Travel

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This past summer quite a few family members vacationed in Israel, some of them with young children. I remember how difficult flying from New York to Israel can be with small children, so with this in mind, I advised all of my family to book Isroyal VIP service along with their flight.

While no one can ever guarantee great weather, I know that just the other day, on December 29th, I was sitting outside a caf?, sipping my favorite iced drink - without a jacket.

This mitzpeh, or outlook, is a memorial to soldiers who fell during the “Mirdafim” (Pursuits) that took place in the area for about three years after the Six-Day War.

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The Lake George area has a historical depth to it, is filled with natural beauty and has a whole host of fun for those with an adventurous streak.

The hotel’s location is incomparable. You can see the old city from your balcony, and it’s a five-minute walk to the Light Rail.

Naale’s latest crop of students land in Israel to absorb everything the Jewish state has to offer

China assaults the senses with a cacophony of sounds and colorful sights amid its teeming masses. As we arrived for a month’s trip in October the noxious smog of vehicle-packed Beijing assailed our nostrils. But the past still dwells in the shadows of the modernized capital. At dusk a row of elderly stooped men shuffled along the road beneath our apartment in Mao-style uniforms. We would see the same gray men plodding by in the morning.

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For 19 years Yerushalayim was a city divided, cut in two by the 1948 armistice line. After Israel’s War of Independence on November 30, 1948, at the time of the official cease-fire, Moshe Dayan sat with Abdallah Tell and UN mediators, slicing up Yerushalayim. Using a map scaled at 1:20,000, each side used a different coloured wax pen to delineate the furthest point under its control. Israel drew a red line and Jordan a green line. This is the origin of the phrase used to describe land that is “behind the green line.”

New Hampshire, also known as the Granite State, borders Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and Quebec. It is a state with impressive mountains affording beautiful views, flowing rivers and magnificent waterfalls. New Hampshire is famous as a prime vacation area both in the summer and the winter. Although it is over a five-hour drive from most places in New York, there is a kosher hotel and several minyanim in the summertime.

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Observant Jews looking to travel far from home once had to confine themselves to day trips and packed sandwiches.

People think that we’re privileged in some way to be doing this but this is a totally accessible experience for most people, says Bitya.

Most people in Bar Harbor at the time had never met a Jew.… I would bring latkes to my daughter’s kindergarten class and talk about Chanukah, and I arranged Purim parties for whatever Jews I could find.

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Two major Japanese airlines grounded their Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplanes after one was forced to make an emergency landing due to battery problems and a burning smell in the cockpit.

One of the off the beaten track areas in Eretz Yisrael that I enjoy taking adventurous visitors to are the southern Hevron Hills. As we drive south from Yerushalayim, passing through the very cradle of Jewish history, with its rolling green hills along the Patriarchs and Matriarchs path or the “Road of Heroism" as it is some times called, we resist the magnetic pull to stop at Gush Etzion or Hevron and continue south, fully cognizant that more Jews walked on this path than on any other road in history.

We try to visit them once a year although obviously it is challenging to visit those living in the Outback.

Stroll through formal gardens, ride mountain bikes, or go rock climbing.

About four years ago a group of orthodox senior citizens from Bnei Brak arrived to tour the Ayalon Institute. One woman seemed to be exceptionally moved and cried a lot. Nearly two week later, she sent a letter to the Institute explaining why. She wrote that she was a Holocaust survivor and between 1943 and 1945 she had been a forced laborer making bullets to help the Nazi cause – bullets that were used many times against Jews. After the war, she had concentrated on raising a frum generation, suppressing all the terror of those horrendous years in order to do so.

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For Yossi Zablocki, Kutsher's was supposed to be there forever, as permanent as the mountains along Route 17. It was after all, for him and many others like him, much more than just a place to camp out for the summer and the holidays. It was an entire world - a brighter, greener, more tranquil world than the one he passed through each day as an attorney in lower Manhattan.

Although there are more direct and faster routes to Beer Sheva and Eilat and all the sites and towns in-between, the Basor River is one of the beauties of the Negev that defiantly justifies a diversion.

         It is said that Poland is one large Jewish cemetery. While that is not 100 percent true, anytime people dig in Poland, they...

Always seeking to increase our knowledge of Israel's tourist sites, from time to time, us tour guides take refresher tours.

Because only 100 passengers from any one ship are allowed on shore at any one time, visitors to the Frozen Continent will have the opportunity to participate in a variety of activities during its mildest time of year when temperatures average approximately 34 degrees.

There was a time when an Orthodox Jewish traveler, offered a choice of visiting London, Paris or Rome, likely would have put Rome last on the list. Today, that would be a big mistake. Rome is a marvelous place to visit, especially for a religious Jew interested in the historical roots of the post-Second Temple Diaspora.

Below is a listing of many attractions that are open during January and February's winter break.