In Israel for Dani's Bar-Mitzvah

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At this point I don't even know if anyone is still reading this, but I owe this blog still a few final posts. Let me try to recap briefly the last few days at the Dead-Sea.

Thursday morning - chol hamo'ed Succoth, we took a few buses early in the morning, the buses took us to Masadah, we davened Shacharit/Hallel/Mussaf at the top of Masadah, Gadi read the Torah beautifully and the experience overall was unbelievable. We all remarked how otherwordly the event was, praying while a strong desert wind was blowing, surrounded by an unbelievable view. On the one side the Dead-Sea with Jordan behind it, on the other just a desert as far as the eye can see. And all of us with our "talitot" and "arba minim" in our hands. A wonderful moment.






After climbing down we were met by a wonderful brunch and finally the buses back to the hotel.

In the late afternoon we took buses again to a wonderful place called "Erets Bereishit". We were met by a number of people dressed in what can only be termed "biblical" garb, a band playing "Mizrahi" music and hors-d'oeuvres. The children had a number of creative activities to occupy them. One set of dancing, and then we entered what can only be called a "biblical" living space (+ succah in this case) for a sumptuous meal. A few more sets of dances, wonderful speeches, hilarious songs, a somewhat surreal speech by Dani in honour of his best friend Gadi (let's just say you had to be there), a guy doing fire-stunts, more food, more dances......we ended up getting back to the hotel at 1.00 am, exhausted but having just enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.


We spent Friday at the pool and in the Dead-Sea. Some of us even got "muddy".

Motsae Shabat and Sunday morning were major social moments for adults and kids, and finally on Sunday night we flew back home.



I will continue to post the huge quantity of pictures we have on the other site, so I suggets you check there regularly.

PS: I had to finish with another restaurant review, of course. On Sunday night, before going to the airport, we dined in Hertzliya, at the Marina, at a restaurant called Bistro 56. Dani and I once again had one of these delectable steaks covered with goose-liver, you get the idea. Pretty much everything on the menu looked wonderful, but this is NOT a place for little children (Arielle had one of her allergic reactions to her desert, we had some "fun" as you can imagine, but all ended well and we made it to the airport on time).

posted by jsaar @ 4:44 PM