Traveling Through Israel (and Beyond!)

Stealing a kiss at the Hagai Sophia!

Chag pesach sameach l'kulam!
Happy Passover to everyone!

An amazing thing happens in Israel during Passover. Everyone takes off for the holiday and travels throughout the country. The roads, hotels, trails, national parks, and camp grounds are all packed with families spending quality time enjoying the country and each other. We had the great opportunity of getting to participate in the fun and went up North to the Kinneret with Gavi's Israeli family. We stayed at a youth hostel, ate delicious kosher for Passover buffet style meals, and went on hikes through some absolutely beautiful parts of the country.

And then we got home and realized that it was the first time since January that we had a significant amount of free time! And after receiving a number of requests, petitions, and inquiries about our next blog post, we figured this would be a good time to give the people what they want.

The last few months have brought an incredible amount of important, powerful, and fun Israeli experiences. We will do our best to catch you up on our travels and learning since we last updated.

January
Jason started the second semester (the first day back, no less!) by delivering a D'var Torah on Parshat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16). The d'var went through a great many iterations during the December break, but he was happy with the final product. (After you watch, if you want to learn more about the African Refugee crisis in Israel, you should check out T'ruah and ARDC).

We spent a significant portion of the month trying to follow the Israeli elections. For all of the issues within the political system, Israel does Election Day right. It's a holiday and a day off for virtually the entire country. People wake up early, go vote, and then go off a a trip to the beach or to go hiking. There are no excuses to get up and go to the polls.

Gavi and fellow CY-er Julie
saving the planet

The CY took the day off as an opportunity to go on a tiyul to עמק הצבאים (Gazelle Valley) and do some pre-Tu B'shevat tree planting.

HUC students got sent out to different parts of the country to talk to people and take videos of what we saw and experienced. Jason went to Beit Shemesh. If your Hebrew is good, you can check out the video his group made here.

We also had a wonderful reunion with our old roommate from DC who was leading a birthright trip. Don't worry. We took her to Babette's to get waffles.

February

Jason, Gavi, Debbie,
and Tov Ro'ee!

Steve with two of his nephews
(the middle one just had his second son!)

February was a month of visits and visiting. We kicked off the month (well, really at the end of January, but this works better for the flow), with a visit from the Young family. For our first Shabbat we had a lovely dinner with Gavi's father's best friend from camp. They have been friends since they were 17 and are still in touch! The rest of the week was full of Jerusalem site-seeing, and spending time with the Israeli family (Gavi's mom's side) who just had a new baby! In fact, of the five boys from Israel, two had new children within a week and Gavi's parents were lucky enough to be able to attend both brit milah ceremonies. The two of us were honored as "kvatterim" (people who hold/pass the baby to the mohel and then back to the mother).

While Gavi's parents were in town, Gavi's aunt (Steve's sister) was in Jerusalem helping to lead a social justice mission for women from Atlanta! Her trip ended after Gavi's parents had left, and one of the activities was a trip to the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh (first day of the month) to pray with Women of the Wall.

Hope you followed the family tree!

Fensters at the Kotel

After this round of visits, we had about 3 days of downtime to do homework and go grocery shopping before Jason's parents came to town. It was Jason's dad's first trip in over 40 years (he had come on a teen tour and hadn't been back since). Clearly, there was a lot of Jerusalem to see. We did some walking around the Old City, saw the shuk, visited the Israel Museum (with an awesome exhibit on Herod) and the Shrine of the Book, and ate lots of delicious food. After Shabbat, we took them to see an Israel film, Gatekeepers (which we would encourage you to see if it is playing near you). On the last day of their trip, we took a day trip to Tel Aviv to visit the Artist Fair at Nachalat Binyamin, check out a museum, and spend some time on the beach. Even though it was a short trip, we got a lot of quality time in and were so happy to have them come.

But wait! The month isn't even over yet. Two days after the Fensters left, we went on a two day trip to Bethlehem with an organization called "Encounter." The goal of the organization is to expose Jews to Palestinian narratives with the hope that face-to-face encounters will help bring perspective and understanding that will allow us to engage in constructing a future for the conflict. The trip is conducted as a listening tour, where we meet with different speakers and different stakeholders from Palestinian communities to hear their stories. It was not intended to be a dialogue group, but we were encouraged to ask any and all of our questions, as long as we did so in a fair and considerate way. The trip is an overnight and we chose to do a home stay and spent the night with a family in Beit Sahour. Needless to say, the trip was challenging and thought provoking. During and after the trip we did a hefty amount of debriefing with Encounter staff and other HUC students on the trip. The one thing we can definitely say is that this trip was important for both of us. We are still processing what we saw and building narratives to bring back to the States. We don't have any miraculous plans to solve the conflict, but we realize that something has to change and it's going to take hard work on both sides (and from the international community) to make positive progress.

After this trip, we went through a pretty dramatic shift from a challenging and thought-provoking few days in Bethlehem, to a revelry and excitement of Purim! Jerusalem celebrates Shushan Purim (since Jerusalem is a walled city, Purim is celebrated a day later), so, we took the chance to celebrate double Purim and went with some friends to Tel Aviv to celebrate regular Purim there. We started the night off as Newsies (after spending the day before running around Jerusalem hunting for Newsies hats and suspenders), but, as the night wore on, an important transformation took place...with our friends we found the Purim Zombie walk (which was more of a Purim zombie mill-around until people got motivated). Gavi had brought some grey, black, and red makeup with her so a few of us got zombie-ified and joined in the fun. With the Fixlers (our married couple friends) we split a hotel room so we could stay out late and not have to worry about finding a ride back to Jerusalem. So, we wandered around and found a number of outdoor dance parties, live bands, and a general sense of merriment. All the while, of course, on the hunt for braaaaaaains.

The next day, we went back to Jerusalem to do it all over again! Jason had helped write the HUC Purim spiel, so we arrived at HUC for the megillah reading early to get everything set up. The spiel was funny (at least to a bunch of slightly-inebriated rabbinical students) and then we joined the HUC folk for a Purim party in the Moadon (read: student center) for drinks, snacks, and music. Once things there wound down, we went for a walk up to the shuk to find a crazy scene. TONS of people in costumes dancing and having a good time. It was allllmost as crazy as Brandeis Purim. Almost.

March

Jason and Annie sample the
first of many Baklava shops

Süleymaniye Mosque!

Once March rolled around, we decided there hadn't been enough excitement and running around in our lives, so we took a weekend trip to Istanbul! We made it out of Jerusalem and flew over with our aforementioned married friends the Fixlers to see the sites, eat the foods, bathe the baths, and take advantage of being on this side of the world. Guided by the wisdom of Rick Steves, we saw some incredible mosques (the Süleymaniye Mosque was our favorite), found some great deals on souvenirs and pottery at the Grand Bazaar, and the Lady Fixler and Jason ate every last drop of baklava in the city.

Left: The Mihrab at the Hagai Sophia.
Right: Rick Steves' suggestion! Istanbul's famous goldsmith, Ahyan.

Once this trip ended, we made it back to Jerusalem right in time for HUC's final tiyul of the year. For this trip, we went up north to Nahariya. We continued our conflict-theme from February and went to learn about and speak with Arab-Israelis. We meant with an imam, visited people's homes, spoke to Jewish and Arab students, and, of course, ate delicious food. It was another important trip that gave another layer of nuance to the ever-complicated issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Our next major event was a wonderful visit from a dear friend from Brandeis and DC. The goal of her trip was to eat as much kosher meat and hummus as physically possible. We were happy to oblige.

Then, after a difficult week, we had a wonderful Pesach celebration. We started with a beautiful seder with friends. Every person was responsible for bringing a dish for the meal, a bottle of wine, and a teaching. The Haggadah was divvied out and every person brought a story, a conversation starter, or an idea they wanted to teach. We arrived at 5:30 and didn't make it home until 2am. For our whole lives we had been saying "Next year in Jerusalem," and this seder truly lived up to the billing.

When chag ended, we went on a Kosher for Passover dinner date. We had delicious Passover pasta that either of us would eat any day of the year and then went a saw an Israeli play called "Kizuz." It was a Knesset farce that was a uniquely Israeli comedy. The next day we got picked up by Gavi's uncle to begin our trip to the North with the Nutkis clan. Once we got back to Jerusalem, we did our best to eat out a few more times and enjoy our last few days of vacation before hitting the homestretch of the school year.

And with that, you are all caught up on the Fensters' journey through the last few months. Whew!