DAN HOTELS OF ISRAEL
A
SUPER
EXPERIENCE
Next Year, Jerusalem
Or Somewhere Else
GABRIEL LEVENSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
assover, the festival of an
exodus, is also the tradi-
tional holiday of return, of
an ingathering of the fam-
ily in the comfortable and famil-
iar surroundings of one's own
home, or the home of grandpar-
ents or other family members.
In the course of a long life, I,
too, have enjoyed the warmth
and the fulfillment of conducting
a seder or being one of the guests
at a family event; but we have
also made the deliberate effort,
over the past 20 years, to cele-
brate Passover in various parts
of the world with fellow-Jews
whom we had never previously
known.
p
per person
in double room
including breakfast
Starting at
DAN PANORAMA, TEL AVIV — DAN PANORAMA, HAIFA
DAN PEARL, JERUSALEM* — DAN CAESAREA
Any combination of Dan Hotels for a minimum of seven nights.
*Scheduled opening Summer 1995
GABE L EVENSON
Rates valid as of March 1, 1995
.(varies by season)
our visit, in the late 70s, there
were virtually no Jews surviving
in the city; and the enormous syn-
agogue, a marble masterpiece in
the flamboyant style of the Ital-
ian Baroque, contained a scant
minyan of elderly worshippers for
the Saturday morning service in
which we participated.
The waning congregation had
had no rabbi since the Sinai Cam-
paign of 1956, when the majority
of Egypt's Jews were imprisoned
or exiled or simply fled on their
own to France (French had been
the daily language of the Allexan-
drine Jews) or to the long-cher-
ished homeland of Israel.
In fact, there were more Jews
per person
in double room
including breakfast
Starting at
KING DAVID, JERUSALEM — DAN TEL AVIV — DAN CARMEL, HAIFA
DAN ACCADIA, HERZLIYA — DAN EILAT*
Any combination of Dan Hotels for a minimum of seven nights.
*Hp•ningiuly 1995
Rates valid as of March 1, 1995
(varies by season)
A 14th century Sephardic seder from a folio in the British Library.
For information and reservations,
please call your travel agent or
Israel Hotel Representatives
(212) 752-6120 or outside New York
State Toll Free: 800-223-7773/4
or FAX: (212) 759-7495
(
4(m 1/611(V:• , CA••er•i
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We are the Elijahs, for whom attending the seder we learned
an extra place is always set at the about and joined that same
seder table; and everywhere we evening in a Jewish old-age home
have traveled at that time of the on the outskirts of Alexandria
year, we have always managed than there had been at the syn-
to connect with a Passover ob- agogue. The celebrants, residents
servance, and we have always of the home, were men and
been welcomed as if we were women in their 70s and 80s—the
members of the particular fami- men wearing a kind of striped pa-
ly with whom we have chosen to jama with the look of Auschwitz
garb; the women, simple house-
nest on the evening of Pesach.
There are differences in the dresses.
languages we speak, but there is
The guests were ourselves, a
always the commonality of the massive, black-moustached
Haggadah, in Hebrew, and the Egyptian policeman in plain-
sense of Jewish belonging which clothes who was here either to
trancends the separate languages guard the old-age home or to keep
and customs with which we, the on eye on us foreigners — or both
guests, and our hosts share the — and a gaunt, long-haired
young American who had jumped
joy of Passover.
It was two decades ago that we the freighter on which he'd been
— my wife, myself and our then- working to become an instant
10-year-old son — participated and zealous `ba'al teshuvah.'
His newfound religiosity took
in our first "foreign" Passover.
We were in Alexandria, Egypt, the form of vigorously objecting
that one-time great center of Jew- to my photographing this extra-
ish learning and community ordinary historic event — per-
which dated back to the founding haps the last seder ever to be held
of the city by Alexander the Great in Alexandria. When we returned
in the 4th century BCE.
to Alexandria last Rosh
Even as far back as the time of Hashanah, 20 years later, we en-