Traveling to Paris, London or Madrid for the first time is breathtaking — the people, the culture, the food, majestic landmarks, scenery, you name it. It’s brand new, and unforgettable.
However, a Jewish person’s first excursion to Israel carries singular emotional weight. Many are not merely tantalized but forever changed.
In the beginning, Israeli breakfasts confound those who subsist on one egg, a piece of toast and coffee. The sight of soldiers strolling in the street is initially disturbing. Zionist feelings are often vague, even non-existent.
Then something happens.
Hearts break when El Al lifts off for the long trip home. All we can think of is returning again and again.
In honor of Israel at 71, the Intermountain Jewish News solicited first-time accounts of being in the land of Israel. Our readers traveled in the company of their families, congregations or on missions.
One woman compared her inaugural visit to her first kiss. Another recalled a moonless sky, the aroma of fruit trees and wind wafting through a full head of hair.
A few touched on Israel’s infamous bureaucracy but momentary frustrations did not survive the land’s hypnotic spell.
It all came down to love.
Remember?
Marlin Barad
My first visit to Israel was truly like my first kiss — I’ll never forget it! This Israeli kiss happened in June, 1973. My husband Ed had just graduated law school and his parents gave us this trip as a present.
Every rock, tree and building was a thrilling discovery. I couldn’t get over the fact that every person I met (even the garbage truck guy) was Jewish!
I was literally walking the Bible, teasing out the different strands of Jews, absorbing the food and culture in great gulps, and delighting in the sheer wonder of witnessing the old perfectly overlaid with the new.
How could I not fall in love with this amazing phoenix of a country that is still enriching my life today?
Rabbi Raymond Zwerin
A moonless night in June, 1960. Our ship, The Theodor Herzl, completed its three-day voyage from Naples to Haifa and docked a little after midnight. My college classmate and I had made the trip from Los Angeles to Rome two weeks earlier to have time to tour Israel before embarking on our year of study in our Eternal City.
Having purchased Lambretta scooters in Rome, we awaited their arrival from the ship’s hold. About 2:30 a.m., satchels secured behind with bungee cords, we set out for Jerusalem.
The roads were empty, the evening warm and lovely, wind blowing the hair I still had, the chirps of birds and crickets, the scent of fruit trees all around. I thought I had arrived in Eden.
As the sun’s rays were breaking over the eastern hills, we came over the last crest from Sha’ar HaGai — the old Gate of the Valley road whose tank and truck skeletons were reminders of 1948.
The city spread in a welcome hug before us, golden from end to end. It felt like a homecoming.
Hazel Melmed
It was a dark and stormy night at the end of December, 1965. The three-day ferry voyage from France to Haifa bringing Herzl and me to Israel to make aliyah was rough. I was in the early stage of my pregnancy and spent the trip sea sick and unable to get off my bed.
Getting through Israeli customs was a problem. The papers allowing us to bring in our small Fiat car, which came with us on the ferry, were apparently incomplete.
An argument ensued.
We asked the officials where they thought we could escape to in a car surrounded by enemy Arabs. We promised we would return the next day.
They were not impressed with two new immigrants from South Africa coming to throw in their lot with the people of Israel.
My husband angrily pointed at a picture of Theodor Herzl on the wall and admonished the puzzled custom officer: “If Herzl were alive, he would be ashamed of what they were doing to us.”
Nothing helped. We had to come back from Tel Aviv the next day to complete formalities.
It was a rough start, but it could only get better. And it did.
Emma Wynn
Last summer I was lucky enough to go on a once in a lifetime three-week journey through Israel. I traveled with around 50 kids and five counselors.
B’nai B’rith Beber Camp offers an incredible opportunity for kids going into their junior year of high school. Traveling the world with people I have grown up with is something I will never forget.
When we arrived in Israel, I didn’t feel like I was on a vacation. I felt at home. Walking around the streets of Tel Aviv, I noticed how diverse Israel is. Beautiful people roamed the streets and often said shalom to us, which made us feel welcome.
The most important thing I learned from my trip is perseverance. In a place that receives so much hate, the people were smiling, dancing and enjoying life.
I never realized how much Israel would mean to me, and all I want to do is go back and relive my Israel trip.
David Sanders
The year was 1969. My parents, ardent Zionists, had never been to Israel. They boarded El Al with their five children for a summer-long stay.
We traveled the length and breadth of Israel, from the chill of the freezing waters of Banias Falls to the hot briny waters of the Dead Sea. Those were a few of the day trips.
The daily routine, which fills me with joy 50 years later, was awakening early each morning to shop at the local makolet for our family breakfast; an assortment of fruit, milk, cheese and hot, freshly baked bread.
To my amazement the owner of the shop would notate our family’s tab in his ledger. This was a new experience for me in how people did business.
Three of my siblings and their families live in Israel. And all of us were shaped in our love for the land by the seeds planted in this initial summer vacation (oh — we also planted trees).
Loretta Cawelti
I remember . . .
Traveling all night and never closing my eyes!
Masada
A light show at David’s Tower
The Temple Mount, entering shoeless and gasping
Lighting Shabbat candles at the King David Hotel
Masada
I remember a dark, rushed trip through an alley in Jerusalem.
Two guards telling us to stay together, hurry and “be quiet.”
We never knew what we were doing in that alley.
I was surprised to see children accompanied by armed soldiers on school trips.
Masada
I also remember . . .
Weddings in the park on Tuesdays
Israelis celebrating Shabbat, dancing near the sea
Standing at the Wall, my head resting on the warm stone, my eyes closed
Listening only to the cooing of the doves
My promise to return — and I did.
Masada
Jean Guthery
My first trip to Israel, and the beginning of my love affair with that tiny state on the Mediterranean and its prickly outside-big-heart-inside-never-again moxie, was in 1984.
I traveled with my husband, Peter (of blessed memory), my stepson, Steve, then 15, and a mixed group of congregants from Temple Sinai and Plymouth Congregational Church. Our group leaders were Rabbi Raymond Zwerin of Temple Sinai and Rev. Dr. Stuart Haskins of Plymouth Church.
My most memorable moments included the thorough interviewing technique of the young Israelis prior to boarding and their demand to open our luggage and check for tampering; “Hatikvah” coming over the plane’s sound system as we descended into Ben Gurion airport, and my tears; and my husband’s exclamation, “The good guys have the guns!”
Iremember Israel’s incredible archaeology at Caesarea and Masada; the question a Plymouth Church congregant asked upon seeing Israeli school children touring Masada with their armed guards: “What is that!” — and our guide’s matter-of-fact reply: “That is an M-16 rifle.”
The museums. Israeli breakfasts. Yad Vashem. And tears.
We returned in 2005 when our daughter Lisa studied at Ben Gurion University. We toured an Air Force base, and the IDF officers bid us goodbye with that incredible Israeli confidence:
“Come back. We will be here.”
Am Yisrael Chai!
David Japha
My first trip to Israel was in 1974; I was 14 years old. I went with my mother, may she rest in peace, and my sister Lynn Geller, who was 11. There we met one of my brothers Moshe (Eddie then), who was studying at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
We went for two weeks in March to attend my oldest brother Alvin’s wedding. He was living in Haifa (still does). Married 45 years now, he and Pnina have three children and 16 grandchildren, all living in Israel.
In 1974, things were a bit different. On the night before my brother’s wedding, he wanted to speak with Pnina on the phone. He had no phone in his apartment, and of course there were no cell phones. So we had to go to an outdoor pay phone in the pouring rain.
One did not use coins to operate pay phones in Israel those days, only tokens called asimonim, which were purchased (as were the majority of life’s necessities) from the Post Office. I stood in the rain holding a bag of asimonim as Alvin spoke endlessly to Pnina.
Of course we saw the sites, and were reminded of the Yom Kippur War, fought only six months earlier. There was so much building. Things have changed dramatically since then, which I clearly see in my home in Jerusalem now.
We are grateful on the eve of celebrating 71 years of the modern state of Israel. May Hashem continue to shower us not only with fond memories but a healthy and glorious future ahead in a rebuilt Jerusalem, bimeheira veyameinu — speedily, in our days.
Nora Schrutt
In October, 1997, I joined up with Rabbi Zwerin and some congregants and took off for Israel for the first time. We formed strong bonds for the land, as well as for each other on this trip. That special connection, which bonded everyone seeing Israel for the first time, was magical.
We viewed all the sights we visited through our “first timer” eyes, which enhanced everything.
That 1997 visit was my first trip, but that feeling of “first” happened whenever I returned to Israel in the ensuing years.
I look forward to each and every new experience there.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News