A lightning short visit to Israel

A Letter from Martin Kessel

Just back from a whirlwind one week visit to Israel seeing mainly our family there.

I arrived on Friday afternoon November 7 and was soon whisked away to the outskirts of Jerusalem for a Shabbat dinner with family. I was tickled to see our two great-granddaughters both a year and nine months old already walking and chatting.

On Shabbat I had a lovely visit with my two brothers and their wives in Herzliya.

Shabbat evening has become the traditional time for the large gatherings in Tel Aviv to support the hostages and a peace agreement with Hamas. The gathering of several thousands of Israelis was particularly poignant as the 20 living hostages had just been miraculously returned to Israel, and the remains of hostages, who had had died in the October 7 massacre, or in captivity, were painstakingly brought home. In fact, two of the living hostages spoke at the gathering – it was extremely emotional to be in the presence of people who had survived two years of extreme captivity.

My next few days were spent visiting the different members of our family one of whom lives in Rehovot, near the Weizmann Institute.

Gail and I wrote several months ago about our experience during my stay at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot as a Visiting Scientist. Just a week after we left on June 7, Weizmann suffered two direct hits by Iranian ballistic rockets.  These rockets destroyed two large buildings housing research laboratories. Thankfully, the attack occurred in the middle of the night, and no one was injured.  I met with one of the professors, Oren Schuldiner, whose lab was destroyed.  He described in detail of his lab’s devastating loss of decades of scientific research. As a scientist myself, I could totally appreciate what had happened. Fortunately, the people affected have now been relocated in temporary lab space and their work can continue. But the physical damage is only part of the story as everyone has been very much affected by trauma from the missile attack. This will take a long time, if ever, to recover from.

My short visit to Israel ended with a two day stay at Kibbutz Kalia located at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Stunning Judean desert scenery, coupled with the Dead Sea itself and a spectacular view of the country of Jordan to the East sealed the end of a beautiful trip. not to be missed.  The babies in the picture are our two great-granddaughters.

My trip ended as it began -- in lightning speed, thanks to modern transport and good timing. It only took 18 hours from Israel to Littleton, NH!!