5785 has been such a hectic year, in so many ways.

So much tremendous good, at least, in my dalet amot, but also, so much that’s been difficult and stressing me out to my eyeballs, for reasons that are not always so clear.

One of my good friends came back from Eilat beginning of last week, and told me they’d found a relatively quiet, relative tznius (mamash relatively…) beach close to the border with Egypt, where they had just spent hours snorkling in the water, watching all the fish that are drawn to the coral reef.

It was so relaxing, she told me. Even my husband managed to relax.

Wow, if it got that guy to relax – maybe, it could even work for me?

==

My husband is very good.

Even though we are having a small cash crunch right now, ahead of Uman Rosh Hashana (with prices in the sky) and paying for stuff for our girls, amongst other things, when I told him I really need a two night holiday, right now, in Eilat – he agreed.

I found the rental apartment, close to a great, new Moroccan-style shul, and away from the downtown / hotel strip area, where no clothes is de rigeur, and he booked it. He also picked up two snorkelling sets from Decathlon, whilst I got a bunch of stuff from the supermarket.

We packed, and we left. I was pretty anxious about the shmirat eynayim aspect of going to Eilat, while it was still summer time, but I was also really feeling like I needed a real break, with the real sea, doing real ‘holiday’ types of things.

Hashem Ya’azor.

==

We got to the apartment, finally, after I ran around the Eilat mall with a computer trying to find wifi, so I could get into my husband’s email and found out what the address was…

That mall doesn’t have public wifi, so an Arab offered me a hotspot (which failed, because I couldn’t type his password in Arabic). So next, I went to one of the phone kiosks and asked them if I could ‘borrow’ two minutes of internet. They thought I was crazy, probably, but after a bit of humming and hawwing, they agreed.

==

We dumped the stuff, and fled to the quiet beach.

Miraculously, apart from diving guys and two families of old Russians, there was no-one else really there by 4pm, at least, no-one else there that would cause shmirat eynayim issues for my husband.

We stuck on the snorkels – and within two foot of water, we were already in the biggest fish tank in the world, with shoals of beautiful fish swimming all around.

It’s hard to describe how magical it was.

After months of wishing I was a fish, kinda, here I was – the dream come true. Floating with the dori fish by the reef in Eilat.

My husband was also wowed by the experience. Hashem’s world is so very beautiful, and I was trying very hard to just learn how to let go, and go with the flow, and trust that Hashem was ‘floating me around’ exactly as required. Even outside the water.

==

That night, I cooked the sausages I’d brought from Jerusalem, to avoid running around trying to find restaurants with a hechsher, said my 7 TKs, did my hour of hitbodedut, and fell asleep reading a very interesting book on Laurence Oliphant.

The next morning, we got up later than planned, and decided to visit the Eilat Botanical Gardens, which is 27 years old, and founded by three guys on a piece of wasteland, who grew 80% of the trees there from seeds.

I found that amazing.

And the place itself is very, very pretty, even with a little waterfall and a stretch they call ‘the rainforest’, which basically drizzles for a minute every seven minutes. It’s the only time in my life, that I actually appreciated drizzle.

Hardly anyone was there.

When we were done, we bought some ice-lollies and then browsed the garden centre and shop. I picked up a rhodonite bead bracelet. You can read what it’s good for HERE. I got the message: I have been experiencing some very heavy anxiety the last few months, and it’s really, really time to work on joy, emuna and optimism again.

==

After making a salad for lunch, sourced from a super where the people 50 years and younger were mostly OK, whilst the older secular women seemed to be scowling a lot in our direction (because we were dossim, I’m guess. I can’t think of anything else, we didn’t run anyone over with the trolley, steal the last packet of biscuits on the shelf, nothing like that…) – we headed back to the beach.

This time, it was way more tricky.

There were a few beach babes there, of various sizes and ages.

My husband took of his glasses (I also took off mine – some of the ‘sights’ were really not pleasant, never mind shmirat eynayim) and we groped around trying to find a better bit of the beach.

We did – and this bit opened up to a different bit of the coral reef, with larger fish and the ability to go deeper into the sea.

My husband loved it. Me, with my no glasses and inability to see more than two metres ahead, even in magnifying diver mask, was less keen. I thought the beach babes had left the shallower part we’d been in, very happily, the day before, so I motioned to him to join me there.

He started swimming across, whilst I walked around.

Just as I got there – three bikinis showed up, and I suddenly felt like the cheese in the mouse-trap, for my poor husband. I walked a bit back up the beach, trying to see where he was. At that point, he stuck his head out of the water, and I motioned with my hand reverse, reverse, reverse.

==

He went back to the depths, and I went back to the shallows.

I just floated some more, in barely 3ft of water, surrounded by so many gorgeous fish of all colours. It was amazing, and I was so grateful to Hashem for the experience of doing that, here in Eretz Yisrael.

==

Supper was a disaster.

Long story short, we were trying to avoid the Eilat strip, and also the Eilat Mall, so ended up in a sordid sushi place with a kosher certificate and a thick layer of dust, attracted by the old fat that was sticking to everything.

I lost my appetite, got upset, we went home.

After half an hour, I realised it wasn’t such a big deal. I also realised how hard it can sometimes be to maintain good standards of kashrut, shmirat eynayim and healthy eating and behaviour on holiday.

I was really thinking about it, how so many of us frum Jews can get ground between the upper millstone of ‘keeping mitzvot properly’, and the lower millstone of beach babes, sleazy streets and bad food that often lurks behind every idea of a ‘holiday in nature’.

It’s not an easy balance to pull off. Not easy at all. And that night, we kind of blew it.

==

The next day, our last, we looked up where to go for breakfast in advance, and ended up in the kosher dining hall of Kibbutz Eilot.

You pay 42 shekels, and you get a really nice buffet breakfast, kibbutz style, but really worth the money and with a lot of healthy stuff to pick from (and bourekas. For people who worry about having bourekas for breakfast.)

The clientele was so much more wholesome, way more families with kids, way less gross tattoos on display, way more clothing.

We don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel when we do this stuff, I told my husband. Now we know about this place, let’s just do it again next time!

==

On the way home, we stopped at the Ein Bokek stream for a two hour hike up very shallow water into a pool.

It was lovely, Most of the people there were also dossim, and my husband’s hat saved him from the one beach babe that kind of sprang out at us from the undergrowth while we were making our way up.

Once again, I was so grateful to God, that we live here in Israel, in a place where we can do this in our own backyard, and where the kiosk back by the parking had a kosher certification for the pizza it was selling.

Where else in the world do you find this?

==

Driving home, I pondered the mess that is what is left of the Dead Sea.

Five years ago, exactly when the first Covid lockdowns began, whoever started digging up the ground the whole way up highway 90, by the Dead Sea.

While they like to pretend that what is happening at the Dead Sea is all due to lack of rainfall, in truth, there is a detailed plan going into operation there, apparently to dry out most of the Dead Sea, and reclaim the land, whilst also making a packet by evaporating the water and extracting the minerals.

This has been upsetting me for years….

But this time around, I was really trying to see all this through the eyes of God is running the world, and everything God does is for the best.

==

But, what good could there be in destroying the Dead Sea like this?

My husband answered, that maybe once all the ‘dead’ water was evaporated, God was going to replenish it with more sweet water again.

That idea made me smile.

More prosaically, I was pondering how the Dead Sea is effectively ‘dead’. Nothing can grow there, or live there. All up Route 90, there are signs that the Arava is really starting to bloom.

Way more gas stations, way more trees, especially palm trees. They are fixing up the road, which is now two lanes in some places, making it much easier and safer to overtake.

On the way home, I heard they are also putting in a train between Beer Sheva and Eilat now.

The desert is blooming, in a very real way.

And maybe, if the choice is between a blooming desert and a Dead Sea, the blooming desert is more important, at this stage.

==

I am not blind to the issues we all still have.

There is an American flag flying at the entrance to the Eilat Port, that was recently closed down because of ‘the Houthis’.

Whatever.

Eilat itself is full of roundabouts dedicated to the Masons, and to people like Yitzhak Ben Tzvi and Chaim Weissman.

==

Strangely, perhaps, one of its fanciest roundabouts is dedicated to ‘Chabad’, apparently the only frummers the State of Israel likes…

You explain that to yourself however you like.

Back in Jerusalem, I am still feeling some stress, some tension, it didn’t all just disappear.

But.

I am bringing back home the message of the sea, and that message is:

Keep your head down, float through all this, and continue to see the tremendous beauty that is right in front of all of our faces’.

Oh, and keep breathing, while all this is going on. A person can’t hold their breath forever, waiting for the madness to end.

==

BH, I will get back to doing some Rav translations again.

I heard the Sefer Torah is nearly ready, they are just fundraising now for the crown, cover and staves.

BH, when the Torah is ready, the war finally finishes.

I can’t believe this has been going on for almost two years, it’s incredible. But, I am keeping my head down still, and getting on with the task of trying to live life happilty, and trying to see God in all the small details.

It really is a full-time job.