The Becker family: Grandparents Bill and Joyce, b’nai mitzvah celebrants Lauren and Garrett, and parents Erin and Mark at the Western Wall
yya (near Golani Junction), the three worked at an organic goat farm and permaculture center. The farm provides enough food for its own consumption and leaves no waste, being self-sustaining with compost, compost toilets, and a recycling center. The volunteers slept in dome-shaped ecolodges or in a mud house. Their activities included reinforcing the fence around the garden, weeding, planting and tilling the soil, trellising the tomatoes and cucumbers, feeding and pasturing the goats and sheep, re-building the chicken coop, making jam from the fruit of the plum tree and painting signs. The farm combines ecology and sustainability with tourism, as it also serves as a guest farm. During their stay, the threesome helped host army soldiers and circus acrobats on tour. Martha concluded: “You get room and board for volunteer time and the experience of a lifetime.” ••••• From July 3-12, Renee Hulsey, her daughter, Mallory, and uncle Bernard Goldstein flew to Israel for a cousin’s wedding. The nuptials, which took place at Al Hayam, a beachside venue in Caesarea overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and surrounded by Roman ruins, capped off a wonderful week of touring. Renee had previously visited our homeland on Rabbi Robert Eisen’s 2014 Congregation Anshei Israel tour. Mallory, a 2015 THA graduate, had joined her eighth grade class on their annual Israel pilgrimage. In planning this year’s itinerary, they re-visited some sites but devoted time for different and
mission), relished seeing and took pride in the fruits of their monetary support for this “state-of-the-art, amazing place,” funded mostly by U.S. Hadassah members. Touring, eating, shopping and taking planes, street cars, buses, light rail, Gett (taxis like Uber) and bikes (up the Promenade to the Port of Tel Aviv) topped off an incredible journey. ••••• Nathan Rix and Benjamin Manninen were recipients of the Beth Weintraub Schoenfeld Memorial Israel Experience Subsidy from the Coalition for Jewish Education and the Weintraub Israel Center. Nathan also received JFSA’s Rabbi Arthur R. Oleisky Teen Recognition Award, a stipend toward Israel travel, which he used to attend Camp Daisy and Harry Stein’s four-week Big Trip Israel. Benjamin participated in a program at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. •••••
Panina and Moshe Rast tend goats on the eco-farm. an additional 13 of his Israeli-born cousins in attendance. The Weintraubs spent a day in our Partnership region, talking with staff and visiting the proposed site for a future Friendship Trail being planned for Hof Ashkelon. ••••• Joyce and Bill Becker spent a week at the beginning of June in Israel for their grandchildren’s b’nai mitzvah. Their son Mark, who grew up in Tucson, became a bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in 1979. Mark, now of Phoenix, and his wife, Erin, carried on the tradition with their children, Garrett and Lauren. On June 4, Israeli Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz officiated at the b’nai mitzvah at Robinson’s Arch, along the western wall of the Temple Mount. Afterward, the grandparents hosted an oneg Shabbat luncheon at the David Citadel Hotel. In attendance were Shlomo and Micki Lutski, an Israeli couple Joyce and Bill had met years before on a past Israel mission. Shlomo Lutski is a famed former Maccabiah basketball player and head coach. The Lutskis, of Petach Tikva, hosted a family Shabbat dinner for the group the night before the simcha. One of Bill’s Tucson dental patients, who knew of his upcoming travel, gave him an en-
velope with tzedakah money to donate while in Jerusalem. Bill handed it to the rabbi, who explained that this gesture would protect them on their journey. Besides arranging tours for the week, Mark scheduled a private session with a scribe, who took out a Holocaust Torah and had Garrett and Lauren read a portion from it. Then he had them write their Hebrew names on a piece of paper, as well as the last word of a psalm. Upon leaving, he presented each of them with a picture frame containing their Hebrew name and the complete psalm with the last word that they had written as a memento of this unique activity. ••••• At the end of Moshe Rast’s Tucson Hebrew Academy eighth grade graduation trip to Israel, his mother, Martha, and sister, Panina, joined him. For the next month, the family visited friends in the North and volunteered for two and a half weeks on an eco-farm. During this time, they attended Shavuot services at the Abuhav Synagogue in Safed where the Torah was read from what is thought to be the oldest Torah scroll in a condition fit for reading, dating from around 1400. At Yarok Az Eco-Farm on Moshav Ilani-
Yochanan Gibly and Lola Maas at David Ben-Gurion’s grave in the Negev, with the Tsin Valley below
Mallory Hulsey in Safed ecumenical ones. In the North, they toured Caperneum and the Annunciation Church; in Jerusalem, the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and in Bethlethem (with special permission to enter the West Bank with their guide), the Church of the Nativity and Manger Square. In Jerusalem, Tucson friend Liora Olesen, who spent the summer in Israel, gave them a tour of the city, including the Tower of David and David’s Tomb. A highlight of their last day was a tour of Hadassah Hospital at Ein Keren, including the new Sarah Davidson Tower. Renee, a life member of Hadassah, and Bernard, an associate member (a male who supports the organization’s
Yochanan Gibly and Lola Maas spent six weeks at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel as Schwartz-Hammer Impact Fellows through the Jewish National Fund. Yochanan, a senior at Catalina Foothills High School, summed up his experience: “I spent my summer at AMHSI with 140 other students from across the United States. It was a life-changing experience that helped me find myself and develop my own thoughts and feelings about Israel. I stayed in dorms with kids my age, learned not only in a classroom but also in the historical areas where the events took place. Israel became our classroom. We spent time exploring the problems that Israel faces today. It showed me that Judaism is a very tight-knit community; no matter where you are from, you belong, and being Jewish isn’t solely about the religious aspects but also about the ideas and connections you form with other Jews and people.”
Time to share
I’m always interested in your news. Keep me posted — 319-1112. L’shalom.
September 23, 2016, ARIZONA JEWISH POST
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