Tears (Article# 89) 7/25/08

In anticipation of having a full house with my brother’s arrival, Goldie and I took a last minute vacation to Teveria. We had been talking about getting away for several weeks, but could not really settle on a specific day to go. At the last second (literally at 10:30 AM) we got a super discount on one of the Israeli last minute travel sites and we hit the road by 11:15 for a 2 night getaway.

When we lived in the USA vacations were a lot easier to plan but a lot harder to go on. I understood all the tourist information and was able to schedule an itinerary with ease. Even selecting a hotel was easy. We would drive around at the end of the day and see what looked interesting and call the Hotel Chain’s 800 number for a deal.

On the flip side, food and davening were major problems. Minyanim were not to be found outside the major urban areas and we had to be very careful about bringing enough food in case we couldn’t find the basic staples (I remember one year it took me almost an hour to find milk with hashgocha in Orlando, Florida). Finding a kosher restaurant meant an automatic night out – just for the novelty of seeing the restaurant in Hartford, CT or Norfolk, VA.

Planning our Israeli vacation was almost the exact opposite. A minyan was no problem and we had all the kosher food we could possibly eat (breakfast in the hotel dining room was included in the price – how cool is that). But all the travel websites (especially the last minute ones with all the best prices) are in Hebrew and I just couldn’t make heads or tails of them. I did eventually figure things out (and got almost 50% off the rate), but it took hours and hours of work to get the job done.

The first night we were there, we took a walk along the “boardwalk” and strolled around the center of town before having dinner. After dinner, as we made our way to the hotel, we came upon some live entertainment. Several Breslover Chassidim were set up on a street corner, peddling CDs, amulets and books while their van blasted (at full volume) the latest Breslover hits while at least 3 or 4 chassidim danced to the music (there was never less than one guy dancing maniacally on the roof of the van).

If you have never seen these guys, you don’t know what you are missing. They engage the crowd and try to spread their “joy” with the public. Invariably, one or two of the onlookers are motivated to join in the dancing, to the amusement of all. I think we sat and watched the show for something like 45 minutes.

The next day we slept late and then enjoyed the hotel dining room breakfast. At the meal we met the Rabhan family from Great Neck who were visiting for the summer. It turns out that I was in college with him way back in the late 80’s. It is always interesting to bump into people from the old country.

We then headed out for some rafting on the Jordan River. The waters were mostly tame (except for one 4 foot drop or so where I thought Goldie was going to pop a vocal cord from the volume of her screaming), but we really had a blast. We tried to drift with the current as much as we could, to enjoy the sun, peace and quiet.

After an early movie and late dinner, we again enjoyed a good night’s sleep and a long, lazy breakfast in the dining room. We were preparing to check out before heading out for a jeeping or boat trip when we turned on the TV to see what was going on. We knew the prisoner exchange was scheduled for that morning, but seeing it in reality really hit hard.

On the television, one of the first images we saw was a grand stage being set up somewhere near Beirut, where a massive celebration was going to be held later in the day. There was a huge banner on which (in English) there was the following message:

“Israel sheds tears of pain while Lebanon sheds tears of joy”

How disgusting. A country is in euphoric ecstasy at the release of a sick deranged criminal. They exult in the fact that they tortured 2 families for 2 full years, never admitting that their loved ones were dead, just so that they could exact the last ounce of pleasure from seeing our pain.

In fact, the initial reports were that Hizbolla was claiming that the soldiers were captured alive and that “whatever happened, happened” in an apparent effort to claim that it was the arabs who executed them after the fact. It was only the next day that the truth came out. Both soldiers were killed in the initial attack.

It is easy to say that we don’t negotiate with terrorists and thugs. When the person whose life might be saved is your husband, son, father, friend or neighbor that very lofty ideal falls by the wayside. The failure here was not the fact that we negotiated with terrorists. The failure was that we had to negotiate with them.

The neighborhood is not afraid of us anymore. They talk openly of kidnapping more soldiers so that they can squeeze even more from us. Our intelligence service seems powerless to detect these attacks and certainly from identifying the location of the captives so that we can mount rescue operations. Our government seems so overwhelmingly focused on maintaining power that it has lost focus on actually governing and in doing what is best for Israel rather than what is best for the political life of its elected officials. And our Prime Minister is still trying to figure out how to claim his frequent flyer miles his family accrued while possibly traveling at the expense of Israeli organizations.

We came here to be a part of Israeli society and to live in the Land of our Fathers, the Land that was divinely promised to us and our children. We wanted to live openly as Jews in the land of the Jews, actually fitting into the culture rather than carving a place for ourselves within someone else’s culture.

The entire family has benefited from our move here. We have happy kids who are excelling in school and in life. This has not changed. Yet, I am so disillusioned about Israeli politics that I am not really that concerned about who wins the next election. He (it better not be the only she who has a chance) is going to sell out anyway and we will be constantly on the defensive, both physically and psychologically unable to get away from the constant desire to have the rest of the world love us for who we are.

My brother arrives on his Nefesh Bnefesh flight this week. Attending his arrival will mark the third straight year we have been at an NBN arrival, always and inspiring and uplifting event. Hopefully, this new group will be part of our metamorphosis into a new Israel, an Israel that can once again stand as proud as we used to stand, safe and secure in the knowledge that we are a mighty and feared nation.

I want to wish the Israel Association of Baseball team good luck in the International “For the Love of the Game” baseball invitational being held in Freeport, PA this week. We look forward to hearing great things about their ambassadorial experience, especially from player Ephraim Schwartz, son of Chanoch and Naomi Schwartz – formerly of the 5 Towns.