Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Morocco: if I had picked anywhere else on the Mediterranean for a family holiday, at least anywhere that’s not convulsed by civil war, I don’t think anyone would have noticed. But when I told friends that we were taking our children to Israel on vacation, I got some odd looks. Was there a special reason, someone wanted to know. Were we in search of political insight, asked another. Perhaps one of us was interested in finding his or her Jewish roots, an acquaintance suggested. Perhaps one of us was ‘searching’, spiritually speaking, and would like to walk in the steps of Jesus. Nobody seemed able to believe that we just…went to Israel, on Wizzair, in search of winter sunshine.
But that wasn’t the end of it. ‘What is the purpose of your visit to Israel?’ Upon arriving in Tel Aviv we were stopped, as everyone is, and asked to explain ourselves.
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