A trip to Israel

As lawyers enter the “senior” phase of their professional careers, many start enjoying a few more personal days and looking forward to a bit more vacation time. Most frequently, the first travel thoughts involve winter trips to Florida or Arizona, or wherever the grandchildren are living. But if you still crave a bit of adventure, consider an ISBA or IJA tour. Lawyers are fine traveling companions. Most tell great stories. You’ll know a lot of the same people. And you will always have someone to join you for a cocktail.

The IJA Israel trip invitation arrived just at the right time. My wife, Kris, and I are retired. So we travel. A lot. But of course we had to do our due diligence. So we asked the question on everyone’s mind when going to a foreign country: “Will someone there try to blow us up?” We checked around. Most people said, “Probably not.” So we went.

It’s about a 15-hour trip to Israel, including a three-hour layover in Frankfurt. Frankfurt is like the Atlanta of Europe. Apparently every plane is required to stop there. But the Lufthansa flight was fairly comfortable. There was plenty of complimentary wine, more legroom than on domestic flights, and enough time for me to enjoy four action movies.

We arrived at the Dan Panorama hotel in Tel Aviv. We later stayed at a Dan Panorama hotel in Jerusalem. It was nice of Mr. and Mrs. Panorama to name all of their hotels Dan. Easy to remember. We had an elaborate buffet dinner and then joined our guide, Nathan Shapiro, for a short history lesson and an overview of the trip. Nathan is a 10th generation Israeli. Modern Israel was created in 1948, so Shapiro’s family must have lived in the area when it was still unincorporated. But the guy sure seemed to know his way around.

Since this was an IJA trip, we did judge and lawyer type things. We spent the first morning with a lawyer from Tel Aviv and another from a large U.S. firm, practicing in Israel. They explained that Israel has a culture of laws and argument. Everyone is either a lawyer, has an immediate family member who is a lawyer, or thinks he is a lawyer. Law is an undergraduate degree and appears to be the fallback major. They have 6-8 times the number of lawyers per capita than in the United States. The law school at Hebrew University was founded 50 years before the founding of the country.

This is a lawyer type of place.

We took a guided tour around the law school campus, with a beautiful view overlooking Jerusalem. We met with a number of law school professors, including a former chief judge of the Israeli Supreme Court and a former chief judge of the Sharia Court of Appeals.The grand finale of the Supreme Court tour was a meeting in chambers with Justice Sabin Joubran, the only Arab Supreme Court justice. He’s a big fan of Chicago. His daughter lives here. Not surprisingly, she’s married to a lawyer.

But we certainly didn’t spend all of our time with judges. We toured. If you’ve read about a place in the Old or New Testament, we were there. We drove north, past the Sea of Galilee to Mt. Beatitude and the Church of Loaves and Fishes. We walked through the old city of Jerusalem and past the Western Wall of the second temple, visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Christian Quarter, and walked the Via Dolorosa. I inconvenienced our travel companions by becoming hopelessly lost in the huge Arab market in the Muslim Quarter. (Thoughtfully, the guide refused to heed my wife’s suggestion to let me find my own way back to the hotel. I would have made it. I remembered the hotel’s name was Dan something.) We crossed over to the Arab controlled area of Bethlehem to visit Mt. Calvary, and then went on to the Mount of Olives, the Church of Peter, and the room of the Last Supper.

From Jerusalem, we headed south to the Dead Sea and Masada. The Dead Sea is much like Salt Lake, except there is no winter skiing and very few Mormons. Jump in, float, take a picture. Then run to a fresh water shower to wash off the rotten egg smell.

Been there. Done that. Never going again.

Masada, for those who didn’t see the movie, was the last holdout of the Jewish rebels against the Romans, who had destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Eight thousand Romans laid siege to the fort, eventually building a ramp to move siege towers and a battering ram to the fortress walls. Nine hundred and sixty rebels committed suicide rather than surrender. What you might not have known is that Masada was built by Herod the Great, shortly before the time of Jesus. Herod was born a Jew, raised and educated in Rome, and installed by the Romans as the king of Judea. Constantly fearing a Jewish uprising, he built Masada as a winter palace and fortress, with well stocked store rooms, pools and sauna, a sophisticated cistern and water collection system, and near impregnable walls. It’s built on a rock plateau, in the middle of the desert. To get there, you go to the middle of nowhere. It’s a few miles farther. And it’s actually worth the trip.

We continued to Eilat, a resort town on the southern tip of Israel and the northern tip of the Red Sea. Despite being near the Dead Sea in both distance and literation, the Red Sea is more of a water wonderland, with a unique aquarium and underwater observatory, built right into the sea, over a coral reef. There are hotels, marinas, and scuba shops. Arriving in Eilat was like driving through the Badlands and ending up in Ft. Lauderdale instead of at Wall Drugs.

From Eilat, we crossed over to Jordan for the trip to Petra. Petra was the center of trading routes in both Greek and Roman times, controlling caravans and levying tolls affecting the movement of frankincense, myrrh, spices, silk, and ivory. By the time of the crusades, the demand for frankincense and myrrh had dwindled, most likely because everyone had a jar and the stuff lasted forever, and Petra was abandoned. It was pretty much forgotten until Indiana Jones chased the Gestapo through Petra’s scenic gorges and into Al-Khazneh (the treasury) at the conclusion of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Petra is magnificent. It is often justifiably referred to as the 8th wonder of the ancient world. The structures, now thought to be primarily tombs and temples, are carved out of solid rock in a secluded canyon and mountainside. And the facades have survived in near pristine condition for over 2000 years. Petra is a UNESCO World Heritage site and it’s a nice piece of work.

Israel is a tourist-friendly, first-world country. Everyone speaks English and prices are reasonable. The hotels are new and clean, the a/c systems work, and the ATM machines dispense shekels. What’s not to like? Tourism is a large part of the Israeli economy. Christians, Jews and Moslems criss-cross the numerous historical and religious sites. All seemed equally intrigued by the cultural overlaps. Put Israel on your bucket list.

This year, ISBA President Russ Hartigan organized a fabulous trip to Ireland and an international cruise through the Mediterranean. Incoming President Jim McClusky will have next year’s itinerary at the Annual Meeting. You’ve got plenty of time to renew your passports. Sure, you’ll miss the grandchildren for a week. But you can send them a postcard with a cool stamp. 