“Focus, Focus,” instructed our ever lively extremely entertaining tour guide, Frances as she knew we had a long and busy day ahead.
First to Caeseria, a spacious resort/playground of the Roman Empire from 2000 years ago. One could marvel at their use of architecture and design to capture this amazing space in front of the rich aqua blue Mediterranean Sea; just imagine the Chariots of Fire (hippodrome) setting on the sea front with marble stadiums for theater facing out to sea as well as cleverly designed swimming pools projecting out to the sea to capture the cool ocean air in front. These guys knew how to live!
Next stop was Alona Park a newly (10 yrs) discovered underground tunnel that the Romans ingeniously designed to transfer cool mountain water to their party town of Caeseria, about 15 miles. We saw a poorly designed movie that had our group cracking up, thank goodness it got jammed and stopped. We learned how this water tunnel was constructed and threw on our water shoes and braved the cool water underground for about 100 yards. There were spaces etched along the walls for candles and one could not help to think of the difficulties and danger of constructing this tunnel.
Next we were off to the yuppie designer town in the North, Zichron Ya’acov had our Israeli lunch of falafels and shwarma in this friendly shopping town …and all the pressure that go with bringing the best jewelry home as my wife was the last one rushing to our bus hoping not to disturb the others as we headed for Yemin Orde youth Aliyah village, a retreat for Ethiopian Jewish immigrants. This special place had wonderful 'boarding school style' rooms and a synagogue for those unfortunate children lucky enough to leave the troubles back home. The main theme that the director Susan impressed upon our group was that when these children came to Yemin Orde, this was their home forever. The students are encouraged to feel at home, secure with a future, secure in their identity, and secure that they can and do have a wonderful future. It may look like a camp setting with the Mediterran Sea off in the distance but these 500 kids are nurtured and cared for while setting a model for other refugee children to learn from. All of these beautiful kids serve full army time and some have graduated to become attornies giving hope that Yemin Orde can ensure a secure future for these children.
Remi and Rachel Nevins donating a variety of supplies to the students at Yemin Orde Youth Village in the north of Israel.
Next stop to Gonen Kibbutz, we had a short tour and dinner then some of us enjoyed races thru the sprinklers and lounging around the huge pool in the soft evening summer air. We knew we were somewhere special and were reminded that others before us granted us the groundwork so we could head off to sleep and be a lot less concerned with the threat that Syria and Lebonan were just a few miles over these hills.
- Howard Nevins
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