From Holocaust to Modern Day Life

Our day started solemnly with a visit to Yad Vashem, the newly rebuilt Holocaust museum that juts out of a dramatic mountaintop near Jerusalem. Our guide, David Solomon, led a very moving tour of the museum. Even though David has led this same tour dozens of times, we all felt strong emotions when got choked up retelling stories of how families were separated upon arrival at the death camps.

Entrance gate to Yah Vashem.

Yad Vashem's main corridor, photographed from outside the building.

Next our tour bus drove us out of the State of Israel proper and just into the West Bank to a very modern town called Ma'aleh Adumim to visit the home of Adina, an Ethiopian immigrant to Israel. We heard her stories, translated from Hebrew to English, of her family's decision to leave their village life in Ethiopia to participate in the 1985 airlift to Israel. Did they leave because of famine or persecution? Not at all, but because they felt the calling from G-d. We learned of Adina's struggles to learn Hebrew and fit in with modern Israeli life.

Adina shows an image of a typical Ethiopian village. At left is our guide and transalor, David Solomon. At right is Rick Leibovich.

Ma'aleh Adumim is a lush and modern West Bank settlement.

Our next stop was Macheneh Yehuda, Jerusalem's outdoor market (shuk)...very chaotic on the afternoon before Shabbat. In this sea of faces was one familiar one, Ruchama, the former JCC caterer, who is now retired and living in Israel. She was also shopping there.

Serena, Ethan and Lisa Newburger visit a shop at Macheneh Yehuda.

Former Clevelander Ruchama (center) is reunited with the Newburger family.

We greeted Shabbat with early services at congregation Kol HaNeshamah, a reform congregation that welcomes visitng groups from around the world. Here we found a very familiar face, former Fairmount Temple congregant, Edith Paller, now living in Israel.