Shabbat Menucha and A Busy Sunday

July 5-6, 2008 Shabbat Menucha & a Busy Sunday

Most of the group had a chance to sleep in late on Shabbat morning. We met in the lobby at 11am to visit the Ayalon Institute outside of Rechovot (Rochester’s Sister City). It was a about a 40 minute ride to Kibbutz Hill where the Ayalon Institute is located. While Yaakov referred to it as a bullet factory, that doesn’t do it justice. I call it one of the most fascinating stories in working towards the establishment of the State of Israel.
During the British Mandate the Jewish population was prohibited from obtaining arms and ammunition. Secret missions to supply the Jewish defense organizations were not enough if they had no ammunition to use and replenish. On a site that housed a kibbutz training center for groups of people who wanted to create and build their own kibbutzim a clandestine bullet making operation was created and hidden not just from the eyes of the British and other outsiders but even from members of the community. Imagine the difficulties! How do you dig out an area for an underground factory? How do you bring in the machines and materials needed to produce the bullets? How do you cover up what those who worked in this arena were doing without others getting suspicious? How do you keep the British from having any idea of what you are doing? That is the story of the Ayalon Institute and the brave heroes who made the operation a success. Under a bakery and a laundry using trap doors below a large industrial sized washing machine and a 40 ton oven this factory was built and operated until the British left the land.
The group was wowed by the experience and you can ask any one of us the new definition of a giraffe, whose head is in the sky and doesn’t know what is occurring below.
We returned to the hotel and people went on their way to the beach, to Jaffa, to the new Port of Tel Aviv ad the pool to spend the afternoon and evening. Alan’s brother Bob came from his kibbutz to visit and the 4 Katz’s ate at a wonderful Tapas Bar (not a “topless” bar as one person thought he heard)
At 10 pm many of us gathered in a room to make havdalah and have a brief discussion on early reflections of the trip. Ben’s friend Dan Saat from Rochester (now San Francisco) joined us. Ben will be spending the next three days with Dan, his father Moshe and their very large Israeli family.

On Sunday we were up early so we could check out and be on our way before 8:30 to try and avoid the heavy Tel Aviv traffic. Our first stop on this hot morning was Caesarea, a port city built by King Herod and later used by the Crusaders. There is now a fantastic multi media center where we viewed an introductory film, saw and heard from many historical characters including, Herod, Pontius Pilate, Rabbi Akiva and Hannah Senesh, all created in computer generated holograms. The final section of this was computer generated images of the various parts of the city at different times of its history. After a period of wandering around the Crusader fortress and some of the shops we exited a gate to visit the bath house, fabulous mosaics, the hippodrome (can anyone say Ben Hur’s chariot race), the royal palace and the magnificent Roman theatre that was set up for a concert. By the end of our hours there in the sun, even with the lovely sea breeze the heat had tired us out.
We returned to the bus and drove nearby to a small mall for lunch, ranging from falafel, schwarma, salads, ice cream and MacDonalds. The food, cool mall and rest were a welcomed respite. On to Haifa where we stopped at the top of the mount to view the truly magnificent Bahai gardens. In addition the view of the port below is beautiful.
Next we headed to our final site of the day, the city of Acre (Akko). We started by visiting the Turkish bath made famous to Jewish audiences from the prison break scene in the movie Exodus. Instead of telling that story the media show told of the history of the bath itself and a bit about the cruel ruler al Jazeera, who was said to have defeated Napoleon Bonaparte when he tried to conquer the city.
Our final visit was to the Crusader fortress and underground halls of the knights. Many of these excavations were underground just 20 years ago.. Some of us exited through an escape tunnel that ended in a gift shop (what’s new?) whose owner produced a unique style of silver work in the Libyan tradition.
Our bus ride took us from the Mediterranean coast at Akko, across the Galil to the north eastern area and our destination Kibbutz Kfar Blum. The kibbutz hotel is lovely and the rooms and food were considered by some to be even nicer than the Dan Panorama Hotel in Tel Aviv. To our surprise also at the kibbutz were a group of principals from Modi’in including our dear friend Aviva Dvir the principal of our partner school Idanim and Jan’s counterpart in the Partnership education bridge. We were able to introduce one of the principals to the Rosenzweigs and David Yates who will be her guest at next week’s Shabbat dinner. After dinner many of the group enjoyed the fabulous Olympic sized pool which is considered one of the best in Israel.