Day 2 – 25 April 2008
Another restful night, and after breakfast a visit to Liviu’s mother, Tea, who has been in Israel for many years. Fori has known her for many years and was amazed at how little she has changed. Her welcome and kindness were overwhelming, and made me appreciate the combination of Romania and Judaism in this delightful woman I felt I had known all my life. We then visited Doina and Liviu’s first grandchild, 7-month-old Ben, son of their daughter Orly and her husband, a delightful child, happy and smiling. A true Sabra child, full of life, another thing that I miss very much since I left Israel.
The next stop was a real treat: Abu Hasan’s on Shivtey Israel Street, a real Arab restaurant, serving the freshest hummus, falafels, French fries, hot pepper and garlic sauce, and pita. Bob and David Gregory and Rob Weinberg, eat your hearts out! Abu Hasan’s is a family-run business, and the tables are cleaned and wiped off to make way for the next round of guests, with foods appearing almost instantly after the waiters scream the order at the top of their lungs to the staff preparing the fare. If you walked into this place without someone who knew why they were screaming, you might think they were about to kill each other, and while I could have done without the constant shrieks, the food made up for any other inconvenience.
Apart from missing the Holy Shrines in Haifa and Bahjí, I realize how much I have missed the Holy Land, a land truly blessed by God, a land whose peoples live, fight and die for, a land of contradictions, filled with life, history, religion, the Holy Land for four of the world’s major Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá’í Faith.
