Eat
The high holidays –hahagim– are now past us and I am elated! This was a month of intensive meal preparing, meal after meal after meal and to me, who happen to be the primary family cook, that was demanding to say the least. Especially during the long stretch of Sukkot where my three daughters were out of school for more than a week. I tried to figure out ways we could enjoy a few meals out and combine it with a site seeing experience with the girls.
Pray
Toward my husband’s cardiac procedure, I felt an urge to pray. To pray that he would emerge past the process alive and kicking with his arteries sending blood to his heart unhindered by any blocks.
I had never taken the girls on a trip to Haifa. I thought it would be a good idea over Sukkot combining the pray, eat, love trilogy we all surrendered to in this high-holiday season.
I figured I could render Haifa into a celebratory day out. We got on a bus to Haifa and on to another bus to the Baha’i gardens. Our day trip had an educational quality to it exposing us to cultural, architectural and natural highlights of the city in an easy going way.
We took a few photographs by the impressive architecture and beauty of the Baha’i gardens by the compound’s low gate and hopped on a bus to our second stop the “Stella Maris.” The “Monastery of our Lady of Mount Carmel” as it is also called is a Carmelite monastery. We visited its church, lifted our eyes to its magnificent dome decorated by colorful paintings based on motifs from both the Old and the New Testament.
There was a constant flow of local and foreign pilgrims who had come to pray in a cave located under the church’s altar associated with Elijah.
Prayer, we believe in our family, may be held anytime at any place, at a church, synagogue, mosque or in nature so yes, the four of us walked into the opening in the innermost part of the church and prayed in the midst of pilgrims from India dressed in colorful saris.
Coming out the church our energy was uplifted. Next we opted for the cable car that took us down from the Carmel Mountain to the sea.
As we were approaching the cable station, I spotted a circular building with a nice outdoor sitting area a few steps away from the sea where I thought we could enjoy lunch by the sea.
-“But,” I heard myself announcing to the girls, “that would only happen after we visit the prophet’s cave.”
The Jewish sacred site of Elijah had also many pilgrims lighting candles outside the cave and waiting in line to enter the innermost curve of the cave where two to three people could fit.
When I travel I love turning to locals for tips and directions.
In Haifa what I enjoyed was that Jews and Arabs had helped us on the way to find the right bus, to suggest routes, and point us in the right direction.
There was something about this city, a sense of harmonious co-existence that we loved and embraced being in its midst. Arabs and Jews live side by side in the city in a thriving co-existence and a model shared society.
After the cave, we headed for the beach. The seashore was clean and the sand soft. We dipped in the cool water and felt refreshed. The temperature outside the water had reached 35 degrees Celsius.
Past the swim and with our bathing suits and only a t-shirt on we got ourselves a table by the seaside circular restaurant Shawatina and enjoyed the warm hospitality of its Arab waiters. We loved especially the dishes I never prepare at home, for example the tabbouleh salad, the rocket salad and a delicious knafeh for dessert that are foreign to my home’s Greek Jewish cuisine.
Love ❤
Back to Jerusalem, and am escorting my husband for his heart procedure. Love, care and support is everywhere in the cardiology department of the Shaarei Tzedek hospital. Love between husbands and wives caring for each other before during and after the procedure. Caring nurses and doctors. Supportive medical clowns come in the hospital raising people’s spirits.
Support is also felt among the families of strangers who happen to share the same room before or after the medical procedure. There, like in Haifa, Jew, Christian and Muslim are brothers and our families blend into one extended family who cares for the wellbeing of all of its sons and daughters, mothers and fathers.
The Ultra-Orthodox lady, a mother of thirteen children, and the wife of the Haredi patient who was next to my husband felt like someone familiar. We hit it off freely and easily with her and her husband, all the walls raised between us, by “Israeli society” nonexistent. We were all vulnerable there, we all needed support and we were all open to receiving it from and giving it to our neighbors.
The procedure is now past us and to me it feels that not just my husband’s heart was touched by it but my heart too. It is full of gratitude for the web of open-hearted people out there giving of their love and support in abundance to whomever is there with an open heart willing to receive it.
From Jerusalem with love,
Yvette Nahmia-Messinas