An Unforgettable Trip to Israel
“If You Will it, it is No Dream,” wrote Theodore Herzl in his utopian novel, the “Old New Land.” This quote has a personal significance for me coming from Transylvania’s once culturally vibrant multiethnic city, Oradea that has gradually disappeared while growing up during the decades of 1960-80 under the ever growing oppression of the Ceausescu regime.
I’ve studied art from elementary school age and by chance, most of my friends were jewish kids also studying arts and music. Our bonds were strong not only through our education but through our ethnic minority and religious status. While Jews have endured centuries long religious and ethnic bias, and subsequent discriminations, my Hungarian family with its strong catholic roots in the city ( my mother was a former Catholic nun, and we’ve had several Catholic priests in the family including one Canon of the Cathedral Chapter) has experienced ethnic religious discriminations in a majority Romanian population that have been forcibly moved from the Romanian countrysides of various regions to Oradea and other Cities. During these times, Hungarians in Romania were labeled as “Bozgor” that loosely translates as “a person without a homeland” in English.
As children, my friends and I, have always dreamed of distant lands where we could blossom carefree. Overtime, the once abstract lands, we’ve longed for, started taking concrete shapes and forms as my friends after each other immigrated to Israel with their families. Finally I also could leave Romania in 1984 and after some detours arrived to the US in 1988.
My curiosity toward Israel, has evolved through different stages. As a child through the teachings of the Catholic Bible, the Old and New Testaments that for us Catholics has culminated in the teachings and life of Jesus, from the bedtime retellings of Jesus’ parables by my poor mother, who is one of the many lost “brides of christ” who has never recovered from the dissolution of her religious order. My readings of the history of the “Holy Land” and the Crusades, the rich art histories of intersecting and coexisting cultures, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and the stories of the late 19th and 20th century Palestine and later Israel, the “Jewish State.”
Finally early this year the opportunity emerged to visit Israel with my friends, June and Robert Hirsh and some of the members of their congregation.
However, my excitement was dampened when thinking about the tragic events of October 7.
As a person with a decent moral compass and a healthy load of guilt of a lapsed Catholic, I had to question myself, whether is this the right time to go…? A nation is in war, a nation is in mourning, a religion, a culture a way of life is under attack and a people fiercely must defend themselves from the oldest deepest hatred of mankind that is on the rise again…
When we arrived to Ben Gurion airport, the mood was somber and my understanding was that tourism has been very low since the hostage crisis begin.
While I am used to be the outsider, I am grateful for our small group that they made me comfortable and an integral member of our group. Our exceptionally well prepared guide, Uri’s enthusiasm, his visible investment in his culture, history and love of country made his presentations engaging and very informative. I enjoyed the variety of programs that provided a great cross section of Israeli life, culture and history.
While most non-jewish tourists visiting Israel, usually seeks out the unparalleled religious, historic and archeological sites, take a stroll through the markets. I feel especially lucky that as part of the visiting congregation I had a chance to see various aspects of daily life, for instance, visiting and learning about the life, goals and aspirations of Beduin women hoping to improve their own and the life of their nation while facing the resistance of their traditional culture.
Meeting and talking to Ethiopian Jews, and hearing their journey to Israel first hand that we’ve seen only through the lenses and movie versions of Hollywood.
While visiting the Givat Haviva Center for Shared Society and the Ein HaShofet kibbutz I was thinking that it should be mandatory for the members of both parties of the US Congress to take some classes at the Shared society center and working in the kibbutz for a few months to learn from the Israelis how to build a more tolerant and emphatic society.
Listening to music, poetry inspired by the homeland and life of people. It was refreshing to see and hear the story of the grassroots rehabilitation center that formed in the week of the October 7 tragedy.
Living on a farm upstate New York, teaches you caring for the land and I am always curious to learn how other people in other countries and cultures deal with land management.
We stopped at Neot Kedumin or “Pleasant Pastures.” It is not only a nature preserve, it has been an attempt to recreate a biblical landscape. The project goes back to the Ottoman era before WWI and is attributed two immigrants from Russia whose son has taken over the project and the land reclamation is an ongoing project since. They have built reservoirs, planting trees and restore the native vegetation. Our group also planted trees here. They have also restored baths, and wells according to period descriptions.
In Haifa we stayed right at the Baha’i garden. It is a praying place and is open for everyone. It is a perfectly manicured terrace garden to isolate visitors from the urban environment and provide a quiet place to pray and meditate.
After Haifa we stopped in Tel-Aviv the great cosmopolitan city on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. I’ve dreamed to visit the city and see glimpses of its world renown Bauhaus architecture. The style was a great complement to the so called “socialist-Zionist” era and was a respond to the sudden housing shortage created by a large exodus of Jews from Germany after Hitler’s power grab.
For a change we returned to antiquity visiting the Roman sites at Cesarea, including the Hippodrome.
Our visit to Sderot the town near Gaza and the Nova festival site are the two places when I got the closest to see the worse side of humanity. Newspapers and television reports just cannot substitute the personal experience of seeing the sites of the grizzly massacre of some 1200 innocent people, young and old. Lives, loves and hopes were annihilated. The sea of heartbreaking memorials reminded my our old neighborhood of Carrol Gardens in New York after 9/11.
We were there when the release of the hostages has begun as part of the cease fire agreement. There were nationwide jubilation in Israel. I think no other nation on earth can appreciate more the miracle of life than Israelis.
I am back home in the US now. Trying to organize the fresh memories of my travel. Looking at the hundreds of photos, they seem somehow incomplete without the smells, of the places we visited, the taste of the food we ate, the sounds of the streets, the markets or the sea, and without the touch of the old stones and fabrics worn by the Beduin women.
