So much to write about

It has been a while since we last posted a blog. That is because the we have been going full speed on the Kol Emet Israel tour. Carrie and Reuven (our guide) have had us up early every morning and out late every night. I guess they want to be sure we feel like we've gotten our money's worth. It has been a great tour. We are now in Athens, but we'll try to recap some of the Israel highlights before going into that.



There is so much to say about the Israel trip, it is going to be hard to make sure we cover it all. First off, let us say that Carrie did a great job organizing the trip. Behind the scenes, for months and months leading up to the trip, Carrie was busy making sure our itinerary hit all the best spots. And her hard work definitely paid off. I think we squeezed 3 weeks of touring into 10 days. It was exhausting and, incredibly, it only scratched the surface of this great land. It just gives us more reason why we need to go back. In addition, Carrie knows so many people that we were able to meet during our trip. It was great to meet Carrie's friends, they certainly are interesting and gave us insight into life in Israel that we'd not get elsewhere.



In addition, Reuven was an incredible guide. His knowledge and story-telling flair helped each site come alive and allowed us to better understand all the history. While I originally thought maybe he was a little over the top, at times, in his delivery, I soon came realize that was not the case. Without a good guide, so much of the ancient history could be perceived as just a pile of rocks – old interesting rocks, to be sure, but without the meaning behind them. And, since Israel has such a tremendous mix of ancient and modern history, it is great to have a knowledgeable guide to help you piece it all together. Once you hear the stories associated with the sights and history and how these guys did this and those guys did that, you can much better visualize what was happened and why.



At the beginning of the trip, we were in Tel Aviv. In contrast with many of the other cities and sites in Israel, this city is only about 100 years old. So, naturally, in this area we concentrated more on recent history -- namely the creation of the modern state of Israel. We went to the Palmach museum (the Palmach was the strike force of the Jewish resistance before Israel was created) and Israel's Independence Hall. Living in today's world, it is hard to imagine how tough things were for the world's Jews in the years leading up to Israel's creation -- and I'm not just talking about the Holocaust (I'll get to that later when I talk about our visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem). Nowadays, we mostly see Jews as assimilated, integrated parts of society. Back then, they lived in ghettos, had limited work opportunities and were victims of often violent discrimination. So some of them picked up and moved to what was a desert wasteland.



So they moved out of the pan into the fire, so to speak. While in Tel Aviv, we got a feel for how difficult an undertaking it was to create the state of Israel. It was at the Ayalon institute that it really hit home how many different things needed to come together to make Israel possible. The Ayalon Institute is not a major tourist site – it wasn't even mentioned in our Fodor's – but it is just another example of a gem that Carrie knows. In the years before Israel's independence, the Jews living there had many trials and tribulations to deal with in daily life. In addition, they knew that a state would not be handed to them on a silver platter, so they had to start putting things together so they would be ready. The Ayalon institute is one of those jig-saw puzzle pieces.



Living among hostile neighbors, the Jews realized war would be inevitable, so weapons would be needed. Given the blockade of the British, they knew that they couldn't rely on buying weapons elsewhere and smuggling them in. So the Haganah (the Jewish resistance movement in Israel from before the time of the British Mandate up to independence) created a secret factory to make bullets and code-named it the Ayalon Institute. Right under the noses of the British and in complete secrecy, they built a small factory underground, then built a kibbutz around it, to disguise it. In addition, just before WWII, they had the foresight to buy bullet making machinery in Europe, dismantle it and smuggle it in.



The workers at the Ayalon Institute had to sneak into this hot, noisy underground factory through a secret entrance hidden by the kibbutz's half-ton washing machine (the noise of which also hid the noise of the factory) for four years every day. Not long after work in the factory began, the workers there realized that to keep up their cover stories of working in the fields, they would need a tan. At first they sprayed themselves with iodine, then later installed a tanning booth and exercise room in the factory (1940s style:  a UV light and some small weights). The production machinery used a lot of electricity so the Haganah had to have someone in the electric company to adjust their bills so the secret wouldn't be blown. Brass for the casings were smuggled in, with extra brass being ordered by a nearby factory.



Incredibly, all this – the very existence of this factory -- was kept absolutely secret until 1985! Stories of other factories to make guns and other secret ventures organized by the Haganah, the bravery of these early pioneers, the incredible odds Israel faced in the war against their Arab neighbors in the war before and after declaring independence, give light to the fact that the creation of the state of Israel could truly be considered a miracle.

 So, you as you can see, this was just in the first days and doesn't even include everything we saw and did.  I'll keep plugging away.  Now that we're in Athens, we're taking things a little more slowly, getting the kids caught up on school work and soaking in the urban life so we should have time to write.

Some pictures from Israel (from Dara):

At the Ayalon Institute - Under the washing machine (left) is a hidden entrance to the bullet factory below.

Down in the factory it was dark, loud, lonely (even though your friend is next to you, it's hard to talk when the machinery is banging away), and monotonous (a job might have been to lift a lever up, and then put it back down, over 10,000 times per day)

Some of our favorite Israeli foods!  The sign says "falafel v'humus" (falafel and hummus) in Hebrew too.

And shawarma (usually chicken in a pita with hummus, veggies, tahini sauce, and fries too) - yum!