Three rabbis dance on a bar...yes, I recognize that you know the joke as walking into a bar. However, this is no joke and yes, there were three (sober) rabbis on a bar in Tiberias. But before I get to this part of the story, there are a few things that happened first in this epic day.
We began by leaving Tel Aviv and heading north to Alona Park. There, we watched a film which taught us about the Roman aqueducts which provided water to Caesarea and other towns. For the record, the film could not decide what time period to set its "Indiana Jones" character in and was weirdly entertaining as a result. With that fresh in our minds, we headed into the aqueduct for a water hike. Unlike Hezekiah's Tunnel, this water was deeper and less clear. Yet, we had a great time exploring our way through this cave.
After drying off, we boarded the bus for the fastest trip ever through Caesarea. At least this film made a little more sense...we saw the ruins very briefly and then returned to the bus to head to Yokneam.
Yokneam-Megiddo are the partnership cities for Atlanta and St. Louis through the Partnership 2000 program. What that means is that our Atlanta Jewish Federation donations, in part, go to support programs in this area. As such, we make it part of all of our trips (our adults visited hi-tech sites and had home hospitality for dinner, and our teens did programs and stayed with host families in the community). We arrived to an elementary school to waving flags and music. We were treated to a brief strings concert, then had a dance party. afterwards, adults spoke with the leaders of the school and community partnership while the kids joined their Israeli counterparts to do team-building exercises. I was shocked to see how quickly Facebook info was exchanged....particularly from the Israeli girls to our b'nei mitzvah boys. We continued to the youth center for lunch and a performance by an Ethiopian dance troupe (our federation funds some of the programs for Ethiopian immigrants). The dancing was amazing, as was the stories from the dance teacher and one of the mothers of the dancers. The dance teacher, as part of Operation Solomon, walked for 6 weeks as part of her journey to Israel. She spoke about trying to change who she was only to discover how connected she is to her Ethiopian roots as well as her Israeli identity. The dance performances concluded with a lesson in Ethiopian dance, which we were told was like Zumba. I wish I could say that we were graceful, but what we lacked in style we made up for with effort and enthusiasm.
The group continued to Tel Yokneam, an archeological site, for a quick program, and then we headed to the Galilee region. We took a boat ride on the kinneret, during which we did Israeli dancing. Then we went to Decks restaurant for a celebratory dinner. The food was quite amazing and clearly the woman running things has tremendous respect and affection for our Rabbi Berg as evidenced by the number of vegetarian dishes which kept coming our way. The b'nei mitzvah students were treated to a small display of fireworks and received personalized t-shirts and held sparklers. The woman running the show said that our b'nei mitzvah was like the twelve tribes of Israel. Then, we had a dance party.
As part of the festivities, we were strongly encouraged to lead the YMCA dance...and what we thought would be leading from the platform was actually leading from on top of the bar. Not our idea (the woman running the music suggested it), but I can now cross "dancing on a bar" off my bucket list. Rabbi Berg, Rabbi Rau, and myself did our best to entertain and lead the dancing.
When you think about the moment celebrating our b'nei mitzvah and the joy and festivity of the night, as well as the nature and personality of these three rabbis, I think we would all agree it made perfect sense. And, while the 2015 trip should not count on a repeat performance, rest assured we will find another way to distinguish ourselves as The Temple.
The last song of the night before heading to our kibbutz was "We are Family." Truly all of us on this trip are family: we spent a lot of time together, we shared meals, we helped corral one another's kids, we celebrated the simcha of b'nei mitzvah together, we have developed new friendships, we have laughed and cried and questioned and discovered together. This is truly a spiritual experience, and we are honored to be a part of it.
Tomorrow we rest in the morning, then have electives before our last Shabbat in Israel. Hard to believe our trip is almost done!
Rabbi Lapidus
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