Bat Mitzvah and More!

Today we got up and drove to The Davidson Center at the Western Wall. We got a quick tour of Robinson's arch by our new tour guide, Isaac, who made it home from Germany.  We met Rabbi Bender who is originally from Philadelphia and the photographer,Yaakov, also a Philly guy.  The B'nai Mitvah of Emma, Jamie, and Max was beautiful.  It was held right in the Davidson center on the original limestone that was over 2000 years old. There were several bar/bat mitzvahs taking place at the same time. Some were reading torah, others singing and doing the horah, and singing the Shema. It was an unbelievable place to be. We started the service by putting tallit on the B'nai Mitvah and we all took siddurim to read from. The Rabbi led us in prayer and we started singing Oseh Shalom. We waited for the bar mitzvah next to us to finish so that we could use that Torah since it was a Torah reading day. Jamie had the first alliyah, then Emma and Max.  We sang, paraded the torah, and even did a horah. It was magical and very moving. The Rabbi gave a very short D'var Torah where he mentioned a few words about the three B'nai Mitzvah that we had sent to him.  Everyone participated in the ceremony. Aidan and Spencer helped cover the torah and Cory, Alexa, Sydney and Arli all read and sang the prayers that they have learned from services and hebrew school. We each passed the torah from generation to generation as well.  It was a beautiful ceremony that was just perfect.
Next, we went to Yad Va Shem, the Holocaust Museum.  We walked through very quietly trying to take in all of the information of the horror that happened.  It was very educational and definitely moving.
Our last stop was the Herzl museum. We were all pretty beat, but it was an interesting format where you were taken into different rooms and showed a movie that told about Theodore Herzl's life.
We made our way back to Tel Aviv and allowed our driver, Adi, to pick our restaurant. He dropped us off at the a grill where we stuffed our faces. There were over 70 plates on the table as the first course was all small plates of different dishes....Our main plates were chicken, house kabob, and the steak kabob.  If that wasn't enough, we then walked to get ice cream.  On our way home, we stopped by the park on the beach that is like an exercise park. We let the kids run around for a little and came home.
Max asked our guide to give us a word of the day and today's word was Metzuyan which means excellent.  Today was METZUYAN:)