Today was the day to meet friends in Israel. First, it was time to see the chatan and calla (bride and groom) from last Friday, Yossi and Daniella. I had to direct them to the apartment I'm in, using the map I found here. There were 2 problems with this. First, my sense of direction here seems to work in only one direction. Strangely, I seem to be able to point the direction to Yerushalym from where-ever I am. North and south don't seem to be something I can easily find, probably because the clues that I use at home don't seem to work here. The sun is too high in the sky to easily tell direction from and the large body of water that I'm used to using as a base point is to the west, not the south. Anyways, the map was in hebrew, so that made the reading a bit slower. Once I found where we were on the map, I was able to get them here and they arrived around 10 am. We went to a nice place to have a bite to eat and sat outside and talked for about 2 hours. I had arranged to meet my old friend Udi Savion for lunch and he and Yossi coordinated the maneuvers in hebrew on my cellphone. So Daniella and Yossi and I talked and talked as the temperature became warmer and warmer. I'm really glad I came for their wedding, and they could not stop thanking me. They really missed my wife Vanessa who wasn't with me here, and made me promise that she'll come for the bris or baby naming. I assured them that she would be there. (Note to Vanessa: there's plenty of time to get ready) Udi arrived about noon and we all sat for a while until Daniella and Yossi had to leave. They are really great people, and we all got emotional when we said goodbye.
Background on Udi Savion: In the early 1990's Udi retired from the Israeli Navy and came to Toronto as the Israel Aliyah Sheliach. I was doing some work for them and we became friends. Udi is the kind of guy who throws himself into a job 110% and was one of the most successful sheliachs anywhere. He was able to arrange for about 400 people per year to emigrate to Israel from Ontario. He visited schools and synagogues, spoke to groups large and small, arranged for a High Tech fair with Israeli firms, in short, he was and is a ball of energy masked as a great big teddy bear. His wife Tami worked to make the Toronto celebration of Jerusalem 3000, one of the biggest events of it's kind on the North American continent. They toured Ontario as tourists on their time off, and, unusual for secular Israelis, began to visit synagogue on shabbat and holidays. They really enjoyed the Canadian lifestyle and requested a double term in Toronto.
Once I asked Udi to speak about the Israeli Navy at my synagogue. Of course he accepted and I asked for his resume to make the introductions. Udi had me make business cards for him that stated: ''Ehud Savion, Commander, Israeli Navy''. I always thought that that was a rank like Captain, Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander. Wrong. Udi was THE Commander of the Israeli Navy. He always said it was just the Mediterranean Fleet, but when I asked if there was any other fleet he would tell me ''not really''.
When Udi finished his stay in Toronto, he became involved with Canadian Highways International which was trying to build a toll highway in Israel, which when complete would run from Beer Sheva in the south to Natanya in the North, almost 300 kilometres long. The company became Derech Eretz and Udi is now the CEO.
I hadn't seen him in a couple of years and he gave me a hug and a kiss (very Israeli, and very emotional). We talked about old times, about how Israel is doing, how his highway is doing and about the prospects for peace. He's always been STRONGLY in favour of peace with the Arabs - most military people here know what war can do, and all the senior people have seen the results of war - and we talked about the inevitability of it. Once the Arabs figure out that there's the possibility of profit from peace, it will happen, and the Israeli economy will boom because they won't have to pay for the large standing army that they maintain.
Udi had to show me his baby, Highway 6, the newest highway in Israel. We saw the tunnels under the archeological sites and forest, how with blind luck or devine providence the 2nd temple grave-site at the end of the tunnel was perfectly aligned with the median (just north of the highway #1 interchange, north side of the tunnels) and how they had built a highway to the same standard that a North American highway would be built to, on time and in a place where it had never been done before.
One thing that I have found here is that if you change the signs from hebrew to english, this coastal areas of this country look a lot like the nice parts of New Jersey (not the Meadowlands!). At one point we used the police turn-around to reverse our direction and Udi remarked with a chuckle ''I can do that - I think, I own the place''. When they finish it, it will cut hours off of travel time from north to south here. It will be a great success and Udi deserves all the kovod.
Udi dropped me off at Avrohom's apartment and gave me a book ''Dreaming Gardens, Landscape Architecture and the Makings of Modern Israel'' which has a reference to Highway 6 in it. They have spent a ton on landscaping and it shows. We said goodbye and promised to see each other soon.
It's almost shabbat and we're getting ready. The shabbat siren isn't for a couple of hours - they run the air-raid sirens at candle lighting time here in Rehovot, but there is some packing I'll need to do now, as my plane leaves at 1 am Sunday morning. I get into Toronto at 6:30 am, which means the 12 hour flight only takes 6 hours this way! There is the possibility that the airport may go on strike, but Udi says that the word is they'll wait until daytime on Sunday.
I'll be happy to go home, but I am very happy I came.
Next stop, Toronto!
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