents and Dara's sister's family joining us too). Then a few days in Athens and a week in Crete. From there we go to Rome for a week and then the Naples/Pompeii area for a few days. Since that is a lot of running around, after that we are going to settle into an apartment in Sienna for a month. That will be our home base for short trips to Florence, Pisa, Venice and other great places in Italy. After that we head to Spain for a month where we will visit the Cunats (Nacho and Alex, the exchange students that lived with us 2 and 3 years ago, respectively -- and respectfully).


That's it. At this point, we typically get one of two reactions. From those of us that don't know us too well, we usually get the modern version of, "Whatchou talkin' bout, Willis?" For those that do know us too well, we get the same reaction as if we'd told them we were going to the supermarket: "Oh, we were wondering when you were going to do something."

Before we left, Ellie made a Powerpoint presentation to her 4th grade class about our trip.  The kids followed our itinerary around the world (using globes) and asked tons of great questions about our upcoming trip.  Ellie's awesome teacher then proclaimed the last day before we left "Ellie Bortman Day"...Thanks for making it so special Mrs. Lopez!