How does a young Israeli
kollel couple with very little income and four young children get to spend Yom
Kippur and Sukkos, all expenses paid, in a hotel on the shores of the Kinneret?
Welcome to the
upside-down world of
* * *
Before Yom Kippur,
both my husband Yaakov and I started to feel sick. We soon realized that we had
This was all arranged
on the Friday before Yom Kippur, but it was too close to Shabbos to go then.
Right after Shabbos, they called and asked how long we needed to get ready. I
said we need an hour. I rushed around the house, packing whatever I thought we
would need. We brought summer clothes and winter clothes, paper goods, canned
food, bikes, and scooters. We did not know what would be provided, so we took
the whole household.
At the exact time
that they said they would come, two big yellow ambulances arrived at our door.
I went in one ambulance with two kids, and Yaakov went in the other one with
two kids. There were no windows, and the ride was very bumpy, making one of my children
nauseous, so the trip was not too pleasant.
When we walked
into the hotel, people rushed over to say hello and told us that a bar mitzva
was taking place and we should come and enjoy the food. People urged us to take
off our masks. They were not necessary here because everyone there was already
sick.
The place was
absolutely full. There were about 500 people: many big families and lots and
lots of children. We had two big adjoining rooms. Next to us was a family with
10 children with three rooms. My children made friends with their children
right away and were busy playing with them the whole time.
We were past the
worst part of the sickness, so this was really a vacation for me. There were no
distancing restrictions, and the children could play all day both inside and
outside. The grounds were beautiful, although we could not go to the Kinneret
because there was a fence around the hotel. All our food was prepared in the
kitchen, and we went to pick it up for each meal and ate it in our rooms. Each
member of the family got a huge bag of food, including two rolls per person.
That meant that we had 30 rolls a day. We couldn’t possibly eat that much and
there was no refrigerator, so we had to throw away the leftovers.
On Yom Kippur,
there was a minyan for chasidim, one for Sefardim, and one for
Litvacks. Yaakov davened in the Litvack minyan. For Sukkos they had a big
sukkah for everyone, although some families bought their own as we did. On Simchas
Torah, the hakafos were lively and
fun, with a second set of hakafos on Motzei
Yom Tov.
I enjoyed relaxing
and shmoozing with the other women. The only task I had to do besides watching
my children was the laundry. They had six washing machines but only one drier,
so Yaakov hung a line to hang the clothes to dry. Sometimes there were shiurim or exercise and dancing classes
for the ladies, depending on who was at the hotel at a given time. For example,
if there was a dance instructor, she would provide classes for the women. The
men were busy learning in a kollel, and the children had tons of kids to play
with.
People were
allowed to stay for 13 days after they tested positive. Kupat Cholim provides a
letter to release you, and then the transportation picks up the family up and
takes them home. Sometimes it did not work so smoothly, because if one spouse
was in the hospital, he or she might be released at a different time from the
rest of the family. For example, over Simchas Torah, there was a family where
the father was not released because he had been in the hospital, and the mother
and her four children were sent home by themselves.
All in all, we had
a wonderful, stress-free vacation. We have a lot of hakaras hatov to the government, which arranged this
