Israel and Family

We visited Israel for a busy 2 weeks. Our visit was chock full of family, special occasions, and showing Christian his first taste of my second home country.

The Wedding

Natalie and Hillal under their Chupah. All of their friends signed and decorated it.

My cousin Natalie got married to her circus partner Hillal in a spectacular circus filled wedding on March 30, 2007. The ceremony was beautiful.

Although you are restricted to have only an Orthodox Jewish wedding if you will be officially recognized as married by the state of Israel, Natalie and Hillal found an excellent orthodox rabbi who let them add things to make the ceremony more palatable to their gender-modern beliefs. The Rabbi sang with his guitar and led the outdoor ceremony with such a fervor that you felt like this was the first wedding he had led and he actually meant it.

The chupah was encircled on all sides by friends and family to witness the occasion on this beautiful Spring day.

Natalie's dress was nothing short of fairy tale princess. Shown here being twirled by Grandpa.

But wait, there's more!....

...The bottom of Natalie's dress is designed to slip off and become a performance tu-tu!

Natalie and Hillal performed the first of 7 excellent circus acts, the rest performed by their circus friend community.

Just Married and jumped on top of your shoulders!

Uli and Noa doing their amazing lip synch/trapeze to Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

Grandpa and his two daughters - my mom, Ellen, and Natalie's mom, Susie

All the Belsons showed up! Bob, Joe, and Ellen

Jerusalem

Our family friend and tour guide Shraga Hecht took Christian, Joe and me on an informative (and argumentative) tour of Jerusalem.

I am always impressed with how many ancient religions and cultures have passed through here and still mark Jerusalem as their holy place today.

View of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock.

Jerusalem sprawls its way over the hills.

The Church of the Rooster. Christ was imprisoned here, and they still have his cell in the basement. This is a statue commemorating the site where Peter betrayed Jesus!

This is Zion Gate, built by the Turks, and pockmarked with Jordan's bullets from the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Most Christians believe that this Church is built on the hill where Jesus Christ was crucified, and it is also where he was buried. As you can probably guess, as this is where he "died for our sins", this is a pretty significant place to them.

The church has been the destination of pilgrimages ever since the 4th century, and we indeed saw many church groups passing through. The most colorful were the groups from Africa, who all wore bright matching African style clothing and head wraps.

The interesting part was that different branches of Christianity disagree as to the exact physical location of Christ's burial within the Church itself. There were many people buried there, so different tombs have been selected by different Churches as to "the" place. The Catholics have one tomb, the Eastern Orthodox have another, etc. Each of these tombs has been marked and decorated separately as "Christ's tomb" by each Church.

This rock is where Christ was supposedly laid after he died.

The Church is pretty dark and medieval feeling inside, so Christian took a lot of cool "Da Vinci Code" photos.

Doesn't she look like a Renaissance painting?

The Wailing Wall is a remnant of an outer courtyard wall from the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

The Second Temple housed the "Holy of Holies", which was an inner sanctuary considered the most sacred place in Judaism. Since the wall is the closest structure of the temple remaining to that inner sacred place, it is considered Holy even today.

Also referred to as the Western Wall, the wall is nicknamed Wailing because Jews still mourn the loss of the rest of the Second Temple.

People come to pray at the wall, as the Orthodox man in the picture is doing. They stuff papers with prayers and wishes into the cracks in the wall. The site is partitioned into girl/boy, according to Judaism's gender traditions.

On the day we visited, Chabad, one of Judaism's internationally orthodox groups, was having a big loud celebration in the center of the Wailing Wall Plaza. We lost Grandpa temporarily, and then we found him, listening to the celebration and saying what a great sound system they had.

Oasis of Peace, officially named Neve Shalom and Wāĥat as-Salām is a cooperative village jointly founded by Israeli Arabs and Jews in an attempt to show that the two peoples can live side by side peacefully, as well as to conduct educational work for peace, equality and understanding between the two peoples (copied from Wikipedia).

My Grandpa has been a big supporter of the village from its beginnings in the early 1970's, and we visit to see how the village is doing every time we visit Israel.

Passover Seder, 2007

Natalie and Hillal invited the family over to their "dome" for the annual family seder.

The dome is a canvas covered geodesic structure. It is a tent like area with a wooden floor where they sometimes practice circus and sometimes use as their living room. Their home is right next door in a trailer at the back of a trailer park.

Mirrel and Jasper setting the table in the dome. They studied in Natalie and Hillal's circus school and came from Amsterdam to be with them on their wedding.

Laura reading the poem she wrote for their wedding to Natalie and Hillal.

Eve and Ira take a nature walk at the back of Natalie's trailer park.

This proves that Dutch people are taller than Jewish people

(back): Bob, Mirrel, and Jasper.
(center): Eve, Ellen, Susie with Manu, Laura, Hillal, Natalie, Grandpa, Ira
(front): Christian, Noah, Alon

The Dome by Night

The Arava, Moshav Edan

Continuing with Israel tour, 2007, my mom, dad and I took Christian to show him where I spent the first four years of my life. On a small Moshav farming community in the middle of the Arava desert.

The Negev desert

The Arava in its brown glory. The black thing is me (Laura)!

These signs point to two major changes that have taken place on the Moshav since we lived there 20 years ago. First, instead of English speaking settlers and volunteers, Thai laborers work the fields, as can be seen by the Thai script at the bottom. And second, the village is going organic! There was even a small organic store that would have been unheard of in the spartan times when we lived there.

Laura returns to her childhood bomb shelter

Hanging out in Nes Ziona

We had some nice down time with Susie and her family in Nes Ziona. Thank you for being such a wonderful hostess, Susie!

My cousin Alon and his son, my newest cousin, Noah!

Hanging out with Noah at the local park

Udi!

No visit to Israel would be complete without catching up with my old buddy Udi. He lived with us in Providence for a bit, so he was eager to show off Israeli cooking. We agreed the falafel was better at East Side Pockets!

Hanging out in Tel Aviv

The Tel Aviv boardwalk

The Israeli Juggling Convention

In honor of Natalie's wedding, we all paid a visit to the 2007 Israeli Juggling Convention. It was held in the Sachne, one of Israel's nicest parks.

Please don't fall, please don't fall, please don't fall!

Matzah Karate and Omer with his fan

I always knew Dad was a top hat kind of guy

GQ David, my step cousin

The best picture of Joe, ever!

Manu, Natalie's dog, trying hard to look dignified next to my brother Joe