Zieva and Marc's 2010 Trip to Israel

Introduction

We scheduled this trip to Israel in order for Marc to ride in the first annual Israel Center for Treatment of Psychotrauma Cycle for Hope bike ride. Marc's write up of his adventures on this ride is at http://www.konvisoft.com/Stories/Israel2010/cycleforhope.html. This blog describes the exciting things we did before and after the bike ride.

Family and Friends

As always the highlight of our visit was seeing family and friends; and, as always, we could not see everyone - another reason to come back soon. We started straight from Ben Gurion Airport where our former Southfield neighbor Renee Himelhoch Chemel picked us up and took us to her home in nearby Moshav Bnei Atarot for dinner with her husband Eli and sons Adiv and Matan.

From there we took a taxi to Jerusalem and our "home" at the Dan Panorama Hotel where we were welcomed back and treated royally by our long-time friends on the staff.

The next afternoon we had our traditional delicious Shabbat lunch at cousins Tchia and Avraham Snapiri's house and were joined by their son Yoni, Avraham's brother Yehuda, and Tchia's sister Eta. Later in the week (while Marc was on the bike ride) Zieva had lunch at Sima's Restaurant (another tradition) with Avraham and his son Doron.

Sunday, after visiting the graves of Zieva's parents, paternal aunts and uncles in the family plot on the Mount of Olives, we had lunch with cousin Florence Chelst (visiting from Silver Spring, MD), her son Jonathon, his wife Dena and their children Ora Finkel, Yitchak Yaakov, Esther, Yael and Sara Shifra. Then we visited cousins Ariel and Einat Snapiri and played with their sons Yair and Yoav.

Lunch on Monday with Aron Matskin (Josh's refusenik Bar Mitzvah twin) completed our long weekend of family and friends. Marc left for his bike ride on Monday night. However, we were able to see cousins Abi and Abe Stern who had just come back to Israel from visiting family in England and the US on the Friday after he came back.

While Marc was on the ride, Zieva visited with friends Inbal and Yoel Novick and cousins David and Tirtsa Fuchs and their children Shmuel Avraham, Miriam, Rivka and Sara. B'shaah Tova to both Inbal and Tirtsa who are expecting.

On the last Sunday in Israel on our way back from the Golan and Galil, we stopped in Zichron Yaacov for a short but sweet visit with our friend MT and Malcolm Feuerstein.

Hadassah Hospital Mt. Scopus

About a year ago, one of the people Zieva knew at the Hadassah office in Israel asked her to see if she could raise money to fund a study using computers to assist children and adults cope with chronic tension-type headaches and other chronic pain for which no adequate treatment was currently available. We decided to fund it ourselves. Dr. Shimon Shiri, a rehabilitation psychologist at Hadassah Mt. Scopus and project director, invited us to see a demonstration of the software which integrated biofeedback with computer simulation.

Yam, a teenage girl was the first subject. She had repeated severe tension headaches over her right eye. The software was designed to use a sweat sensor to determine when tension was building and then present a visual image of herself with a symbolic image of the pain. By using this biofeedback she had learned to reduce her tension and lessen her pain.

In the picture below Yam,

the girl suffering from tension headaches, is sitting at the desk with the sensor on her middle finger. One of the researchers Dr. Uri Feintuch of the School of Occupational Therapy is standing on the left, Zieva is in the middle and Nili, the research assistant who actually worked with Yam, is on the right. Yam's picture is on the monitor and changes as her tension increases or decreases based on sensor readings. The purpose of this intervention is to help her learn to control her tension without the computer assistance. She said that she is beginning to learn to do this. It was very exciting to see the profound effect of this intervention and the fruit of our donation.

Markets

Marc loves open air farmers' markets. His favorite is Machne Yehuda in Jerusalem. He and Zieva went there and, much to our amazement, ran into two women from Detroit who go to our synagogue, Mandy Garver and Elaine Webber.

He also loves fruit and discovered a new fruit called a Loquat (Shesek in Hebrew)

Fresh garlic was also in season

Near the end of our trip, Marc kept seeing a billboard featuring a sweet potato. Since his Hebrew was too poor to read the caption, he asked cousin Hadassah to read it. Neither she nor Zieva had seen it, but finally we found one and everybody had a good laugh. The billboard advertised a product called Skepti for helping bald men grow hair. Here are pictures of a (bald) sweet potato from the market and the bald head from the Skepti billboard.

The Golan

Friday morning after the Cycle for Hope Ride, we rented a car and drove up to our friends Elaine and Chaim Hoter who live in Alonei HaBashan, an orthodox moshav, in the Golan right at the Syrian border. It was early enough in the spring that the Golan was still green and quite lush looking. After we arrived at the Hoter's house, we drove their daughter Orit to a not so nearby bus stop, had a quick tour of the area including the Jordan River

and then raced home to shower before Shabbat. Chaim and Marc went to the synagogue for Friday prayers and afterwards we had a delicious Shabbat dinner. Every opportunity to hear the Hoter family sing was a sheer delight - traditional songs and prayers, Yemeni nigunnim or the beautiful words and melodies composed and sung by daughter Michal (who also baked awesome desserts).

Marc had some asthma problems before leaving the US which seemed to have resolved, but then got decidedly worse in the Golan (probably allergies). In any case he started prednisone, but was still wheezing a lot.

On Saturday, we all went to the synagogue where we were "treated" to a double torah portion. It was very hard for Chaim and Elaine because their son Gavriel had been killed in a terrorist attack and this was his Bar Mitzvah Torah portion. In addition, Yom HaZikaron, the day of remembrance for soldiers, police and terror victims was to begin the next evening and all of the family members were speaking and singing at various events around the country. After synagogue we had a very nice dairy lunch and everyone went to sleep, except for Marc.

Marc first walked across the road to a wind turbine which supplies about 1/3 of the power for the moshav. It was an easy walk, but the first time he had ever been so close to a wind turbine.

Later he decided to walk to the bunker at the Syrian border. As he started up the path to the bunker, a group of 12th graders from the special school for ADHD children in Alonei HaBashan were starting a walk there as well. He chatted with some of the students who spoke English as they walked up the hill. At the end they all climbed up on an unmanned, but remotely monitored bunker outpost overlooking the green hills and lakes of Syria.

Marc was wearing his biking shirt and carrying a water bottle, and the school principal, who is also a bike rider, chatted with him. The principal said he would speak to the boys in Hebrew for about 20 minutes, so Marc decided to go back on his own.

Marc hadn't been paying much attention to the route on the way up and turned off the route one trail too soon. This took him down a nature trail that was somewhat out of the way, but just under the glide path of about 100 storks who were coming in to roost.

The storks were so close that he could hear the swoosh of their wings. A little while later he passed their nests as they were settling in for the night. He thoroughly enjoyed the walk and his close encounters with storks.

Before leaving the next morning, we met briefly with Yoram, the school principal Marc had met on his walk the day before, and told him that our son Aaron had ADHD as a child and we thought a special school for ADHD kids where they could be active and didn't have to be confined to normal classroom etiquette was really a great idea.

Ismaeel's Village

Zieva has been working with an Israeli Arab research assistant Ismaeel Hammoud. He stayed with us in November in Detroit and reciprocated by inviting us to tour his village Kabul in the Galil, and have lunch at his father Ali's house.

The first thing I learned about Kabul is that "village" does not mean the same thing in the US as in Israel. Ismaeels's village has over 20,000 residents and, in US terms, is definitely a city.

As Ismaeel explained to me, Arabs traditionally live in the same area in which their parents did and, as families grow generation by generation, they build additions to their houses for the next generation. Ismaeel's widowed father lives in the portion of the house closest to the street with Ismaeel's sister Monera (who is studying to be an English teacher). His brother Abed lives in an apartment behind. Another brother lives in an apartment above and a third brother lives in a new building up the street, where Ismaeel also has an apartment (although he has chosen to live near Jerusalem). So, over generations, a village becomes a city.

Ismaeel's brother Abed, a Haifa cab driver, and his wife Eman prepared a delicious feast of roast lamb, houmous, pita and all sorts of cold salads

We were stuffed and happy when we left.

Yom Hashoah (April 12, 2010)

Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) is a national day of commemoration in Israel, on which the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust are memorialized. This is a solemn day, beginning at sunset on the 27th of the month of Nisan and ending the following evening, according to the traditional Jewish custom of marking a day. Restaurants and places of entertainment are closed and memorial ceremonies are held throughout the country. The central ceremonies, in the evening and the following morning, are held at Yad Vashem and are broadcast on the television. Marking the start of the day-in the presence of President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, dignitaries, survivors, children of survivors and their families, gather together with the general public to take part in the memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem in which six torches, representing the six million murdered Jews, are lit. Zieva and her cousin Hadassah were privileged to attend the Opening Ceremony at Yad Vashem. The powerful program “Voices of the Survivors” featured the stories of seven survivors of the Shoah and letters written by two of its victims and inspired the audience to remember our responsibility to ensure that there should “never again” be a world that could breed another holocaust for any people. Similarly, Zieva is passionate about telling the stories of terror survivors and victims, who were honored the following week during Yom Hazikaron, Israel's National Memorial Day for the Fallen and the Victims of Terror, and who also bear witness to their experiences to reduce the likelihood that it would never again happen to someone else.

The following morning at 10:00am, a siren sounded for two minutes throughout the entire country. For the duration of the sounding, work halted, people walking in the streets stopped, cars pulled off to the side of the road and everybody stood at silent attention in reverence to the victims of the Holocaust, as we witnessed. At Yad Vashem, a ceremony focused on the laying of wreaths at the foot of the six torches by dignitaries and the representatives of survivor groups and institutions. Other sites of remembrance in Israel also hosted memorial ceremonies, as did schools, military bases, municipalities and places of work. Throughout the day, both the television and radio broadcast programs about the Holocaust.

Yom Hazikaron (April 19, 2010)

Yom Hazikaron is the memorial day for soldiers, police, terror victims and others who have died in service to Israel. It is nothing like Memorial Day in the US. In Israel virtually everyone knows someone who was killed and the holiday is very personal. As Hadassah's daughter Michal described, "It is in our genes." Like all Jewish holidays it begins at sundown the night before. At 8:00 PM air raid sirens wail throughout the entire country and everything stops. Cars on roads and freeways stop and drivers get out and stand at attention; everyone, whether at home or out stands for two minutes while the sirens wail. We arrived at our cousin Hadassah's house just as the 8:00 sirens started.

The next day we went to the cemetery in Herzliya for a ceremony. At 11:00 AM, just as we got there, the sirens wailed, and again everything stopped while everyone stood at attention. This was followed by a short ceremony with speeches, a military salute and laying of wreaths representing categories of people being remembered.

Even though Marc's Hebrew is very poor, he was very moved by the huge sacrifices Israelis have made to keep their country safe.

After the ceremony we drove to Tel Aviv (about 20 minutes) to visit Zieva's 90-year old cousin Frieda Katz. She is a chain smoker, so Marc was unable to stay and walked around Tel Aviv while the women visited.

Afterwards Zieva, Marc, Hadassah, and Michal went for houmous. As soon as we sat down, Marc realized that he had lost the controller for his insulin pump. We all retraced our steps twice, went back to Frieda's and woke her up from her nap, but could not find the controller.

The only solution was to go to the pharmacy, get a doctor friend to fax in a prescription and get supplies to tide Marc over until he got back to the US (the pump controller was not available in Israel). After buying over $300 worth of supplies, we went back to Hadassah's. Marc eventually opened his email and, to his utter amazement, someone had found his pump controller near the houmous restaurant, looked through the pump controller menus and found his name, then used Google to find his website and email address and contacted him. We arranged to pick it up the next day in Tel Aviv.

The man who found it was named Barak Harari

Marc asked him if he was a computer geek. He said, "No, I an accountant." He saved Marc no end of grief. Thank you Barak.

Yom Ha'atzmaut (April 20, 2010)

Immediately following Yom Hazikaron is Yom Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. The country goes from deep sadness and reflection to celebration all at once. The main road a block from Hadassah's house was closed off for a carnival to celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut. There were two rounds of fireworks and 4 venues with bands and dancing. We got fresh corn on the cob and food, games and toys were all around. Marc took a long walk the next day (also Yom Ha'atzmaut) and passed barbecue after barbecues (like the 4th of July in the US). For some, like our cousin Yoni, their emotions were too raw for celebration and he and his friends celebrated more quietly with a picnic in a park.

We had dinner in Tel Aviv with our cousins Yoni, Ori and Oshrat (and their new puppy), Zieva and Hadassah.

Michal joined us a bit later.

The next evening, on our way to the airport for our flight back to the US, cousin Avraham took us to a delicious Turkish restaurant where we had dinner with him, his daughter Adi and her boyfriend Roi.

Blue Box

Continuing our tradition of visiting interesting Israeli sites with cousin Hadassah, we went to the Keren Kayemet LeYisroel (Jewish National Fund) Blue Box Exhibit at the Port of Tel Aviv. Throughout the world Jewish families put spare change in Blue Boxes to support the building of Israel. Whenever Marc bikes through the forests of Israel on land that was once treeless, he thinks that the pennies, nickels and dimes he put into the Blue Box as a kid helped create these forests. The Blue Box has special significance in Zieva's family as there is a story, still to be proved or disproved, that her maternal grandfather Aharon Wirshup created the first Blue Box, at least in Vilna.

Murphy's Law

From Marc's perspective, this was a trip of problems: getting sick on the bike ride, asthma problems in the Golan and beyond, and losing his pump controller. However, all in all it was a great trip. The bike ride was fun and the people he met great, being in Israel for Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha'atzmaut gave us insights into the real lives of Israelis and getting to see our family and friends is always a wonderful part of our lives.