We woke early to pack, and enjoy our last huge Israeli breakfast. The Dan Hotel served the best breakfast of the trip, out doing our wonderful breakfasts at the Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. After stuffing ourselves with a variety of breakfast foods both European and Middle Eastern (including 3 types of halvah that would have put the Halvah King from the Jerusalem market to shame) We met our guide and driver for our Tel Aviv tour. Our guide, Maishe, was born in L.A., but moved to Israel at the age of two, so he fortunately still sounded Israeli, rather than a Valley Girl- not a single “dude” or “for sure”. His goal was to give us some feeling of what it was like in Tel Aviv from its inception in 1909 when a small group of Zionists decide to leave the crowded Arab port city of Jaffa, and start a new city, not just a settlement, on a sandy hill just to the north. The name was taken from the title of a book by Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement. Meir Dizengoff was the primary force in creating the first homes lining a wide open avenue. Dizengoff became the fist mayor of Tel Aviv, and he donated his home to the city as an art museum in the late 1930’s. This is now Israel’s Independence Hall. This is where Ben Gurion proclaimed statehood for Israel on May 14, 1948. The hall where this occurred along with the signing of the declaration of independence has been preserved just as it was 62 years ago.
From here, we drove to the Palmach Museum, a very new museum in Tel Aviv that brings to life the story of the the creation of the Palmach in the 1940’s through its metamorphosis into the present day IDF (Israeli Defense Force). This is done by telling the story of a group of young men and women who join the underground organization in 1940 as a unit, explaining about their training, trials and tribulations, and bravery through WW II and the War for Independence through dioramas, actual footage, and movie. It was a very moving 1 ½ hours. We were with a group of Israeli high school students who were no older than the kids in the presentation which brought the idea of what the young fighters sacrificed in 1948 even more poignant.
Our last stop was the “Bullet Factory”. In the early 1930’s, due to safety concerns, and knowing the British who controlled the area would be less than helpful in a crisis, Jews in the then Palestine, decided to try to obtain the necessary machinery to produce their own weapons clandestinely. They eventually (after several years) were able to procure the machinery from Poland, but getting it out of Poland secretly was made even more difficult by the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. It took another 4 years to smuggle the machines out in pieces and back into Palestine. Thus, the Israeli armament industry was born. In 1945, the Haganah realized that their major problem would be obtaining enough ammunition to sustain their forces, they started a bold, very secret plan. Beneath a kibbutz in Rehovot just south of Tel Aviv, they created an ammunition factory code named the "Ayalon Institute" about 30 feet below the kibbutz’s laundry. They then recruited a group of kid’s, 16-20 year olds, who had planned on starting their own kibbutz and were training at this location for kibbutz life. Without any knowledge of the job, the risks, or the length of service, only that they would be crucial to the creation of the State of Israel, they accepted the job. The other members of the kibbutz working and farming over their heads never new that this secret factory was just below their feet. During their 3 years of working underground this group produce 9 million bullets right under the noses of the British. Detection would mean imprisonment or death, and because of this security was of utmost importance. The rest of the kibbutz was told that these kids were out working in distant fields, while they snuck into their underground factory through a secret staircase under a washing machine in the laundry. Because they needed to cover the noise of the machinery, the laundry needed to be running a all the time, so the kibbutz decided to have a large supply of dirty clothes. They convinced the British Army to give them their laundry contract, giving the Kibbutz an endless supply. Another problem was because they were working underground, they lacked the sun exposure typical of kibbutz farm workers. To cover this, they started the first tanning salon in Israel. Each member was required to spend about an hour under UV lights each day to maintain their tans. The British never found the factory, and the ammunition was a critical factor in the Israeli’s fight for their homeland.
We finished our tour with the guide at about 3 pm, and had several hours to kill before we had to get to the airport. We spent a while walking through the weekly Friday craft fair, and then hiked back to our hotel along the Tel Aviv boardwalk. The beach and boardwalk are both very wide , good thing, because Friday afternoon is a busy time at the beach. The city planners were wise to keep hotels off the beach (there is a street that separates the beach from the hotels) unlike areas in the States like Miami Beach.
Earlier in the day, Jeri and I both phoned relatives in Tel Aviv whom we’ve never met to try to get together with them. My cousin Paul, a South African living in Israel for a year, was the first to join us in the bar at the Dan Hotel. Paul had developed a strange syndrome after a button spider bite several years ago (usually fatal). Apparently, the two world’s experts are in Boston, or Tel Aviv, so he is here having this treated. It was great to meet him and get a bit more information about distant family. We agreed to meet in Capetown (assuming he’s back) when we visit South Africa in the near future. As he was leaving, Jeri’s relatives showed up. The two women were Jeri’s grandfather’s sister’s daughters. Jeri’s great aunt Miriam emigrated to Israel in the 1920’s when her grandfather came to the U.S. The two women’s husbands came to Israel as teenagers. Nissim was a staunch Zionist and ran away from his home in Iraq at age 16 in 1947 and illegally entered Israel after walking through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. He was jailed by the British for several months and eventually became a member of the Palmach, fighting in the Negev during the War for Independence. The other husband came earlier and was recruited by the British during WW II to fight in the Jewish Brigade. He was put into the navy aboard an anti-subamarine warfare ship and saw action in the Mediterranean. After the British disbanded the Jewish Brigade, he joined the Palmach and also fought in the War for Independence. It was fascinating talking to them after all the history we listened to earlier in the day.
From this point on we had our only real gripe with the trip (other than Molly and Dave’s flight problems on the way in). Dave went to pay the bill for 2 gin and tonics, and 2 plain tonics, and came back $50 poorer. After a photo op we said goodbye to our relatives and headed by cab to the Old Port of Jaffa for dinner. The concierge was very specific about where the cab driver was suppose to take us, but we wound up at the wrong restaurant in a pretty sketchy area of Jaffa. The cabbie spoke no English, only Hebrew and Spanish of all things and between the four of us, we didn’t have enough language skills to correct the problem. The good news, though was that the restaurant was very busy, so we figured we’d give it a try. We were hoping for a quiet, relaxed dinner, but instead, we got the Arabic version of fast food. As we sat down no less than 24 different plates of salads were thrown on the table along with a pitcher of lemonade, and Laffa (giant pita). A waiter came by and told us what we wanted, since he spoke no English, and I only rudimentary Hebrew (and even less Arabic-I learned hello and thank you-sa’alam and shuchron- while in Jordan) we were at his mercy. I was able to find out the price, though, “about 310 shekels” (about $100). Unable to complain, we went for it. When the fish arrived, it came cut into steaks with the head and tail sections still present. It was very good, but we could have fed a small army. We made Dave polish off the last of the steaks, making it difficult for him to even consider dessert. As part of the package, though, they served the Arabic version of fried dough that you’d get at the Turnbridge Fair (for those of you not from around our neck of the woods, this is billed as the Turnbridge World’s Fair, with main attractions of ox pulls and pig calling). These pieces of fried dough, though, were presoaked in rosewater, so when you took a bite, the rosewater spewed forth scalding anyone in its path as well as making them smell good. The most amazing part of dinner was the bussing of the table. The 24 salad plates, glasses, fish head and tail and anything else that was within 10 feet of the table was whisked into a huge plastic tub as if one were wiping off crumbs ,and was completely cleared in about 20 seconds. A new world’s record! After paying the bill, we called the taxi driver who brought us here, but the person that answered the phone refused to send a cab to this area. Hmmmmm? I finally called our tour guide, Hagit, who spoke to the guy that acted as the maitre d’ and traffic cop in the restaurant, and got him to order us a cab. Finally, after some nail biting, the cab arrived and we were soon back in comfortable surroundings.
The last glitch was at the airport. We had hoped to spend the time before our flight with Dave and Molly in the lounge, but they were unable to check their luggage until about
1 AM for their 4:30 AM flight to Rome. This meant saying goodbye at security and them being stuck with several hours to kill without their Charades partners. After hugs and goodbyes, we headed through security for our flight home.
Reflecting on the trip on the way home, we both felt kind of silly for waiting as long as we did to visit Israel. Other than the last night in Jaffa, we never had a moment of fearing for our security. Even walking at night in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, we really did not give a moment’s notice to feeling unsafe. It was difficult to say what the best or most interesting part of the trip was, but the nicest part of the journey was the sense of history and pride that we brought home with us.
The highlight of Tzvat was lunch. We ate at a stand that sold aYemenite dish called l’choch (that’s throat clearing "ch")that looked a bit like pizza, but was very middle eastern. 
