Glorious Guests Followed Luminous Lights

Although Chanukah has come and gone and it has been a couple weeks since all of our visitors returned home, we wanted to recap the wonderful weeks we had celebrating the holiday and spending time with our family & friends.

The best parts of celebrating Chanukah were seeing all the signs of the holiday everywhere around you. For example, the city had huge Chanukah menorahs lit up all over the place as in this picture, and we even took a tour of some of the more religious neighborhoods to see all of the menorahs placed in windows and outside of doors - it was quite a sight to see so many menorahs all lit in one area!

Also, every single bakery had sufganiot (fried, jelly-filled donuts) piled sky high! We had heard of the custom of eating these donuts in the US, but it is even more popular here. And I have to say, especially not being a big fan of donuts in general, that some were pretty good. I even learned how to make them with a friend here who hosted a Chanukah party - so perhaps we will bring that custom home with us! Another fun change for us was actually lighting our chanukiah using oil this year. In the past, we have always used the little colored candles, but at the urging of our Halachah teacher, we bought a sort-of disposable menorah with little shot-like glasses that we filled each night with oil. Watching the oil burn out night after night seemed to be much more in line with the "miracle" that happened in the Temple so long ago. Here's a picture of what our menorah looked like on the 7th night!

We were lucky to have my sister, Betsy, and her fiance, Joel, come to visit during Chanukah as well as our good friends Nicki and Dan. We all enjoyed Shabbat meals together and even tried a new Ethiopian restaurant, which turned out to be quite a treat! The picture of me and Nicki is from just hanging out at our apartment, and the one of the 6 of us is from the restaurant - it's a little "smoky" due to all the incense they had burning there ... we even got real Turkish-style coffee after dinner, so Max was very happy.

While Nicki and Dan spent some time in the South, we toured parts of Jerusalem with Betsy & Joel. One of our favorite stops was at the Hadassah Hospital to see the infamous Chagall windows! They are quite a site - 12 huge stained glass windows - each designed to capture the essence and story of each of the 12 sons of Jacob. As these 12 sons later become the 12 tribes of Israel, which play a key role in our biblical Jewish history, hearing about the windows and how the artist chose the colors and images was quite interesting. This shot is one of our favorite windows - representing Levi - the only one done in yellow!

We also visited the Israeli Knesset (parliament) with Betsy and Joel, where the menorah - the national symbol of the state of Israel - stands. We were grateful to have them all here over the holiday as it was wonderful to have familiar faces and of course to catch up on everything going on in the US :)

Our good friend Katherine arrived shortly after Chanukah ended, and as she had never been to Israel before, we took her on a trip outside of Jerusalem to hike and visit Masada and to swim in the Dead Sea. It had been just about 10 years since either Max or I had climbed Masada, and it was both challenging and breathtaking. We enjoyed the hike up and views of the Dead Sea and surrounding mountains, and the ruins on top are much more spectacular that I remembered. There are so many different historical time periods reflected in what remains of the city that was atop the mountain. Here, Katherine and I are standing in one of the many storage rooms that were originally built and used by King Herod to store all types of food for his "resort" stays on the mountain.

I think Katherine's favorite part of her trip, and a highlight for us too, was getting to swim in the Dead Sea! As the lowest place on earth and the saltiest body of water, it is quite a sensation just to try to swim and float in the sea! I bet you never knew that Katherine and I used to be on the synchronized swimming team :) It was nice to find out that even at the beginning of January, with the sun shining, we were able to spend some time in the water. Check out this short video of us that Katherine took while we were there: We also really enjoyed viewing many of the Christian and Arab sites around Jerusalem with Katherine, places that we had not yet ventured out on our own to explore! Overall, we had a great time while she visited :)

Since then, we have started our second semester at school and gotten back into the swing of things. Today, we are off on a 3-day trip to the southern part of Israel to hike in the mountains near the city of Eilat. We hope to be quicker about posting about our trip and everything else going on here. Lots of love from Israel!