Scenes From The Streets of Israel; Happy Passover!

Have a Happy and Meaningful Passover

Happy Passover (Pesach) from here in Israel, or as we say, חג כשר ושמח!

Pesach is a holiday that begins Wednesday night and has been celebrated by Jews throughout all of history since biblical times. It’s the celebration of Hashem’s open miracles when He freed the Jewish people from the shackles of Egyptian slavery and led them to the Promised Land, the Land of Israel. We celebrate with a number of millennia-old rituals, commandments, and traditions, the most important among them being the Passover Seder. The family comes together for an hours-long meal full of traditions, special foods, family customs, games, discussions, and songs.

The feeling of celebrating this special and timeless holiday as a Jew in the very same Land of Israel in 2023 is a privilege that’s almost difficult to describe, but I’ll try. I moved to Israel nearly 20 years ago, as a wide-eyed, excited, ideological teenager. I fell in love with the land the first time I visited, and could focus on nothing else until I made it my permanent home. It’s cheesy, but twenty years later as a full-grown adult with teenage children, I feel even more blessed to be here than I did the day I stepped off the plane to a celebration of Israelis welcoming myself and my family to our new home.

Raising my children in a small Land that’s full of rich history, traditions, family and religion is a huge blessing, and to top it off, this place is absolutely stunning with a wide variety of climates and views within a very small geographical area. The teenagers are raised to be extremely independent, and they begin traveling and exploring the land with friends and youth groups from a young age, where they learn about their personal history in locations where that history took place.

I’m not naive. We as a country are young, we’re scrappy, and we’re going through some major growing pains. But at the end of the day, we here in Israel get to wake up every single day in our beautiful homeland, and that makes us the luckiest Jews in the world.

In honor of Pesach, and to share a glimpse of the beauty we get to see on a regular basis, here are a few personal photos from everyday activities over the past couple of months. Enjoy, and Chag Sameach – Happy Passover!

Jerusalem

Tel Aviv

Judean Hills

Judean Desert 

Dead Sea

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Etana Hecht is an American-Israeli investigative journalist, and Associate Editor at DailyClout. She lives in Israel with her husband and three kids. Etana’s articles can all be found at clownworldhonk.com

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