DECEMBER TEMPLE TOUR - 2006

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Just a few days to go and another group from Temple Beth El will be heading off to Israel for a tour. As we did back in February of 2005, we hope to have access to internet and post entries so friends and family can follow us on this journey. We will arrive just in time on Friday, December 22, for the last night of Chanukah! There are 9 of us from here in New Jersey; we are meeting up with three other families - a couple from Baltimore, a mother/daughter from Alexandria, VA, and a family of four from Prince Edward Island in Canada. There will be 6 young people in the group -- from ages 8 to 15, but mostly 12-13 year olds.

We are taking some special items on the journey: baby/children's clothes for poor families in Sderot, Israel (near Gaza); tzedaka (money) to buy baby formula for needy children; and dozens of paper butterflies decorated by children from our Temple. These are for the Butterfly Project: a project to collect 1-1/2 million paper cut-out butterflies to represent the 1-1/2 million children who were murdered in the Holocaust. As this week's news is filled with reports of the conference of Holocaust deniers in Iran, our act of "remembering" is even more poignant.

Please bookmark this site and check back from December 22 - January 1. We hope to keep a group diary (volunteers taking turns each day), and then transcribe those note into this blog every day or two.

Our basic itinerary is:
1. We begin in Jerusalem for four days: including a Shabbat to relax, attend services at Hebrew Union College and walk the Old City; two days of touring sites in Jerusalem both in the Old City and out at Yad Vashem Museum and Herzl Cemetery; and a day at Masada/Dead Sea - including a hike up Ein Gedi.
2. Then we have two nights in the north (Galilee), with sites on the way (Beit Shean ancient Roman ruins and Sea of Galilee (also know as the Kinneret). Up north we go to Tel Dan, Safed, and jeep tour on the Golan Heights. On way back from the north we explore the archeological park at Caesarea (Roman ruins) along the coast of the Mediterranean.

3. We end up in Tel Aviv for four nights: Shabbat at the Progressive/Reform congregation of Beit Daniel; touring the city; visiting Jaffa and its artists' quarter; walking the promenade along the beach; participating in a food-packing tzedaka activity; side trip to the Ayalon Institute and getting our hands dirty in an archeological dig at Beit Guvrin.

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