Israel @60 Celebration Mission 2008
by Mark Silverberg
Executive Director, JFEDNEPA.ORG
The Israel Missions program of the Jewish Federation of Northeastern Pennsylvania has been in effect since October 2001. Our Israel Missions have taken over one hundred and twenty members of the Jewish communities of Lackawanna, Pike, Wayne and Monroe counties for an experience of a lifetime. In most cases, those who have participated in our Missions had never before ventured to Israel. For them, this was the fulfillment of a lifetime dream.
This year, in order too increase participation in our 2008 Israel@60 Celebration Mission due to the economic meltdown, the Federation agreed to provide a $1,000 per participant Mission subsidy from our endowment fund in return for a $250 gift increase to the forthcoming UJA Campaign.
The result of these Annual Missions has been the evolution of a bond of deep friendship that has bound together the members of the diverse communities of Northeast Pennsylvania in ways nothing else could have done. The experience of seeing Israel, of sharing the agony and the ecstasy of Jewish history and touching the stones marked with Hebrew inscriptions stretching back through the eons of time have left an indelible mark on each and every participant without exception. Twenty-one members of the Jewish communities of Lackawanna, Monroe, Pike and Wayne counties including two from Luzerne County and two former Scrantonians who now reside in Florida participated in the 2008 Israel Mission from November 2nd, 2008 to November 14th, 2008.
Superbly led by former Scrantonian and leading Israeli tour guide Lee Glassman, and broken into two distinct tracks to accommodate both first-timers and prior visitors, the participants landed at Ben-Gurion Airport early in the morning of November 3rd and began their 14-day whirlwind Mission through the sites and sounds of modern day Israel - from Independence Hall in Tel Aviv (where Israel‚s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declared the birth of the new Jewish Commonwealth in 1948), to the Herodian ruins at the ancient seaport
of Caesarea, to Safed where Jewish mysticism (the Kaballah) was born in the 1500s and where several famous rabbis were laid to rest, and the beauty of Tiberias on the Sea of Gallilee. The group then ventured through the former Syrian fortifications on the Golan Heights, visited the museum at Katzrin, stood on a steep and windy cliff overlooking "the Masada of the North" (Gamla) and visited many other diverse and historical sites in between before arriving at the Prima Kings Hotel on King George Street in the heart of Jerusalem as the focal point for the journey.
Using Jerusalem as their "base camp," the participants toured Machaneh Yehuda (Jerusalem‚s famous open air market) and Ben Yehuda Street (Jerusalem‚s major shopping district), participated in an archeological dig where a colored fresco from the 16th century was found, visited the village of Yemin Moshe (the first 19th century Jewish town built outside the walls of Jerusalem) and Kfar Adumim ( town of 30,000 people bordering Jerusalem), visited Ammunition Hill (the site of a major battle in the 1967-Six Day War) and Latrun (the site of another major battle fought during Israel‚s War of Independence in 1948), overlooked the ancient Temple Mount upon which the Al Aqsa Mosque is built, prayed 
at the Western Wall (the last remnant of King Solomon‚s Temple), studied the ruins following the Roman destruction of the Holy Temple in 66 AD, traveled to the Israel Museum to stand in awe before the Dead Seas Scrolls at the Shrine of the Book, shared the experiences of new Ethiopian immigrants at the UJA-funded Mevassaret Zion
Absorption Center (especially its kindergarten filled with twenty-five small children who were excited to be the focus of such attention) , cried for the sacrifices made on Masada (the last Jewish outpost of the Second Jewish Commonwealth that fell to the Romans in 70 AD and led to 2,000 years of exile), relived the experience of the Holocaust at Yad VaShem, journeyed to the Valley of the Lost Communities that were obliterated by the Nazis during World War II, ventured into the Western Wall tunnel excavations where they touched the actual bedrock stones of the ancient Holy Temple laid during the Solomonic era three thousand years (stones that bore the actual marking of Star of David which remains, even today, the symbol of the Jewish state of Israel), and rejoiced that, after two millennia, the Jewish people have now returned to their ancestral home and have become a "light unto the world."
The group returned to Northeast PA with a single, poignant message reflected in their minds and hearts "Masada (Israel) shall never fall again."