Following our guide -On our last day in Jerusalem, our guide’s wife invited our whole busload of Americans and Canadians to have afternoon tea and cookies in their apartment.
What fun to be welcomed into their home. To be, for an hour or so, in a family – a warmth and affection worlds away from hotels and buses and tourist stops. To hear who’s who in family photographs, to inquire about vacations and hobbies.
Suddenly conversation ceases as the sobering answer to a naive question is the holocaust. Only our hosts’ grandparents survived. None of the grandparents’ siblings or family. Suddenly the barbarity of genocide past, hits home. We are talking to direct descendents of a few survivors. This country is full of such descendents.
The hosts deftly move the conversation to lighter topics. We snap their photos. It’s time to return to the bus, and dinner, and the airport.
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Picture this large tour bus on a small quiet residential street in Jerusalem, moving carefully between cars parked on both sides. We spill out, following Mishi like children behind the pied piper.
Police in a squad car, blocked behind our bus, beckon Mishi who they know is a tour guide. He has a brief conversation, then returns to the sidewalk grinning.
“What was that about?” we ask.
“They asked me, ‘What could possibly be of historical interest in this neighborhood?’”
“I said, ‘I am bringing them to my home!”
It was truly special.
I am smiling still.
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