Maccabee's Wars

A venting rage against the ills of our society with some hopeful observations.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Flying Back To America

On Monday morning of the 24th of April, we flew back to the USA.

With the long wait for the Nesher, the time spent in line at airport security, the long built in delay prior to departure, sitting on the plane for 15 hours or so with turbulence comparable to a roller coaster ride, you might ponder the following: If only Star Trek were real and we could shout into our cell phone “Beam me up, Scotty.”

But I’m not so sure. The apprehension, the excitement, always makes the trip to Israel special and memorable. And this time, returning to America, there was one more memory. About half way through the flight, Yom Hashaoh had just begun in Israel. Though it was still brilliantly sunny outside the aircraft, an announcement came on the PA system saying that we would find Holocaust related movies, which were not part of the regularly schedule in-flight movies, on our monitors. The first film was Life is Beautiful which I had seen many times already and the second was Everything is Illuminated, which I had not seen.

The second film starred Elijah Wood and was directed by Live Schreiber. It was excellent. Though I must admit, I have read reviews which said that it did not do justice to the book upon which it was based. No matter, I can always read the book at some other point.

Though it had very few vignettes of the Holocaust within the film, it still touched greatly on its ramifications. Though it was more like a road-buddy movie with some amusing moments, it was very poignant and reminded me a great deal of a personalized Kever Avoth trip I took this past summer and of a trip I took with Dr. Leiman about 10 years ago, which I fondly recall and refer to as ‘the Grateful Dead Tour.’

But those stories I’ll leave for another time.