I went to Israel on birthright, almost a year ago. It was the best time ever. I visited the shuk (market) in tel Aviv the first day, I should have bought chicken Sharma spices I'm really kicking myself for not. The shuk was the highlight of the trip. It was like the how people used to shop hundreds and thousands of years ago,before supermarkets. I had falafel on pita(the pita is much thicker than in the US...for the better) I got the falafel right as it came out of the fryer and I asked for chips in it (fries). It was amazing.
I met a couple of really nice and hot girls on the trip and chat with one five times a week on Facebook. Everyone I saw was so pretty or handsome. There was a Hasidic wedding in the Jerusalem gate hotel where we were staying and I peeked inside and saw the men separated from the women. The party was really jumping! There were such cute kids, girls in such nice dresses and young boys in suits. I had the best israeli beer I ever had called Maccabee.
The soldiers on our trip were mature and wise beyond their years. They were so great, and knowing all Israeli citizens have to go into the army gives you a new found respect for them and what they do to keep all citizens and tourists safe. I climbed Masada and went to the dead sea after. It's really amazing how they have handrails all the way up Masada, that you wonder how they brought them all the way up there.
I will definitely move there in my lifetime and the question is only what neighborhood. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming it was so unlike America where no one talks to strangers or even looks at each other like on the streets or subways in NYC. I felt so safe the whole time, also unlike the US because of all the crime, muggings, and the knockout game.
It really made me feel like I was finally home and in my ancestors homeland. We visited had Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum which was really sad for me personally having a survivor grandmother that lost her first husband and only son in Auschwitz. My mom still has the picture of him, he was only five years old when he was murdered. We don't even know my grandmother's first husbands last name to put a record of Yossi , her son or her husband's name. Israel is he only place in the world where Jews can ever truely feel at home and safe from pogroms / persecution in the future.I can't wait to move there in the not to distant future.
