Every tour I have taken has a certain feel to it. Some were inspirational, some were solemn, some were moving, and some were emotional. If I had to describe this in one word, I would say, this tour was FUN! Our tour guide today was Yoni Meyers, who I went with last week to Tzafat. Yoni is a very friendly guy who is full of simcha and always smiling. We took the same route at the beginning on the same highway. Here is what is so cool. Each tour guide tells little facts about the area we are traveling in. I was worried that I was going to hear the same things I just heard yesterday. However, Yoni had tons of new things to tell us. It seems like learning about Eretz Yisroel is a lot like learning Torah. There is ALWAYS something more to learn.
Our first stop for the day was the city of Yaffo. We walked up a up a hill that overlooked the whole Tel Aviv coastline.
Gorgeous, gorgeous view. Right next to where we were standing were three canons. These canons are the actual canons that Napoleon used!
We saw a really unusual piece of art. This is an arch that is the artist's interruption of three Biblical events.
The right side of this doorway show Jacob's Ladder with the angels on it. The left side shows Akaidas Yitzchok, the binding of Isaac. Across the top you see the story of Yehoshua when he walked around Yericho blowing the shofar for seven days (and then the walls came tumbling down). Following the winding path down, we saw another arch that was from Mitzriyam.
Then we went into the old city of Yaffo. We saw an orange tree that is part of a piece of art ... It is inside a clay pot, and it dies because the roots have no where to grow. So, they just stick another one in it!!
I saw a lot of other interesting trees today too. I saw a fig tree that was just starting to have fig buds. (The leaves fall off in the winter.)
I saw an olive tree. I saw the same type of tree that Yonah sat under, a kikayon tree.
Makes a lot of sense they grow in abundance there, seeing as this is the port that Yonah left from. We saw the Yaffo port too.
Then we were on our to Tel Aviv. Our first stop was lunch at Migdal Shalom. (This was once the tallest building in Israel.) I was thrilled to finally meet up with my friend Nitza.
We always spoke about how I was going to come and visit her in Israel, but I didn't really think I was ever going to come here. We went up to the second floor and saw a huge layout of the city of Tel Aviv. (I didn't take pictures.) Then you walk around to this next room and get totally freaked out. There are 6 poets hanging around. Not live ones; they are made of wax. They were so lifelike.
Seriously, I really thought that one of them was going to get up and say, "Haha, ,we aren't wax, we are real"! They were that realistic. We saw Dizengoff's house where the read the Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948.
Real cool fact about that ... The British were leaving the country on the 15th. However, Ben Gurion didn't want to do it on Shabbos, which is why today Yom Ha'atzmaot can move around. If Hay Iyar falls out on a shabbos, then they push it up to the Thursday before. Gotta love that!
While we were driving along, Yoni decided to do some other things we us. We saw this totally cool fountain in Dizengoff's Circle.
The fountain sits on top of the road (on like a bridge).
We went to this really cool little area called Sarona. The Alter Rebbe once said that "We should live with the times". It just so happens that in this week's parsha it says,
| 8And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst | | חוְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָֽׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם: |
Sarona is a little area that was started by a group of non-Jews who called themselves Templers. They were people who broke away from Christianity. They still considered themselves to be Christians, but they didn't feel the need to go to church or do other things. They considered their bodies to be like a temple, hence the name Templers. What hashgacha protis to learn about these people, the Templers, on the week when we learn about this in parsha. This is probably what they based their whole philosophy on. They set up this settlement, and brought with them a lot of technology that Israel didn't yet have. (We are talking in the late 1800s here.) There is a windpump that they set up to pull fresh drinking water from under the ground. (Did you know that there is always fresh water underground near the sea? I didn't.)
Here is the way they did laundry ... It was a three step process and it took a while to get it all done before they could have hang their clothes up to dry. So totally makes me appreciate just tossing my clothes into a machine and pushing a button.
These people came to Israel from Germany.
At the beginning of World War 2, the British didn't want them there, thinking they may help their enemy, the Germans. So they shipped the whole group off to Australia. After the war, they came back, but then they left and abandoned their area. In '48 Israel took over this abandoned area. Fast forward to recent years ... Tel Aviv needed to widen a road. People pitched a fit that you can't destroy our history. So rather than knock the buildings down, or take them apart and rebuild them, THEY MOVED THEM! They moved each and every house. They dug under the foundations, lifted them up, and then used rollers to move them over. This house was moved about 25 feet away from where it was before.
The really neat thing about this whole area is that it just opened up last year. We also saw an very creative movie about the olive press that is there.
It was getting late and it was time to move onto Bnei Brak. I have no idea what I was expecting. I've read Chaim Walder's books, and I was really interesting in seeing where a lot of the stories took place. One of the streets we turned onto is one that I immediately recognized as being a story. We got to where the men were going to daven mincha, and the ladies took off to explore the stores. This was after I had bargained with Yoni to buy us ladies some more time. However, we were terribly disappointed with what we saw. Nothing really interested us that much. We did find a robe shop having a sale. However, the prices were not so great. The robes I liked were about $125 in American money, and that is the same price I can order the same robe online for. Sadly, we left there with no purchases.
Located in Bnei Brak is the Ponevezh Yeshiva. The bus dropped us off, and we walked up towards it. As we left the stairs, and started to approach the building, I heard the most beautiful sound in the whole entire world. Very vaguely we could hear a sorta like buzzing sound. As we walked closer to the entrance, the sound grew louder and louder. At the entrance, it was the loudeest, and we could hear it coming from the building behind. What is this sound? The sound of hundreds and hundreds of boys learning Torah. Truly music to my ears. I am not zocher to live near a yeshiva. If you do, then please do not take this sound for granted! The building behind us is the Kolel, where married men learn. The building in front of us is where the yeshiva boys learn. The men went up to the yeshiva to look, and we ladies peeked in at the kolel.
The place where we were was high up. Like the second story of a building, so no one saw me taking a picture of them.
Last stop of the night was Rav Chaim Kanievsky's house. I couldn't get the color to be correct. The overhead light was yellow. The building was white.
And that ended a super fun day trip to Yaffa, Tel Aviv, and Bnei Brak. I would like to point out that this a brand new trip that Artzeinu is offering. We were actually the fifth group to get to take this trip, which is why Yoni was able to tweak it a little for us.
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