The CJN asked readers to tell us about their memories of trips to Israel. Today, in honour of Yom ha-Atzmaut, we are printing a few of those essays. You can read more submissions in The CJN’s upcoming magazine.

It was 1965 and I had just finished Grade 1 at Jewish People’s School in Montreal where my teachers ignited a love for Israel in me. Here in Israel, it took a firm grip of my heart. There were many steps on that journey: drippy bites of falafel, tearful family reunions, collecting eggs on my cousin Roise’s moshav. And every day, the ocean waves at Gordon Beach.

 “Yom yom yam,” my Dod (Uncle) Shlomo repeated rhythmically. As editor of Maariv and a lifelong Zionist, his grasp of the Hebrew language was precise and poetic. But as an immigrant from Lithuania, Hebrew was not his mother tongue and he was forever infatuated with it.

My mother hadn’t seen her own mother and sister in the 15 years since she and my father had left Israel. Her father and brothers perished in the Holocaust. She survived with her mother and sister. My father lost his parents and five siblings.

My parents wed after the war in Czechoslovakia where my sister was born. They moved to Israel where my brother was born. Struggling with poverty and more war, after all they’d already suffered, they decided to move to Canada.

But the single deepest memory of that trip, seared into my soul, still informs how I view Israel. It was our trip to Jerusalem.

On that day in 1965, Jews had no access to the Wall. We viewed it from a bridge at a distance. Soldiers patrolled around us. They looked old and serious to seven-year-old me. Today, they’re young enough to be my grandchildren. It breaks my heart to think of them risking their lives.

As Israel grew, it made mistakes to be sure. Some of its existential threats now come from within. Israel has given back land won in battle but maintains control of Jerusalem, to much consternation and criticism. As time passes, fewer and fewer people remember what it was like, standing on a platform, gazing at the Wall with longing from a distance. But I do.

Marilyn Lazar

***

I was eight years old at the time and I was in the basement of the shul in St. Catharines at a youth program. An announcement was made that Israel was now an independent state and we were taught to sing Hatikvah. It didn’t take long to catch on to the song.
When I went back to my grandparents’ house where we were staying, there was much talk and excitement about Israel and its independence.

My first trip was when I was 32 years old. Since then, I haven’t counted the number of times I have been there. I have a brother and his family living in Ra’anana for over 40 years.

Israel was a special part of our lives long before his aliyah.

Reene Katz

***

In the summer of 1971, I was 19 years old and traveling through Europe and Israel with two friends. Life was just opening up for me. I had finished high school and was on to university. It was the first time I could begin to imagine who I would become as an adult. This trip was my declaration of independence.

It was a turning point in my life for more than one reason, because this is where I met my husband Bill on Aug. 10, 1971, in Jerusalem.

Like Bill and his travel companions, my friends and I had arranged a seven-day Egged bus tour before leaving Toronto. Coincidentally, Bill and I both lived in Toronto only a few kilometers from one another.

Our tour guide’s name was Raffi. He was very tall, very kind and had a contagious enthusiasm for Israel and its history. It was four years after the Six-Day War and there were still remnants of military equipment strewn on the side of the road as we toured the Golan Heights. Tangled barbed-wire demarcated where the new borders had been drawn. It was this material evidence of war that helped me to appreciate on a more visceral level, the struggles and sacrifices faced in securing Israel’s borders.

I will never forget the night in Bethlehem when Bill and I sat outside with a canopy of stars above us. He was charming and funny and it was just about the most perfect memory for what was a magical time in my life. That summer in Israel was almost 52 years ago.

In 1993, we toured Israel with our children Andrew, Jessica and Sheryl. This light in our hearts for one another, for our children, their wonderful spouses and six grandkids all began in Jerusalem.

Karen Faith

***

I grew up in an Orthodox home in Toronto.  My mom and dad raised their four daughters to observe Jewish traditions.  We went to Hebrew school for two hours a day, five days a week following a full day of public school.  After sitting in class all day, I didn’t want to go and sit for another stretch at cheder.  I rebelled and often misbehaved. But, despite the pain of sitting through Hebrew and Bible lessons, I learned.  I was spellbound by the mystical Bible stories and enjoyed being able to speak a language with my sisters that others didn’t understand.  Years later, in 1971 as an undergrad at the University of Toronto, I’d saved enough money to take off on a life-changing travel experience. I met up with a group in their late teens and early 20s to go on a Zionist organization heritage trip to Israel.  I thought I’d be traveling with like-minded kids who also wanted a sense of independence, freedom and fun.  Our parents had sent us off for over two months on a relatively unsupervised trip with a 20-year-old chaperone.

We spent the first week in Europe and then my new friends and I hitchhiked to a designated spot to meet up and fly to Israel.  Landing in Ben-Gurion Airport was an emotional experience for us.  All those years of study came flooding back.  We were whisked off to Kibbutz Yasur where we lived and worked for a month prior to touring the country.   

Waking up at 5 a.m., we were in the orchards by 5:30 to pick tomatoes and peaches before the unbearable heat set in.  We ate breakfast at 8:30 following the first shift in the fields and then went back.  It all took some getting used to.  But we grew to love it.  We sang, told stories, and laughed as we picked. 

 Armin, the field manager and my kibbutz father, taught me how to drive the huge tractor that transported us to the fields.  We all got along and we adored the chaverim or kibbutzniks, as we called them. Living together in this intense fashion taught us about the culture and a way of life that at first was foreign but soon became natural.  

The program included adoption into a kibbutz family.  I was young, and impressionable.  My kibbutz family: sister, Yocheved, little brother, Oren, parents Penina and Armin and a very handsome, kibbutz brother/IDF paratrooper, Yorum, embraced me.  Yorum became my kibbutz boyfriend (hmmm!) and he introduced me to kibbutz life on his off-duty visits home.  

We then traveled for two weeks on a bus with a guide.  The beauty of the land, the spirit, the language, the diversity of people from all over the world, the history and the way of life were all so appealing. It gave me a perspective that has shaped me to this day.   

I’ve traveled to Israel many times since that trip more than 50 years ago.  My granddaughters live in Tel Aviv.  But my first time was the ultimate experience.

Donna Cohen