Arrived!!!!!

I think everybody is here. There were 7 of us on my flight, including Ellie Adams who flew East from California and joined our flight at Kennedy.

Very typical El Al experience: the minute people board the plane they start switching seats. Kol haKavod to El Al flight attendants who keep their patience and somehow keep track of where the glatt Kosher meals go as the entire list of assigned seats becomes nonsense. Watching people store carry-on luggage the size of steamer trunks in the overhead compartments also has its entertainment value. The earlier flight had a lot of Birthright kids traveling; ours had more of the Yeshiva-age crowd (slightly less manic).

Jewish geography:
Met one person on the flight who believes his sister's was the first marriage to be celebrated at the JCA (Reaching back into the depths of memory, says "It's a church building right on the corner, right?") Family name "Joffa." Anyone remember this?

Only on El Al:
The very attractive, young Catholic woman sitting next to me (on her way to a college friend's wedding in Petakh Tikvah) got the full El Al security treatment ("Go away for 90 minutes while we search your luggage.") and was given a "Customer Service" escort who stayed glued to her side (including walking her into the ladies room) the entire time she was in JFK. Whatever their suspicions had been while on land, they didn't stop one of the male flight attendants from asking one of his female colleagues to pass her a note (how 9th grade!) with both of his cell-phone numbers and his email address, as we began our descent into Tel Aviv. Yuval. As we deplaned he stepped forward with a smile and introduced himself to her saying "It's me."

We were met at the airport by our wonderfully endearing and energetic guide, Lee Berlman (a Chicago-born olah), and were driven by Ofer (our driver for the tour) to our boutique hotel on the ocean in downtown Tel Aviv. As I got off the elevator, I bumped into Karen Loeb and Barbara Janoff (a New Yorker and a member of Congregation Ahavath Sholom, the Recon synagogue in Great Barrington) as they were headed to the beach.

Oh, yes. It's 90-something degrees here.

Ok. We meet for dinner at 7:30. I'm heading to the beach NOW!

Rddb