Greetings! It's the end of the second day in Prague. Tomorrow (Monday) we fly off to Budapest. We started out today at 9 am from the hotel, walking over the the Jewish quarter. It's just five minutes from the hotel (great location -- President Hotel, and great hotel). the first building we entered -- the walls are all whitewashed inside, and then the names of the 80,000 Czech Jews who were murdered by the Nazis are written by hand in alphabetical order through the entire building. They are arranged alphabetically by surname; and then each first name is listed with birth [View Full Entry]

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Well, it's 11:30 pm on Saturday and we are toured, fed and I'm guessing all asleep except me! The flight from Atlanta to Prague was uneventful. Hurray! We arrived only a 1/2 hour late (though got off the ground an hour and a half late because plane arrived late to Atlanta). Met our guide, Janusz as we came out from baggage/customs. Wow -- was Czech passport control nice, quick and easy.. Got right on our bus and into the city to the President's Hotel. HIGHLY recommend this hotel. Clean, nice rooms, updated. (Great shower.....) And GREAT location. Met up with our [View Full Entry]

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August 1 (emailed on August 2) Dear Readers, We arrived! It’s Friday, the day we were scheduled to be in Prague. Instead, we are sitting in the Atlanta airport. Our flight took off from JFK around 4:30 pm on Thursday for the non-stop overseas flight, and it was true. We had only one stop. Back on the ground at JFK an hour later. On take-off the plane lost an engine (not as bad as it sounds…but we shook a bit as the pilot adjusted.). Back at JFK there were 300 of us to rebook and Czech airline was already closed down [View Full Entry]

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In a little over a week, 10 of us from Temple Beth El will be heading over to Europe for an encounter with Jewish history in its glory and its tragedy. We will be visiting the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland - with a short stop in Slovakia. We will see old cemeteries, landmark synagogues, and Holocaust sites. We will have two Shabbat evenings with the revitalized progressive Jewish congregations: one in Prague and the other in Krakow. We will hear tales of the Golem; say memorial prayers at Aushwitz-Birkenau; remember the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto; take a brief ride [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to the next phase of this blog. You guessed it: another fantastic group from Temple Beth El of Northern Valley (Closter, New Jersey) is about to take off for Israel. This time we are a total of 18 -- that stands for "Chai" - life. Well, it will be a lively group. Three empty nester couples, and three families. With children ages 6, 8, 13, 13, 13, and 17. Pretty cool.... The first half of the group is going a few days early to do a pre-tour to Eilat and Jordan, specifically to see Petra. It will be my 3rd [View Full Entry]

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David here. Rabbi Hachen does not know that I am doing this but I ended up with such great pictures I had to post them. Our last day had some of the worst rain of the week. Fortunately, our stops were inside. Our first stop was our Tzedakah project. It was at a Jaffa Institute food warehouse in Tel Aviv where we packed packages for distribution. We did it with Harvard, Princeton and Yale kids from the Birthright tour. It was nice to interact with them but I loved watching Rachel look up to them. She even asked Nina and I [View Full Entry]

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Shabbat as it should be: a day of rest! All of us still at the hotel happened to meet up at breakfast -- around 8:30-9:00 am. Great buffet breakfast, just wished I wasn't still stuffed from pasta at Steve's apartment last night. After breakfast met up with Tami's brother who lives near Ashdod. He drove into Tel Aviv with his wife and little boy -- who is just over a year old. So cute! We met in my room for about an hour talking Hebrew about family, his work, where he's lived, etc. What a nice guy. He's helping Tami (and [View Full Entry]

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Shalom again! This is Debby today. I'm writing this a bit later, but covering all the happenings on Friday. We started with breakfast, of course, but today I skipped it. How much can one eat? (A lot.....) Then onto the bus at 8:30 (yes -- finally a day to get a bit more sleep...) We headed off first to see where Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated. For Americans reading this, it is an even more significant moment in Israeli history than the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Rabin was not only the head of the government, but he was just [View Full Entry]

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David again. We left the Kibbutz at Kfar Blum this morning and as we looked up into the mountains of the Golan, we saw all the snow from after we came down yesterday. Rabbi Hachen actually heard that other groups that went up today got stuck in the snow. Except for a couple of days of rain, we have had some decent weather this trip but it has been chilly. Luckily, we packed correctly. Our first stop today was Caesarea, a port city with a lot of history of ruins. Herrod first built it but a lot of the ruins were [View Full Entry]

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Hi!It's Sarah Paster. Today was so much fun! We woke up a lot later, which was nice, and then we went on this awesome Jeep tour of the Golan hights. It was a bit cold outside, but since my Jeep (my family and Stamberg family) brought 3 blankets and 1 comforter, we were good. We drove through a Kibbutz, and then followed the path of the IDF during the 6-day war. Cool things we saw were a hot-spring, a bunker, and lots of cows. Hi! Now it's Sarah's sister, Becky. After the Jeep tour was over, we walked through a nature [View Full Entry]

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