Shabbat Shalom from Netanya: Shabbat August 20-21: The hitchhikers emerge from quarantine!

When we left off last week, we were hurling through space and touching down in Petach Tikvah, to spend Shabbat with Gila, Ariel, Elisha, Ora and Adi. To be honest, despite that last frenetic post, due to the frantic week, to just be able to relax with the little ones climbing all over us was positively refreshing. After months of relative isolation, made very bearable by all our great friends at home, just to hang with family was quite awesome. This will be the main highlight of the weeks that we will be spending here, and we have something to look forward to when we get home, which is to visit Daniella, Monty, Tali and Ezra in their new home in Cleveland.

So, what went on? Well, shabbat was fun, with some COVID twists. The synagogue services were outdoors. We avoided crowded parks, opting to take the kids early in the day when there were not a lot of people. Sunday, we went to see Elan, Nomi and Co; they had a wedding and we babysat their two youngest, Aryeh 3.5 years and Eytan 3 months. Lots of fun; we decided to stay at their home in Efrat till Tuesday and then went back to our apartment in Netanya with Shoshana and Shlomo for the next few days. That was lots of fun; a balance of beach, walks, and then working on Canadian time in the late afternoons and evenings. We got to eat out at a beachside patio restaurant and get some sun and sand. The idea is, stay with those who you know are safe, and stay out of crowds.

Meanwhile, in Israel, the numbers are climbing. In fact, they are as we speak at the same peak as they were exactly a year ago, when the country closed down for the Jewish Holidays. There were nearly 8000 new cases today and almost 600 in hospitals. But the relatively good news: of the 220 serious cases, only 18 are among the vaccinated. On top of that they take contact tracing and quarantine seriously here. There is an office of the ministry of health called Quarantine Exit that tracks all those who were infected or travelled to the country. We learned all about their email address and had to follow up all of our paperwork to get the letter “ending” our quarantine and getting us GreenPasses. So even before Barbara and Bruce have the Quebec Vaccine Passport, we have the official Israeli GreenPass!

After an afternoon on the beach with Elan’s kids yesterday, we have welcomed Ariel and Gila to Netanya for a week holiday and went back to Efrat (with great herring and wine) for Shabbat this week. So more stories to come as we keep crisscrossing the country!