bahai gardendina
Bahai Gardensyes, we have guys!
welcome ceremonyA standard part of every Taglit birthright-israel trip is the “Shehechyanu” ceremony. After getting up at 7:00 am, we had breakfast and then drove to the Bahai Gardens on Mt. Carmel in Haifa. Prior to checking out the gardens, we did the ceremony and everyone said the bracha – much to my surprise… There’s so much I don’t know about Reform and Conservative Jews! Afterwards we hiked up mount Carmel (more pictures after the bump). I should definitely hang out more in this part of the country. Living in Jerusalem sometimes makes you very uh… Jerusalemocentric (is that even a word?) and you miss out on the sheer beauty of the North!

mt. carmel
Did I tell you there’d be a beautiful view or what? This is our group on Mt. Carmel overlooking the port city of Haifa and the Mediterranean sea.

mt. carmel
Everyone loves a Jewish girl, in a cave…

mt. carmel
Group shot! Everytime a camera comes out, it’s group shot time!

OK, now it’s on to Safed!

Follow me

About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

10 Comments

  • Somebody needs to use a flash, or a camera that can compensate for the sunlight in the background, or make the photo subjects squint as they face the sun so that we can see their pretty faces.

  • The Carmel area is all nice and great, but if you want the north, head over to Metulla or take a hike in the Golan, its truly beautiful up there.

  • Looks lovely. Although I think some of those tanktops aren’t something Ofer would approve of. And it’s Yerushalmocentric.

    Although the most shocking thing of all in this post was CK admitting that he doesn’t really know everything about Conservative and Reform Jews…

  • OMG, it looks like u guys r having sooooooooooo much fun! OMG im sooooooooooo jealous!!! r u having lots of great discussions about like jewish identity and stuff??? everybody looks sooo awesome!! 🙂 🙂 LOL

  • Let’s put it this way. I;m not letting my daughter go w/ y’all, but my son is on his way. No I can’t grow up 🙂

  • Why am I under the impression that there are hardly any males on the trip?

  • You’re right Josh. We have, through some organizational freak, 32 women and 8 men. Tomorrow we’ll be joined by 6 male and 2 female Israeli soldiers, so that’ll help a little – but despite Jobbers insinuation, our kids are all decent and well behaved. His daughters would have a great time and his son’s might be disappointed if they are expecting Hedonism: Holy Land.