Dear Friends,
Last week from Thursday through Sunday night, I spent four crazy busy and hectic days in Israel while on a visit to my cousin’s beautiful wedding. While it was a short visit in terms of the amount of time I spent there, it was rich in experiences and special moments.
Below I will share a few anecdotes and highlights from the visit which I hope you will enjoy.
The trip itself didn’t go all as planned, with my connecting flight to Philadelphia to get to London getting delayed and me being put on a direct flight to London. Sounds good right? Well my luggage got lost somewhere and is currently still floating around the airports of Europe.
Arrival in England was great and it was good to be back to the place where I was born. The problem was that the line for Passports took over an hour and a half and this was after not sleeping for the night. As I neared the end of the line, an announcement was made wanting to know if anyone speaks Spanish and English. When no one responded and they asked again, I volunteered. The security official gave me this bewildered look and asked me “are you sure that you speak English & Spanish”? I guess something about my appearance made her unsure about my ability to speak the two languages. Anyway I confirmed that I did indeed speak Spanish and English, and before 
long I helped several Immigration officials deal with their recently arrived Spanish speaking visitors. I told the officials that if any other official asks me for their help, I will be asking for a job.
I had a wonderful trip in London with my parents and sister and brother in law and their kids. We had to run back to the airport to catch my 3:25pm flight to Tel Aviv via El Al, and we made it in good time. Unfortunately AA had made some kind of error and cancelled the second leg of my ticket, so I wasn’t allowed on the flight. After two hours on the phone the agents of El Al enabled me to board a BA flight some 7 hours after the first flight, after AA finally fixed the issue.
I enjoyed the few extra hours with my parents and also bought some clothes as at this point I was working on the assumption that I would have no clothes in Israel until my luggage was located.
Arrival in Israel
The flight to Israel was uneventful and I sat next to this really nice English Dentist and his son, who of course attend a Chabad in London and were going to Israel to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah. We had some great meaningful conversations and exchanged information.
It is always amazing to arrive and land in Israel, and every time I am hit by a powerful feeling of excitement and belonging when I arrive in the Land of our Forefathers, the Holy Land.
Work at the Western Wall
After checking in at the Hotel in Jerusalem and taking a rest for an hour after two red eye flights, I headed towards the Old City where I had told my friend that I would help him at the Chabad stand at the Western Wall for a few hours. As I am walking through the Old City, I feel a tap on my shoulder and my friend Rabbi Shmuli Weiss from the Western Wall whom I was going to help out, was walking down too.
I spent an inspiring few hours at the Western Wall helping the many people who kept stopping at the Chabad stand to say a prayer, to don Tefillin, or for help or questions about the Western Wall. Over the course of two hours that I was there, hundreds of Jews from all over the world and all over Israel stopped by to don the Tefillin and say the Shema. I personally put on Tefillin with more than thirty people and had many interesting and meaningful conversations with many of those people who ranged in ages from 13 and 75+. These included people from France, Italy, all over Israel, UK, USA, Netherlands, Germany, Russia and more. One of the volunteers at the stand, is someone who is over sixty years old and was stabbed a few months ago by a terrorist, but is now well again and he helps out every day at the Wall.
I also saw many beautiful Bar Mitzvah celebrations as kids got called to the Torah for the first time and I saw people of all walks and streams stand, pray, cry and rejoice! Of course to top it off I met a whole bunch of people that I know from all over the world and where else to meet them, than the Kotel!
To see a Video of the Kotel that I took click here.
Wedding Time
After that it was time to get ready for the wedding of my cousin and head to 
Chadera. It was a long drive and lots of traffic, but the wedding of my cousin Fiona to Yuval was absolutely beautiful and well worth the entire trip.
It was a beautiful wedding and a combination of a European and Israeli style and of course I got to spend lots of great moments with my cousins and many family members who were in attendance. The party went on until the wee hours of the morning but I left at 1:30am and headed back to Jerusalem for a 3am arrival.
Visit to Hebron
On Friday AM I went for a visit to the Biblical City of Hebron with my brother-in-law who is a soldier in the IDF and Tali, a former classmate of mine from the UK who now lives in NY. Before we went we stocked up on Chocolate Pastries which we wanted to give out to the many soldiers who put their lives on the line in the city of Hebron.
We first went to the Tomb of the Patriarchs which is where we have a tradition that the Forefathers and Mothers of the Jewish people are buried. It was truly amazing to be standing and praying in a place where the founders 
of Judaism and the world’s first advocated of Monotheism are buried. I thought about their challenges and journeys and contemplated about all they went through so that they formed a meaningful and holy relationship with G-d that will last for eternity. I was in awe as I thought about the fact that here I am, a descendant of them, thousands of years later, in Israel with six million others who come from them.
Being that Abraham is a respected figure in the Muslim faith, while we stood and prayed we heard the call of prayer of the Muslim’s who were praying in the same building, but in a different section.
From there we headed to visit some of the buildings and other sites of historic Hebron. Along the way we stopped at different guard posts and shared our Chocolate Pastries with them and said our thank you to them for what they do. We explored some of the older buildings of Hebron that were 
Jewish before the massacre of the Jews in 1929 and have since returned to being inhabited by Jews.
We then headed to one of the highest points of Hebron where the graves of the Biblical figures of Jesse and Ruth are located along with a small enclave of Jewish families and a small army base.
At this site there is also a major archeological dig that has findings from 4000 years ago and from the times of King David some 2900 years ago. They found things like a seal of King David, lots of pottery, and many other specific items that linked it to it being the place where King David lived while he ruled the Kingdom of Israel from Hebron. Once again we said our prayers and chatted with the 
soldiers about the challenges and dynamics of life in Hebron. I had one very interesting conversation with an Ethiopian soldier who came to Israel from a small village at age twelve and now serves in the IDF, and was carrying who knows how much equipment on his back in the sweltering heat.
We offered some of the cakes to Palestinian Children too in an effort to be friendly and be a good ambassadors for our people. One set of children waved to us and were promptly yelled at by their mother for what appeared to be her annoyance at them for saying hello to us. It was a reminder to us that some of the feelings of animosity and mistrust that are there, are part of life there in a way that is quite deep, and it will take a lot of work to clear the hate and make way for love and peace.
Before we left Hebron we ended up with a punctured tire, so there we were 
outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs changing our tire, with an occasional European Observer peaking at us and wondering what we were doing as an IDF soldier stood guard from a distance.
From there it was back to Jerusalem, but not before we picked up a young man who was hitchhiking and needed a ride to the city. Yes in case you were wondering, we were safe and we double checked who he was.
Shabbat in Jerusalem
Friday night after the prayers, I went with my brother-in-law to eat at the home of the Schloss family on a rooftop high up in the old city of Jerusalem. It was truly incredible to be eating in a place that was overlooking the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, the place where the Temple stood. As we sat together with some twenty other guests, we sang moving and joyous melodies and enjoyed a special Shabbat Dinner until 1am, as the awesomeness of the history of this Holy City, played before my eyes throughout the evening.
As we ate and celebrated Shabbat, we heard melodies and the joyous sounds of children playing emanating from other homes and rooftops in the Old City. I am sure that King David & King Solomon and the many other visionaries of Jewish history were looking down with pride at the Judaism that is flourishing in Jerusalem.
Saturday morning I prayed in a Chabad Synagogue in Jerusalem. The Rabbi’s wife had just had a baby on Thursday night, so my hopes of having a restful Shabbat morning, were quickly dashed when he had me do the Haftorah, lead the Musaf Service and then give a short talk at the Kiddush. It was fun and a beautiful atmosphere to top it off, with a combination of mostly American congregants along with a few Israelis too. The Chazan for the morning service was an elderly gentleman who did a great job at leading the service and left me feeling not only inspired but also safe, as I noticed the pistol sticking out from under his Talit.
Saturday lunch was at a place called Chayal El Chayal or Soldier to Soldier, which is a home and Chabad run center for Lone Soldiers serving in the IDF and where I had been invited together with my brother-in-law. While I was one of the only noncombatants in the room, I had a great time talking to the dozens of lone soldiers who were from all over the States and Canada, including one or two from Massachusetts. Many of these guys were not even twenty years old yet, but were full of determination and a love for their people and their spiritual homeland.
Later on Shabbat we took a long walk to the an area called Yemin Moshe and Mihskenot Shananim which are beautiful neighborhoods with fascinating architecture that are built on the slopes just outside the old city of Jerusalem. These neighborhoods were the very first neighborhoods that were built outside the old city of Jerusalem well over a hundred years ago by Sir Moses Montfiore.
As we stood there overlooking the hills of Jerusalem, I met a Jerusalem couple out for a walk whom I interviewed about life. The man had been born in Jerusalem and remembered going to the Western Wall when it was under British Control, the nineteen years when he couldn’t go when it was under Jordanian control and the reunification of Jerusalem where all faiths once again have freedom of religion to pray anywhere. He described to us exactly where no man’s land was and what life was like living in a city divided by the Jordanians and Israelis.
From there I walked to the Western Wall, where I stayed and studied and prayed until the end of Shabbat along with hundreds of others.
Dead Battery in Jerusalem
Right after Shabbat, I wanted to go and visit some friends in Central Israel but now in addition to having just a spare tire on the car, the battery itself wouldn’t start. The rental company said it would take hours and advised me to flag down someone and get cables and jump start my car. Well easier said than done and with my cell phone dead and parked in a very quiet street, after forty five minutes of trying to flag down drivers I was no closer to my solution.
Finally I noticed this guy putting something in his trunk down the road from where I was. I stopped him and he said he has an electric car and not sure if he has a battery to even charge from. Well after a quick check, it turned out that he did have a battery but no cables. I told him not to worry and to go home. But he wasn’t so easily deterred from helping, and instead he goes into a local restaurant and found a waiter who had cables in his car. Next problem was that there was no space between my car and the next car for his car to squeeze in without blocking the traffic. Well we hijacked another person walking down the street and with a bit of effort our car was eventually placed on the sidewalk and his car squeezed right in and puffffff my car was working. His name was Yehudah Kohn and he was a really nice guy, next time you bump into him, say a double thank you from me.
Sunday was another glorious day in Jerusalem and it was time to say goodbye to the Holy City after I got my tire fixed.
Yonah the Pious Parking Attendant
I went to get my car from a parking lot and met Yonah the parking attendant and had a little chat with him. What was unique about Yonah was that he wasn’t spending his time on his smartphone or watching TV in between cars, rather he was spending his free time in between cars coming in and out of the lot, studying Torah and reading Psalms. To top it off he was a very nice person too as I saw by the way he treated the clients who were parking or leaving.
Of course I interviewed him too and asked if we could take a picture 
together. Yonah was born in Morocco, moved to Israel and fought in four of Israel's wars. He described to me some of his experiences and personal miracles he witnessed, including when a large shell exploded just five meters away from him during the Yom Kippur war, or when twelve terrorists snuck in to the area under his command. Yonah’s faith, the way he spends his time, and his stories of life in Israel left me impressed and inspired.
Visits with Victims of Terror
From there I headed to meet Rabbi Kutner from the Chabad Terror Victims Project to begin our day of visits and support to people who were injured or severely impacted by terrorists.
It was a very moving and emotion filled day as I met people who live with the pain of the cruel sudden loss of a loved one and people bearing and carrying physical and emotional scars long after the events happened.
Thanks to generous people in our own community, we were able to take along some gifts and help with some assistance when needed. Some people we visited just to send a message of solidarity and care and some it was to provide assistance or 
help.
We started out with a visit to a lady in Jerusalem who lost a child in a suicide bombing quite a few years ago and then a year later lost a daughter in a car accident. Unfortunately life continues to be very challenging and difficult for them in additional to the physical losses that they have suffered, with the husband being out of work, and life just being very challenging.
While it was a very painful visit, it was truly amazing to see how the mother continues life with faith in G-d and doesn’t complain about her lot and tragedies. She showed us two walls in the house, one wall which is dedicated to the memory of her two children and one wall filled with pictures of happiness of her other children and now grandchildren. She said she is obligated to remember her loved ones and for that reason their pictures are on the central wall in her apartment, but right away after she remembers, she looks to the next wall which she called her “Oxygen Wall” for happiness and inspiration.
Our next visit, was just outside Jerusalem for a visit to R. a former commander of Israel’s Border Police who had been severely injured when he jumped on a suicide bomber in a bid to stop him detonating a bomb at a crowded Jerusalem junction 13 years ago. While the suicide bomber ultimately blew up and killed two people and injured many others, including R. who lost both of his legs, many other lives were saved by the several second long struggle that preceded the explosion.
R. is an amazing person who plays Basketball in a wheelchair and gives motivational speeches to Israel’s Police Cadets. In a few weeks R’s son is turning Bar Mitzvah so we gifted his son a beautiful pair of Tefillin as a gift from our community and a symbol of our appreciation for his heroism for Israel and the Jewish people.
From there we traveled back to Jerusalem to visit the Alyn Rehab and Medical center where we met a girl who is in recovery from a terrible attack some 9 months ago in which she was very severely burned all over her body. Thank G-d despite the fears that she wouldn’t survive, she has made tremendous improvements and after many surgeries she is well on the road to recovery, with a long way to go. We spoke with both her and her mother who was also injured in the same attack and shared some moral and tangible support for them in their ongoing uphill recovery and associated expenses. It was once again tremendously appreciated and once again we were amazed by the faith and hope that the mother and daughter exhibited.
From there we traveled to North Jerusalem where we visited one of the last houses before Ramallah. There we met a lady whose husband was a security guard at a Mall in Israel and struggled with a female terrorist before she detonated herself and killed her husband and one other girl. Being that it was right before Passover the Mall was absolutely packed and a tragedy of epic proportions was averted. She told us how during the Shiva so many people came over to her and told her that they were in the mall when it happened and that they feel that her husband saved their lives.
Unfortunately due to some personal situations and combined with no breadwinner in her family, her financial situation is precarious. Thanks to generous people in Sudbury we were once again able to assist and make a difference.
From there we drove to central Israel where we met another widow whose husband was a bus driver who wrestled with a terrorist and gave everyone time to escape before he was blown to bits. She is now making a wedding and we were able to give the new bride and groom a generous gift to help start off their new life together.
The rest of the assistance we shared with the Chabad Terror Victims Project who do amazing work for victims and their families. Rabbi Kutner showed me a dossier of over 3000 families that they have worked with and visited, a list which has sadly grown and is way too large. In fact while I was spending the day with Rabbi Kutner, he was busy arranging a retreat in a hotel for several days for 10 widows (victims of terror) and their children.
One recurring theme that we heard from all the victims, was a huge thanks to Rabbi Kutner and Chabad for not forgetting about them, even when they sit alone at home years after the tragedy. While we went to show support we left inspired by the determination and faith that these people exhibit and continue to live with. By them faith and trust were not intellectual ideas, but real values and beliefs that sustain them on a daily basis.
Thank you to everyone who helped participate in the gifts and contributions to the Chabad Terror Victims Project. We have made a pledge of a little more to them to help with some projects that they are doing for the upcoming holidays, and hope to continue this support each year.
After we finished our last visit of the day I drove Rabbi Kutner back to Kfar Chabad, the Chabad town in Central Israel and took one or two pictures by the Headquarters of Chabad in Israel.
Following that I headed out to Tel Aviv for visits with family and relatives 
which were really special and fun as always. I managed to get two and a half hours of sleep before I headed to the airport and was hoping for an uneventful flight. Well despite some initial challenges I eventually got on the flight and headed to Madrid for the first leg of my flight. Of course I made a new friend on the flight who was going to live in LA for three months and we are now in touch.
Landing in Madrid was an experience in itself, as I saw the beautiful hills and old and quaint towns on the hilltops as we came into land, and thought about the rich Jewish history and vibrant life that had once existed in that country. At its time, it was epicenter of Jewish life in the world, but it all came crashing down due to some hate and lack of tolerance for another faith.
Trips to Israel are always special, even when they are short, but hey next time, I may go for a few more days and hopefully one of these days, I will even get my luggage back. Hope you enjoyed the read.
Shabbat Shalom
Yisroel
