מזל–טוב לשירין וצחי

On July 3, we attended the wedding of our Israeli friends S. and T. in בית יהושע. It was the first Israeli wedding we had ever seen. We discovered, first, that Israeli weddings are huge events with many guests (we arrived at the wedding on a chartered bus that left from the British embassy in Tel Aviv, and some Israelis jokingly asked us why Jenna Bush's wedding was so small); second, that Israel has some beautiful wedding halls; and third, that Israelis really know how to throw a party -- we stayed in בית יהושע and danced into the wee hours of the morning.

Here are the dashing groom and the beautiful bride ...

... and the late-night dancing.

The day before the wedding, we made a visit to David Ben-Gurion's house in Tel Aviv. The house is now a museum, preserved to look more or less the same as when Israel's first prime minister lived there. We were impressed by the vast library that Ben-Gurion had assembled in various languages.

There were quotes from Ben-Gurion displayed on the walls, and I was amazed that in the early 1960s he not only predicted the fall of Soviet Communism, but he was remarkably accurate about the timing and the causes as well. I was also proud to see statements in which he urged stringent protection for Muslim religious sites in Jerusalem after the city was reunited under Israeli rule in 1967, despite the desecration of Jewish religious sites when the city was divided. But my favorite quote may still be, “In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles” -- and this from an avowed agnostic!