APRIL 18 • 2024 | 25
J
N

continued on page 26

COURTESY OF BARBARA LEWIS

Joe and I thought it would 
be a good idea to go to 
Australia to visit his cousins 
and go to the wedding.
But … about 25 years ago 
I accompanied Joe on a one-
week business trip to Sydney. 
We had horrible jet lag the 
entire time, an experience we 
weren’t eager to recapture. 
Why not take a cruise from 
the U.S. to Sydney instead 
and make the 14-hour time 
change gradually?
In the end, Andrea’s son 
and his bride didn’t want any-
one they didn’t know at their 
wedding. But the seed had 
been planted in our brains: 
a trip of this magnitude — 
almost two months — was 
something we’d be less likely 
to want to do as we got older. 
It seemed like a now-or-never 
proposition.
Princess Cruises Lines’ 
Island Princess was sailing 
from Los Angeles in January, 
so we booked a spot. We 
didn’t know at the time that 
the L.A.-to-Sydney cruise 
was a four-week segment of 
a three-month cruise around 
the world, which had started 
in Fort Lauderdale and gone 
through the Panama Canal 
and up the coast of Mexico 
before we joined. 
After Sydney, the cruise 
was scheduled to visit Bali, 
Sri Lanka, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, 
the Suez Canal and Jordan. It 
had originally been scheduled 
to dock in Haifa, but that was 
scuttled after Oct. 7. About 
midway through our cruise, 
plans changed again, due to 
Houthi attacks on ships in 
the Red Sea. The ship would 
skip the Middle East entirely, 
adding two additional ports 
in Australia and then heading 
for Mauritius, Cape Town 
and the Canary Islands before 
sailing to Gibraltar and Rome, 
another one of its segment 
terminals. Those on the ship 

who had been planning to 
leave in Dubai had to scram-
ble to make alternative plans.
The Island Princess was like 
a floating resort, with two 
pools, three hot tubs, a gym, 
a sauna and a spa, in addi-
tion to dining rooms offering 
gourmet meals and numerous 
bars and a theater, all provid-
ing good entertainment in the 
evening.
On our second day, we 
went to the Jewish Friday 
night service, attended by 
about 40 people, and met Gail 
and Ken Posner, formerly 
of West Bloomfield, now of 
Royal Oak. We had many 
acquaintances in common, 
and our musician sons knew 
each other.
Once we got to Sydney, we 
spent a few days at the sub-
urban home of Joe’s cousin, 
Simone, but spent most of the 
time at the apartment of her 
significant other, which over-
looked the Sydney Harbor 
Bridge and Circular Quay, 
with its many ferries, a Metro 
station, a tram station and 
the passenger ship terminal, 
where a different ship docked 
every day. We were two 
blocks from the iconic Opera 
House, across the street from 
the beautiful Botanic Gardens 
and within walking distance 
of many museums and sites 
of interest.
We attended their pro-
gressive synagogue, North 
Shore Temple Emanu-El, 
and met their rabbis, Nicole 
Roberts from New York City 
and Russian-born Moshe 
Givental, who had lived in 
Metro Detroit for many years. 
We also went to a concert of 
Viennese music, mostly by 
Jewish composers, at Sydney’s 
ornate Great Synagogue, built 
in 1878. 
One day we went to famous 
Bondi Beach, followed by 
lunch at Shuk, an Israeli-

In the Great 
Synagogue in 
Sydney

On the beach 
in Picton, New 
Zealand

Barbara and Joe 
with Andrea 
 
Cooper

COURTESY OF BARBARA LEWIS