Vacation Day - Guess one thing we did!

Yossi and I spent a last vacation day together. First I got a haircut here in the neighborhood (comparable price and quality to what I get at home) since I had the time and my calendar for the next two weeks is filling quickly. I also downloaded some of the photos from my camera and got them organized. Around 10 Yossi picked me up and we went out for the day. We weren't sure what we'd end up doing. The only firm plan was an appointment at the Palmach Museum for 3:30 in the afternoon.

It's really hot here in the sun during the day, so it's really not great weather for just plain sightseeing or walking around and getting to know a new place. So, Yossi had heard from a mutual friend about a winery near the airport in the town of Yehud (Chilag; seriously, it was not my idea, for the first time). We called, they were open, so we went to check it out. We spent about 90 minutes there, much of it with the husband of the winemaker. Orna, the winemaker was out for the day. Her training is largely Italian, so the style of the wines is fairly unique for Israel - nice, but not exactly what I look for in a wine. She is very slow and deliberate with her wines, leaving them in the barrel for 2 or three years, then in the bottle for at least another year before she releases them - right now she is selling her 2005 wines. We tasted a 2007 Cabernet from the barrel that shows a lot of potential - It was too smoky for my taste, but time in the bottle later should temper that. We also tried a Merlot - again, not high on my list, a 2006 in the bottle that will improve with age, but I'm not rushing to buy any.

We got a recommendation for lunch in the neighborhood that ended up being traif, so on our way back to another place we'd already passed we met Yossi's friend Lynn who was going to the same restaurant. Lynn, who hosted the folk club we went to last week, is a member of Kibbutz Tzora and works at their furniture and scooter factory which relocated to Yehud after a fire at the Kibbutz a few years ago. We sat with Lynn and his friend Michael and had a very pleasant lunch (reminiscent of Rachmo in Jerusalem) of kabobs, rice and salads. It was a lot of food for 30 shekels.

We made our way to Ramat Aviv for the Palmach Museum. We first went into their photo archive which has hundreds of albumns (and something like 40,000 photos, all captioned, so someone has done dozens of years of work) of photos from the 1940s. An amazing amount of material. The museum itself is run by the Defense Ministry, and its more of a simulation of what it was like to be in the Palmach (Pre-State Israel's premier strike force) At its height it had over 7000 soldiers, of whom over 1000 died before it was disbanded and absorbed within the IDF in 1949. The museum is a continuous film in a variety of rooms with actors playing the parts of actual members of the Palmach, and shows their lives from 1941 to 1949. It is a very well done presentation. It takes 90 minutes, costs 30 shekels, and its well worth it.

After returning to Jerusalem (too full for dinner) Yossi went home and I started packing (harder than it sounds). Wednesday I am finishing the packing, doing some last minute phone calling and cleaning up my space before I vacate it. Tonight is the wine festival. It may be a couple of days before I have a chance to post an entry of what that's like. I fly in about 16 hours.

Ya Never Know - a High Energy Mitzvah Day

But first, I little bit about wine people. Yossi and I are wine people. No particular talent. We know what we like, we enjoy wine and enjoy talking about it. We fantasize about finding meaningful, remunerative work in the Israeli wine industry, despiteour lact of talent. In addition to Mitzvah heroes, hanging out with people who make wine is one of my favorite pasttimes. Last night, not a 5 minute drive from where I'm staying, we went to meet Avital Goldner, winemaker at his home winery in Katamon. Avital makes about 1500 bottles a year and he considers himself a "home" winemaker, even smaller than the boutique designation. We tasted two wines, his 2007 Merlot out of the barrel (he will likely give it another year, but it is already very good) and a 2006 blend that is bottled but not yet labeled, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (about 50%) Merlot (about 35%) and Cabernet Franc (about 15%). It is exquisite and he calls it his Grand Vin (great wine) though he is not yet sure if that is too pretentious. He is planning to put it one sale in the fall, and we are considering splitting a case of 6. Avital is also a sofer stam (capable of writing parchments for sifrei Torah, mezuzot and tefillin) and that is how he supports his family.

After meeting Avital (he was leaving to teach a Talmud study group on Tractate Shabbat) we went out for a late sandwich.

Monday has been an incredible day. Danny Siegel's Mitzvah Heroes Conference began this morning - I was at the opening but had to leave for my meeting at the Jewish Agency with the Ethiopian National Project. I was there with fellow Washingtonian, Jody Harburger, who runs our Federation's endowment fund, and it was a great meeting with Dr. Nigist Mengensha, director General and Grace Rodnitzki, Dir. of Int'l Relations. I was there doing some legwork for JYPI (the Jewish Youth Philanthropy Institute) to learn about programs in Beit Shemesh (and apparently also in Afula) that our community is already investing in, and that JYPI may support. With my Mitzvah Heroes hat, I was also intrigued by what I was learning. As I have 3 pages of notes, I won't go into detail now, but I willl eventually post a report about the work the ENP is doing and how all of us can help. I was really impressed.

Next I rejoined the Mitzvah Heroes conference, in time to hear Yael Rosen talk about her outreach work to the Righteous Among the Nations, living in Israel. Yael gets so ethusiastic when she talks about her work. I also got to catch up with my friend Eli Bialek at luch time. Lunch was a quick Shwarma from Moshiko (in pita, not laffa, no chips), then on to talk about Mitzvah Heroes Fund to the conference participants (including Shira Kaplan's aunt and uncle, Alida and Miles Bunder) and introduce my teacher and friend, Menachem Gottesman (pictured above). Menachem spoke for about an hour, and Elissa, the balloon lady of Jerusalem, talked about her mitzvah work as well. I did not continue with the group to the Diplomat hotel. I also met for the first time, in person, Mitzvah Hero Bradley Shaul Cohen of All for the Kids. What a great guy, getting Israeli (who love to visit Israel) to actually contribute to the care of Indian kids in orphanages in India. We helped facilitate a grant for All for the Kids from the non-scetarian section of the Joint Distribution Committee (known as the Joint or JDS) this spirng.

So that's been the day, better than I expected, to say the least. Tomorrow, a surprise last minute jaunt to Tel Aviv to visit the Palmach Museum, and who knows what else.
Until then . . .

Vacation days, mitzvah clean up, final meetings

The end of the summer trip is near; 4 days about of 4 weeks remaining. Thursday evening, after Tisha B'Av, I went with Yossi and Dina to a "folk club" at Kibbutz Tzora. I'm not going to name names - apparently this used to be a monthly event, but has become less frequent. The performers seem to be aging anglos (I don't think anyone under 50 performed) whose best years of singing have passed; it was being held in honor of someone's birthday, which was nice, and there were about 100 people there. There is an excellent winery about 100 meters away, but they served "other wine" that was also disappointing. No one's set was longer than 3 songs and it wasn't "unpleasant", just not particularly professional (not sure what I was expecting).

Friday I got caught up on some writing for work and High Holidays (if it's the second week of Av, the first of Tishrei is only 6 or so weeks away!) in the early hours. Then Yossi and Dina hosted a wine tasting for the Ben Shoshan winery in the Negev. Yuval served 4 excellent wines, a merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from a northern vineyard (K'far Shamai) a delicious Shiraz and a Cabernet from the vineyard at Avdat. Yuval was ably assisted by his son, Gefen (which means grape vine), aged 11, and we had a very pleasant day - somewhere between 25-30 came, and we met some very nice people.

We corroborated on making a beef stew for shabbat dinner, and Yossi and I went to shul. One of the unique things about Har Adar is that despite a diverse population, they've decided not to divide the community and they have only one synagogue. For Friday night services, they alternate weeks between the tunes of the "aidot hamizrach" (Jews from predominantly Arab countries) and Ashkenazi liturgy. We hit on an eastern evening - different for me yet pleasant.

Saturday was spent sleeping, reading, noshing and schmoozing. Saturday night we went to Jerusalem, I met my friend and mitzvah messenger from Rockville, Peggy Pearlstein, who brought some needed reinforcements from home, and then Yossi, Dina and I went to Cup O' Joe for a light snack and coffee.

Sunday was a day to finish up a bit of business with the final tzedakah allocations of the season, quite a bit going to provide school supplies to help kids start the school year (we split funds between the Rabbanit Kapach, Harel Moyal and Moshe Kott at Lev Ramot). We also helped to reimburse Click for some of the art supplies the USYers used last week with money we raised from the USYers. All told, with funds brought from the US and raised here, we've distributed just over $15,000 this summer, nearly double what we did last summer. I then had some errands - going to the Museum to buy the tickets for Wednesday's wine festival, getting some last shopping done for friends at Machane Yehuda (the shopping list is too bizarre for print but involved housewares, spices, sweets among other things) and gratefully, getting my shirts which I dropped off about 2 weeks ago at the cleaners, they ended up giving them to another customer at some point, who just returned them today. I treated myself to a celebratory lunch at Marvad HaKsamim. I may try to hit a winery here in J-lem later, in Katamon.

Danny is off being interviewed for TV; he could end up on the news today or tomorrow regarding the Tzedakah conference beginning tomorrow (I'm speaking in the afternoon). Tomorrow I am also invited (by the folks at Partnership 2000) for my first ever meeting at the Jewish Agency on the issue of projects for the ethiopian community in Beit Shemesh. Not sure what I'll contribute to the exchange, but I'm curious and really don't know what to expect. I'll probably squeeze in another post or two before the week ends abruptly Thursday morning at 6 am.