Altneuland Revisited - 11 May

After a relaxing morning and a good work out, I went over to Israel Discount Bank to meet Nicky's Mom for lunch.  Nicky is our JCC webmaster and when her Mom was in Palo Alto we tried several times to get together, but were unsuccessful.  I can see now why Nicky wanted this to happen....her Mom is an interesting, intelligent woman with a good sense of humor and perspective who loves to trouble.  The only problem was that I had to be someplace else at 2 PM...otherwise, I could have spent all day with her.  We had a nice lunch by the sea.  Have I mentioned yet how beautiful the Mediterranean is?  The water is turquoise and the weather has been perfect so far.

I got back to the hotel just in time for the Melton program to begin. I don't know anyone in the seminar except for our fabulous educator, Haim, but everyone seems quite nice.  We have 4 Australians on the trip and although most are couples there are 4 women who are traveling alone.  I think it will work out just fine.  We started with the usual intro stuff, but then moved quickly into the seminar.  The theme of the seminar is "Altneuland Revisited" with "Altneuland" being the book that Herzl wrote about his dream for a Jewish state in Palestine.  In honor of Herzl, the class has been set up like a play with today being the Prologue.  The theme for the day was (dis)embarking - those who came were disembarking while we are studying that as we embark on this program.  So where else to start???  The port of Jaffa of course! Jaffa has been a port since biblical times.  When Jonah (yes, the guy with the whale), tries to escape to Tarshish, he goes through the port of Jaffa and until 1939, it was the primary port in Palestine. We read two stories by SY Agnon and 2 poems by Yehuda Amichai as we sat on steps by the port and then took a walking tour of the city.  Jaffa has always been a mixed city with Moslem Arabs, Christian Arabs, and Jews living together.  As with most old cities, it has gone from being the "in" place to being seedy and back again a million times in its existence. Right now it seems to be in and lots of remodeling is going on and apartments overlooking the sea are selling for huge amounts of money.

Tonight begins Lag b'Omer and there are bonfires everywhere.  This is in honor of the yartzeit of Shimon bar Yochai who is said to have authored the Zohar.  Sending his light up to God, etc.

I have my Melton back pack and my "tushion" so I am ready for the adventures of the next 10 days.  Tomorrow we go to the Negev and are staying at a small guest house, so I will probably not be on the computer again until we get to Jerusalem.