A First Time for Lots of things.

I can't believe it's three months since I last posted a blog. The time has gone by so quickly with weddings and lots of visitors from the UK in our first non-covid summer since making Aliyah. I’ve also been back to the UK a couple of times to see my parents and the boys – and of course my new daughter-in-law! Despite that, and Malcolm having a lot of work on at the moment, we’ve still had time for shows, exhibitions including some “firsts”. We had our first crop of lychees and our first mangos are growing nicely.

I attended the Maccabiah for the first time, on our local beach, watching the beach football and beach volleyball. There was a great atmosphere with both local and travelling supporters from all countries around the world. My friend Mark Kingston was playing for Team GB in the over 55’s football so I went along to watch one of his matches. Even though it was only 9am it was already incredibly hot which made their performance all the more impressive - and it was nice to watch them beat Australia!

When we moved to Poleg I was invited by a new friend Lynne ( there's your mention Lynne!) to join the book club she had set up a few months previously. During Covid it was a great way to 'socialise' and to 'meet' new people despite the restrictions. When the restrictions lifted it was agreed to continue to meet over zoom, as so many of us regularly travel abroad, and to meet up in person for coffee occasionally. Although we all live in Israel, the participants have come from all around the world and with an extremely wide range of working backgrounds, and of course personal experiences, which has led to some some really interesting discussions of the wide range of books Lynne chooses. Below is a photo from our first meet up, with about two thirds of our book club present.

We went to our first play in Hebrew with the Goldsteins. We saw a very good production of Fiddler on the Roof in Tel Aviv, where even the songs were in Hebrew. Whilst we couldn’t understand much of the Hebrew, we are so familiar with the story that it was still really enjoyable. We celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary staying over night in Tel Aviv and then went to our first opera in Israel (my first anywhere!) with the Finkes and Tarshs. Israel National Opera put on a production, for free, in a large park in Tel Aviv, HaYarkon. So on a balmy evening, no worries about the weather, we enjoyed their production of Carmen, in French, with Hebrew sur titles.

The following week we enjoyed a great production of Merchant of Venice, in Jerusalem, thankfully in English. Every summer Theater in the Rough put on a production of Shakespeare, presented free & outdoors, moving, with the audience, through the Bloomfield Gardens, Jerusalem. It was really well done and again - no need to worry about the weather!

Our final "first" outing of this month was with the Perskies to the Jazz Sela Lounge in Tel Aviv where we had a really enjoyable evening listening to jazz.

With Rosh Hashanah on the horizon the shops are already gearing up. Not for us though as next week we head for a canal boat in the South of France and then onto Borehamwood to spend the New Year celebrations with our family - Alexander, Gila, Tzvi and Eliya arriving a few days before we get there.

It is energising and stimulating to experience new things for the first time but the most joyous of this blogs "firsts" was Eliya's first birthday today. When he was born the nurses kept telling Gila to wake him up to feed him, as he was so small. When he was in hospital at three months he was a scrawny little thing, hardly eating at all. Thank G-d he is now a healthy, chubby baby and as you can see its hard to take a picture of him when he's not eating!

Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova.