Day 87 of 100

“Have you seen the world?”

When I was 12, my mom gave me a choice. I could either have a Bar Mitzvah or spend the summer in Israel with my grandparents.

Always the adventurer, I chose to spend the summer in Israel. To get there, I had to pay for part of the plane ticket which cost at the time just over $1,054. So I worked outside of school for a year and was able to save $540.

I was so excited to get to Israel. I had heard about it from my mom and her growing up, so had big ideas about what it must have looked like. I was certain the roads were dirt and everyone rode camels. I wasn’t the most well-traveled kid.

As I boarded the plane my mom told my grandmother, “Make sure he doesn’t roll off the plane when he comes home!” Which led my grandmother to feeding me glass noodles and seltzer water for the entire summer. I was lucky as she couldn’t cook. At all.

The first morning I was there, a knock came at the door and a group of kids exclaimed “where is the American boy!” They became my best friends that summer.

We played games with apricot pits, and cops and robbers, and card games, and whatever we could imagine. My grandmother dragged me all over the country from the Dead Sea to Masada to Acco to well, everywhere. I had never seen such sites, and somewhere I still have photos from then.

That summer was a special summer. I felt so at home in Israel even though I didn’t speak the language. “Those flowers are for me?” the bus driver said in Hebrew. I shook my head saying I spoke only English. He laughed and repeated himself in perfect English.

“No,” I said, “they are for my grandmother. She can’t cook, but has shown me the world.”