Croatia Videos - June 2012

Here are our Croatia Videos....

First, the People of the AACI Croatia Trip

...and our Video of the Croatia AACI Trip

Croatia Part 4 - June 2012

On Sunday morning, we left Zagreb for Slovenia. Slovenia is another of the 7 countries that was established after the breakup of Yugoslavia and it is relatively tiny...about the size of Israel.

Our first stop was Postojna (try googling postojna caves slovenia). We have all been to stalagmites and stalactite caves before but these were the most amazing by far. Before going, we were a little skeptical...how could it be different? Well for starters, you first board a train which takes you about a mile into the interior of the mountain. And then you walk thru enormous caverns for about another 1/3 mile surrounded by the largest limestone cave formations that you have ever seen. 

There are over 20 km. of passages and galleries in the system of caves, considered the most impressive in Europe and perhaps the world. At the conclusion of the tour, you find yourself in what is called the "concert hall", a large opening with a very high rounded ceiling where the acoustics are perfect. There was a group before us singing "Amazing Grace", so when they finished, I began "kol ha'olam kulo, gesher tzar me'od" and many of our group joined in....it sounded amazing!

From there we journeyed north to the area of Lake Bled, where we took a boat ride on the lake and then took a cable car to the top of one of the surrounding mountains where we got a bird's eye view of the entire area. When we came down, we journeyed to the top of another mountain where an impressive castle sits overlooking the lake as well.

The only thing that could have been better this day was the weather....it was rainy and overcast all day, as a result, my pictures were not as good as they might have been had the day been bright sunshine. All in all, tho, the weather on this trip has been excellent.

We then checked into Hotel Lek which sits at the foot of the Italian/Croatian Alps. The hotel was very nice and the staff was amazing they just could not do enough for us. We had another fish and salad dinner.

I was up bright and early and took a walk in the village; it was quite foggy and I managed to get a number of very nice pictures.

The next morning, we went to the Vintgar Gorge in Slovenia. Awesome gorge with numerous waterfalls. About a 3 km hike in all; very refreshing.

We continued back to Croatia where we visited the Trakoscan castle

and finished our touring with a visit to Varazdan where there once was a community of 1000 jews.

The shul in this town is still standing tho it has not been used as a shul since 1939. It was used as a warehouse and a movie theatre and now is being restored with the view to leaving a memorial to the Jewish community that once was in this town. We found the building covered in tarps as the restoration is underway. The only thing that we could see was part of the outside and some of the inside thru an open window.

We met a neighbor who indicated to us that she was in fact of Jewish descent.

From there it was back to Zagreb for a final dinner at the shul; quite good. The meal was ended with a number of songs, poems, speeches etc by the tour participants. I contributed with a set of gramen.

This morning we were up bright and early and then it was off to the airport for our flight home.

That's the end of a very nice trip. We met some nice people, saw some unbelievable sights and witnessed the continuing decline of Judaism that we have seen in a number of places in Europe.

We are now back in Israel and are thinking ahead to Shabbat when we will host Josh and Phyllis and Paul and Abbey in Hashmonaim and then on to Toronto on Sunday.

That's all, folks!

All the best

Fran and David

Croatia Part 3 - June 2012

Dear All:

On Friday, we had a driving tour of Zagreb and saw some of its main attractions/buildings etc. from our tourbus. We then headed out to the "Jewish" cemetary. It was the most bizarre Jewish cemetary that we had ever seen. There were Jewish and Christian graves interspersed, there were family burial plots with Jewish and Christian members buried together with both a magen David and a cross together on the matzeiva and then there were persons who had a magen david beside their "born date" and a cross beside their "death date" indicating that the person had converted during his/her life.

 When we discussed this with the Rav of the community on Shabbat, he explained that there had not been a rav in Croatia for close to 60 years, from the beginning of WWII until he arrived in 1998. And therefore during the communist rule when there was rampant assimmilation and no rabbinic leadership in place, things were tremendously hefker. He also explained that under communist rule everything was nationalized and run by the state. They established a bylaw which said that if a grave is not maintained by family members, then they lose their right to it. Not maintained by definition was that no one tended to it, there were no flowers and no visits. The body could then be disinterred and transferred to a public site and sold again to someone else. And since there were few Jews left after the war, many Jewish graves (with Jewish headstones in place) were resold to christians. Absolutely amazing. The rav is trying now to change the bylaws. 

From there, we drove about an hour to the site of the largest Nazi death camp in Yugoslavia (called Jasenovac) where most of the Zagreb community were murdered. There is a large monument in place. There are none of the original buildings left in place. We spoke a bit about the history of the place, we davened, made a keil moleh and kaddish and sang ani maamin and hatikvah. Quite a moving visit.

We were back in town at 4 PM and had some time to roam around the downtown area before getting ready for Shabbos.

There were numerous issues with the hotel re Shabbat (electronic keys, sensors that would shut air conditioning and lights on and off, automated doors etc. We discussed all of these and found solutions that helped us enjoy shabbat with no chilul shabbat.

Friday night before candle lighting, our bus dropped us off at the shul which is on the thrid floor of an apartment building. The building belonged to a Jewish family before WWII and the actual apartment was the home of a well to do jewish family. They had since repatriated the apartment and were letting the shul use it as the community centre for the city's jewish population.

Besides our group of 39, perhaps 10-15 locals (men and women) showed up for minyan. Mincha was at about 8:30 PM.  The rav davened kabbalat Shabbat (sefaradic, quite nicely) and then we had a very nice seudah with divrei torah, zemiros, and a very warm atmosphere. We were back in the hotel by 11 PM.

Davening in the morning began at 9 AM. There were a few more locals this morning and two other Israeli touring couples.

After davening the Rav, Rabbi Dr. Kotel Da-Don (originally from Netivot, Israel) gave a very nice dvar torah and took questions from our group. There are about 1500 jews in Zagreb. He began coming as a student to lead services for RH and YK in 1993. In 1998, after he had received semicha (Yeshivat Hakotel) and his law degree, he agreed to move with his wife to assume the role of Chief Rabbi for one year. The one year has now become 14 years. He and the rebbitzin have 4 kids and they have established kashrut and a day school. There is also a chabad rav here (originally from Montreal) and they have established a kindergaten that feeds the main school. Quite remarkable achievements under very difficult circumstances.

We had a good rest in the afternoon and we returned to the shul for mincha, seudah shlishit, maariv and havdalah. 

Tomorrow we are off to Slovenia.

Hope all are well...

Shavua tov and all the best

Fran and David

Croatia Part 2 - June 2012

We had a great night's sleep...well deserved. 

Up at 7:25 AM for Shacharit minyan in one of the Hotel's conference rooms. Then we went to the dining room for breakfast. In addition to the permissible foods from the regular buffet....orange juice, tea, coffee and some of the cereals, our guide had brought along frying pans and went into the kitchen to fry us omelettes for breakfast....quite good. We all made lunches, (tuna, peanut butter and jam and egg sandwiches, plus fruits etc) and then boarded the bus for local touring.

We visited the UNESCO protected sites of the island town of Trogir and the Old City of Split. Both are reminiscent of the Old City of Jerusalem (l'havdil) in terms of the narrow alleyways and their thousand plus year old  walls of the cities.

Split which is now a city of more that 200,000 people (second largest city in Croatia) has an old palace from the third century that is mostly intact which was built as a summer palace and final resting home (after retirement) for the Roman Emperor Dioceles. Located within the palace are some indications (menorot scratched into the walls etc) that there was a shul and a Jewish presence within the ancient walled city. This indicates that there was an ancient Jewish community here.

There is a much more recent shul that is in the Old City and which has been restored into working order by the Jewish community of Split. We visited the shul and were greeted by the vice president who spoke to us about the ghetto that was in the city and how the community was decimated by the Germans in the Holocaust. He then told us how they had rebuilt the shul in the 1990's and the shul is used sparingly because most of the community is irreligious. They do get together every Friday night for Shabbat dinner; however, there is no religious component to their gatherings. The only time the shul is used for anything religious is when groups like ours come by. So we davened mincha there.

We then walked to the top of one of the hills surrounding the city and visited the ancient Jewish cemetary which has graves from the 1600's. The building which once served as the morgue is now a bar with a beautiful patio that has this amazing vista of the city. The building still has a sign "Tzadok Hadin" etched into the wall above the door to the bar.

We then had a bit of free time to roam around the ancient city and pedestrian shopping streets before returning to the hotel. We had a few hours of rest time (which is why I have the chance to post this update now) and soon we will daven Maariv and have dinner.

Hope to post some more tomorrow....

Hope all are well

All the best

Fran and David

Croatia Part 1 - June 2012

Dear All:

We had a very long but wonderful day today.

Waking up at 4 AM to be in the airport by 5 AM for a 7:50 AM departure was no fun, but at the end of the day it was all worthwhile. 

We met the entire group at the airport and we have spent the day getting to know one another. Most of the people are from Jerusalem, Raanana and Netanya; one is from the north near Rosh Hanikra and one from Zfat. Two are from Beer Sheva, one couple from Australia and us from Canada/Hashmonaim. All are english speakers.

The vast majority are people who have made aliyah and have been in Israel for many years. And the majority are brits. Most if not all are dati and therefore there is minyan three times a day. 

Our flight arrived in Zagreb at about 10 AM and we were on our way at 11 AM on a very nice bus. We stopped after about an hour and a half driving to eat lunch at a beautiful spot overlooking many waterfalls and then continued on our way to the main stop of the day, the Plitvice National Park. You have to google it to see it for yourself, tho I will be sending pictures soon.

It is a national park that is over 115 square miles with many lakes, terraced one above the other, feeding into one another by myriads of waterfalls. It is truly one of the most beautiful sights that we have ever seen. We hiked thru the well laid trails and saw most of the waterfalls, which took a couple of hours, ending up at a boat dock, where we took a boat ride which dropped us back at our bus. It is magnificent and the 2 and a half hours that we spent here did not do it any justice; you need to spend more time here to take it all in. 

There is a science in taking pictures of waterfalls and my lessons that I learned from discussions with Yitzi and Nava paid off...you will see when I send the pictures. 

We then drove another 30 minutes and stopped at a restaurant; not kosher.

Guide Michael Tuchfeld

AACI Liaison Miriam Green

Our guide/mashgiach/cook Michael Tuchfeld, had arranged with this restaurant to kasher and use their facilities, turn on the oven and cook fish and soup for us by triple wrapping everything and baking it all. So our dinner tonight was bread, salad, soup, trout with baked potato, cauliflower and broccolli and watermelon. And it was very fresh,....the trout was caught this afternoon and freshly baked for us. The owner of the restaurant was a local Croat who had worked on a cruise line (the Celebrity Millenium,,,the same ship that we will be on iyh in AUgust to Alaska). As a result he knew alot about Kashrut and also gave me some tips on what to do aboard the Millenium as far as kashrut is concerned.

Back on the bus for a two hour ride to our hotel in the south of the country near the old city of Split. The Hotel is relatively new and is a beautiful 5 star facility.

In all we traversed most of the country today and now we spend a couple of days in this area, visiting Split with its old shuls and cemetaries and the walled city of Trogir. On Thursday we begin making our way back north to reach Zagreb for Shabbat.

We have made friends with a number of the participants and we have played Jewish geography to the hilt! One couple that we met, Harry and Sarah Prais (pronounced "Price"), is from Birmingham, England (with a home in Raanana). When I said my name was Woolf, and that my parents had at one time (about 65 years ago!) lived in Birmingham, Harry said "are you IG Woolf's grandson?" (btw, IG stands for Yitzchak Gershon). I replied yes and he went on to say that his family was friends in the old days with ours and that they regularly attended a SHabbat afternoon shiur in my uncle Myer Lebovic's (a"h) home and that after my Uncle Myer and Auntie Minnie (a"h) had moved to Canada, they had bought that very home, which was at 125 Russell Road.

He also said that if he remembers correctly, his brother Sigbert was a close friend of one of the Woolf sons, possibly Sidney (ie; my father). He said that IG Woolf's involvement in the Central Shul in Birmingham back then, helped to strengthen the yiddishkeit in that city. Those are memories that are 6 to seven decades old!!!

Will try to post some more tomorrow and hopefully include an album of pictures. 

Hope all are well....all the best

Fran and David