בס”ד
When
I’ve told people that Ima and Abba coming to visit, the most common first
reaction is “this late in the year?!”
But they came and they’re here, and we spent some quality time together
this past weekend.
For
the first time, they decided they wanted to stay at the lowest place on Earth -
the Dead Sea - for a night, so after we did all that I described in the last
post, we headed out to Yam Ha-Melach.
We stayed at the Isrotel, which turns out to be a really nice hotel. Most of the guests at the hotel were
Russian and walked around wearing bathrobes; kinda sketchy – Ima jokingly
suspected them to be the Russian mafia.
Dinner was totally unreal – a buffet of different meats, some good
desserts, and wine from the tap, which was actually really good. After dinner, we walked around the area
for a little bit, checked out some stores. One store was selling “Rambam Soap” – I found that to be
kind of intriguing. Ima was
thinking of buying some foot cream for someone but it was labeled “foot
deodorant,” and that just sounds kind of wrong.
Anyway,
Friday morning Abba and I went into the sea for a little bit and Ima got a
massage at the spa. We met
Slovakians and a crazy Australian lady; the former was on their first trip to
Israel, and the latter comes every year for treatment. Abba loves striking up conversation
with random people, as I saw saw all weekend. I guess that makes him a good rabbi. From there we headed to Jerusalem,
where we were for Shabbat. We
stayed at the Dan Panorama on Keren HaYesod – nice pick. In the afternoon, we walked around the
Ben Yehuda area a bit, and we ate at Burgers’ Bar. We went to schul at the Great Synagogue – the chazzan
davened nicely, but they did a ten-minute rendition of Sefirat Ha-Omer, which
was kind of unnecessary from my point of view. Then we ate dinner with Dov and Esther Genehovski; we were
surprised because they served fleishig, which they don’t do Friday night
normally. Ima hadn’t seen them in
over four years, though, and we all enjoyed seeing each other, so much so that
we didn’t leave until close to midnight.
On
Shabbat morning, we davened at Shira Hadasha. For me it wasn’t anything more special than I’m used to –
very nice for the most part – and Ima and Abba enjoyed it, though didn’t see it
as their best experience there. We
ate lunch at Agron – for once actually good food – and napped at the
hotel. Family friends who live in
Modi’in came to visit, and then Abba and I went to Mincha at The Great
Synagogue. Mincha was followed by
Se’udat Shlishit, and we sat with Rabbi Freedman and had a good time
there. After Shabbat, we went to
Ben Yehuda for shopping and that was the extent of the night really.
On
Sunday morning, I davened at the CY and then went to get a haircut and beard
trim. Afterwards, we all met up at
the CY so I could introduce my parents to teachers and people I learned with,
though a lot of people weren’t there since the Shabbaton returned late the
night before. I introduced Ima and
Abba to Tito Bravo, and then we took a trip to Poland, and by that I mean Me’ah
She’arim. They had some gift and
jewelry shopping to do, and I also wanted to do music shopping. When we got back to the center of town,
I introduced them to Aldo for some gelato, and then we went back to the
hotel. We had dinner at Joy on
Emek R’faim, and then a little later I went back to Yerucham.
It
hasn’t been since I was two that I’ve shared an Israel experience with my
parents, so it was nice to spend the weekend. I’ll be going back tomorrow.
Kol
Tuv,
Judah
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