This Year in Tel Aviv/My Faces of Israel

Dvir Musai is a friend I met in 2016 when I was part of a 2-year Hadassah Leadership Fellowship. We were a group of #lucky16 women from around the country becoming more engaged in Hadassah as leaders. (By the way there's a new Fellowship for women 45 and under, you can find more information and apply here .) As part of our fellowship, we traveled to Poland for a "March of the Living" program visiting Auschwitz and Krakow, the place where Kristallnacht happened. We came to Israel to learn more about the creation of the state post WWII and met so many interesting people. One of them was Dvir. Dvir is a poised young man who sits holding his cane. He shares his nightmare story in a well-practiced tone that draws the listener in while knowing that he is re-telling a story he's told many times. He starts out by saying, "Hadassah women, I loved you before I ever met you".  On June 11, 2002, at age 13, he was on a field trip from school and along with his friends he...

I've been utterly distracted by my husband's visit these last 10 days. Mike and I have visited old haunts, seen friends, and discovered new favorite places. He quickly got into a routine of walking the tayelet (beach promenade) for 11-13 miles and then walked another 5-6 a day with me exploring Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Zichron Yaacov. We had Shabbat with friends, visited the Perez Center for Peace and Innovation in Jaffa , and watched many beautiful sunsets over the Mediterranean. He left Monday night after the Megillah reading (Purim begins tonight) and I have another 5 days before I too head home. The past 10 days have been a taste of what our future times here will be like. We've already booked for 2 months next year (February & March) and I hope he'll be able to join me for longer. One of the first days here he walked me on a surprise birthday mission (he came a week after my birthday). We walked a couple of miles and got to a shop where a young man was outside ...

 I've been so busy with visiting friends that I've fallen behind on my writing. I had an amazing visit with Tina and Jeff. After they toured the south they came back to meet me in Tel Aviv at the Palmach Museum . The Palmach was a secret Israeli army pre-state that was made up of new immigrants from all over the world. Some had escaped the Holocaust, some came from Arab countries, some from the US, South Africa, etc all with the same goal, to fight against the British occupation and create a Jewish state. After the museum, we headed north to Afula to visit the high school where Tina spent a year in the 80's before we met in 1989 at Haifa University. We spent the night in an adorable cabin in Yavne'el with a view of the mountains near the Sea of Galilee. The following day we walked the ancient streets of Tsfat and greatly expanded Haifa University where we rode the new cable car down and then up the mountain. Our friendship is intense. Jeff and Tina lost their 14 year ol...

 I've been living by myself for a little over 2 weeks in this beautiful apartment in an amazing neighborhood. On Thursday my dear friend, Tina, and her husband Jeff, came from Colorado. Tina has been my friend since 1989 when we met at Haifa University. We spent 5 weeks backpacking through Europe together that summer and had there been blogging and tik-tok and snapchat and Be Real- we probably would have been the queens of all of it. Instead we quietly wrote in our journals every night about our adventures. We took pictures with real film that we developed when we got home. When you hear the song, "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay",  by Otis Redding, picture two un-showered girls with raggedy clothes and wearing socks with sandals (not slides, leather greek sandals stained brown from the rain). We're riding in a stifling hot Greek train, teeth stained red from cheap wine, singing this song along with our Sony Walkman, changing the lyrics to "Sitting in the Back of ...

One week down, five to go- can't believe I will be here in Israel for such a long time. This first week was spent settling into my apartment which is located in Nachalat Binyamin, a pedestrian street right next to Shuk HaCarmel, the open-air market in Tel Aviv. I've spent some days touring and have seen lots of friends during this first week. Before I came to Israel, I thought I needed a project while I'm here so I decided to revive this blog and share about "My Faces of Israel", tell you a little bit about the people I know here. Everyone I meet has a different story about how they came to be in this small and fearless country. Some came on their own, some with a spouse and children, some were born here, some were born to Israeli parents overseas and came back, etc. etc. I have permission from everyone I write about to share their story. I didn't interview them for the blog, I'm sharing from conversations I've had through the years. I can't sing o...

This blog post is dedicated to Steven Fox Z''L, may his memory always be a blessing. Particularly when we are thinking about this summer- the best of our lives. (cue up Bryan Adams- It was the Summer of '69) Let me tell you a secret: I've been having a love affair with Israel since I was 17 years old. I realized after I wrote yesterday's blog that I set out to describe why I was in Israel for 6 weeks and felt I needed to explain my love story with my husband and how that "kept" me from moving here in 1993. In that writing I realized I've been having an affair with Israel this whole time. Sorry Mike! I grew up in Marblehead, MA and we had an Israel trip in the summer that everyone went on. We had our own Israeli Shaliach (emissary from Israel), Nadav Bartura, and he organized Israel programming in our community.  It won't surprise most of you that I actually loved Hebrew school. Mostly because I got to spend time with friends who lived in the town n...