This past summer, my husband and I had an amazing opportunity to go on Honeymoon Israel. On a Honeymoon Israel (HMI) trip, you can “spend nine exhilarating, romantic and memorable days exploring Israel with your partner, while building friendship and community with other couples from your city.” The experience was like nothing else we had ever done. We bonded, explored, and made friends with couples like us who are now like family. Over six months has gone by since we got back from Israel, and we still get together with the other couples and enjoy the community. HMI welcomes couples with at least one Jewish partner early in their committed relationship. On our trip, almost every couple was interfaith, so we really had a lot in common. My husband and I were part of the first Atlanta trip to go on HMI.

During the trip, they encouraged us to take notes and journal about our experiences. Almost every night I would write down what we did that day and what I thought about it. I had planned to write a story about it and hopefully getting it published in the Atlanta Jewish Times, since I’m a freelance writer for that newspaper. After we returned home, I started writing a bulleted list of everything we did while referring to my HMI program we were given. It ended up being nine pages long. I used that to write my story and spent months working on it. I edited it down and then pitched the idea to my editor at the Atlanta Jewish Times. He decided to publish it and it went to print late December of 2016. My story was called “Honeymoon Israel: 9 Days to Last a Lifetime.” Click here to read the four-page spread in the travel section of the AJT (pages 62-65). Click here to read the online article.

There were so many things we did that I did not have room to share in my article, so I will share more of what we did in this list below.

Jerusalem:

• When we first arrived, we had a welcome dinner with the New York Group. We heard from Avraham Infeld that evening as well as the next morning. Avraham Infeld is the President Emeritus of Hillel – the Foundation for Jewish Campus life. He talked about the five-legged table idea and that we are all family, the Jews. He touched on Jewish identity as well. “My vision for the Jewish People is to find a way to be unified without being uniform. We can achieve this vision by constructing a “five-legged table” which allows each person to choose at least three of the following legs to express their Jewish identity: memory, family, covenant, Israel and Hebrew.”
  – Avraham Infeld
• We joined our friends at a bar on Ben Yihuda Street. We walked down through the shook (market) and it was very interesting seeing all the bars and the people. During the day, the shook is an actual market where they sell fruits, veggies, spices, etc. It looks completely different I hear. I didn’t get a chance to go during the day.

Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

• Touring this museum was very emotional for me, but I learned a lot.
• The Avenue of the Righteous is dedicated to righteous gentiles who helped save/hide Jews during the Holocaust. There are trees dedicated to them throughout the complex and throughout Israel.
• The Children’s Memorial: when you walk through it, it is like you are walking a night sky and see the stars. There is an audio recording that constantly plays the name of the children who died in the Holocaust along with where they were from. It is a very emotional piece of the museum.
  

  

Sea of Galilee:

• We stayed at a hotel on a Kibbutz called Kibbutz Ginosar. We learned about the history of Kibbutz life and what it is like now. We learned about the women’s revolution regarding the children. It was interesting to know that children in a Kibbutz used to be raised by everyone. All money and goods were shared with everyone. It was very socialist. Now, about one third of Kibbutzim in Israel are still socialist.
• We went to Mt. Bental and saw a panoramic view of the Golan Heights and looked from afar into Syria and Lebanon. The next day, we were told there was bombing in Syria that would have been visible from the Golan Heights.
• We also went rafting down the Jordan River. There weren’t very many rapids, but it was still fun. We got stuck on rocks/ran into the shore and trees. It was very shallow water due to not enough rain. (I saw a picture of the Jordan River recently and it is much deeper now due to winter rains).

Tel Aviv:

• On the way to Tel Aviv, we stopped and overlooked the ocean and went to Ceasarea, one of the land of Israel’s most important cities in the Roman period.
• In Ceasarea, we saw the Herodian Theater, which is still in use today. The acoustics are awesome. Then, we saw the new excavations along the Mediterranean shore. It was so pretty to be right by the water. We put our toes in the sand and you could even see the tiled mosaic floors of the what was once the King’s quarters that lead to the sea. We also saw the arena where they raced horses. Our tour guide told us the history and made it feel like we were actually there in Roman times watching a horse race.
• We did a beach cleanup project with the Zalul environmental organization. Zalul (“clear” in Hebrew) is one of Israel’s leading environmental NGOs. They are dedicated to protecting the seas and rivers in Israel.
• We picked up trash on the beach. The sand was so hot, we had to bury our feet in the sand so they would not burn. Unfortunately, we got so much tar on our feet from the beach that we had to scrub it off at the hotel. I feel sorry for the maid who had to clean the tar residue from our bathtub!
• While shopping in the Carmel market, we saw a woman in a shop down the street made a commotion. We think she was trying to steal. My husband saw a man kick the woman and then she caused a fight. We were very uncomfortable and left the shop as soon as we paid. We don’t know what they were yelling about because it was all in Hebrew.
• The evening we flew out of Israel, we ate at a Georgian-Jewish restaurant called Racha for a late farewell dinner. It was in a historic building in Neve Zedek. It was so ornately and originally decorated with fine china dishes. They gave us dish after dish after dish. There was a lot of meat. I thought it was funny that they said “Chicken is not meat, its salad!” It was a ton of food and probably wasn’t the best meal to have right before a long plane ride. But, we enjoyed it and they had good hospitality.

We had such an amazing tour guide for our trip, Koren Eisner. He was very knowledgeable and taught us so many things. Even his voice was soothing to hear. While I was writing my story for the AJT, I asked around for quotes from various HMI staff and from Koren. He sent me a quote as a recording, and it was great to hear his voice. I couldn’t use it in my story because it was on a subject that I didn’t write about, but I thought I’d end this blog post with his quote. I asked Koren, how does the HMI tour differ from other tours that you usually do?

He said, “In my of my tour groups that I get, people are not just sightseeing, but are searching for something spiritually, religiously, culturally, historically, through a Jewish perspective, through a Christian perspective, through a Muslim perspective, etc. So, that is pretty much a motif. But, with the Honeymoon Israel groups, there is a certain sense of urgency because of the unique stage that the participants are in — getting married, having their first kids. These issues are on the table and need to be addressed. This sense of urgency creates lots of creativity. People come to these tours needing to work, needing to participate, to really have their own spiritual quest as individuals and as couples, and to the community. That is a very powerful thing, the productivity.

Another aspect is the way that people seek one another. You see the friendships, the bonding between people that happen in such a short time but go very deep because of the many things that participants share with one another. I guess it is the need to be a part of the greater community. That’s really inspiring to see. I’m truly grateful that I can play a role in such an amazing project.”