Community-wide Israel Experience brought members of Dayton’s four synagogues together. Some for an extra week.

By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

By the time most of the 58 participants on Dayton’s Community-wide Israel Experience went to bed on the ninth night of the trip — Monday, Oct. 29 at the Ramon Inn Hotel in the Negev — the breadth, depth and scope of the tour left them wearily looking forward to the return flight to the States the following night.

From Haifa and Tzfat to the Galilee and Golan Heights, from Caesarea and Jerusalem to Masada, Sde Boker, Sderot, the Negev, and with plans to see Tel Aviv, all on the tour had met members of Dayton’s Jewish community they didn’t know before. And that was the point of the trip, organized by Dayton’s four synagogues and the Jewish Federation.

Several of these travelers would get to know each other better than expected. On the evening of the 29th, Hurricane Sandy forced all airports on the East Coast to shut down. The next confirmed fight out for the group would be a week later.

Federation Executive Vice President Larry Skolnick, the rabbis on the trip, and Federation staff back in Dayton had plans for an extended tour in place by the morning of the 30th. The details included refilling prescription medications for those running out, a laundry service that picked up and dropped off, a trip to a Dead Sea spa, tours of ancient Beit Shean, Beit Alpha and Beit Gurvin National Park, the Bullet Factory Kibbutz, and time at the hip and trendy Zichron Ya’akov.

After one night back in Jerusalem, the group enjoyed a five-night stay at a hotel on the beach in Tel Aviv, with a Kabalat Shabbat service and Havdalah on the beach.

“We started this trip as individuals from four synagogues and differing institutions,” said Temple Beth Or’s Rabbi Judy Chessin, president of the Dayton Synagogue Forum. “Traveling together tears down barriers. Together we laughed, shopped, dined, floated on the Dead Sea and played in the mud, sought out bathrooms, walked the paths of our Jewish heroes, touched the stones of  Judaism’s holiest sites. These things bonded us as nothing else can. At our beach side Kabalat Shabbat Service, those of us remaining, hugged and realized that we may have different styles of prayer and faith expression, but as children of Israel all of us are one family indeed!”

Over the additional week, some travelers had arranged their own returns to the U.S., others left the group as planned for trip extensions elsewhere, and some members of the tour were assigned earlier flights out, in alphabetical order.

A patriotic surge took over when we arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv on the day before U.S. elections, to cast Federal Write-In Absentee Ballots for president, senator, and representative.

By the last day, 25 people remained with the group, quietly strolling the winding streets of Old Jaffa at sunset before the midnight flight back.