Chol HaMoed - Weekdays of the festival

The six days between the festivals of Sukkot and Simchat Torah are referred to as Chol Hamoed. Many activities which are forbidden on the festival days are permitted on the days of Chol HaMoed (except if it is also Shabbat) such as using electricity or driving a car. Hard work is ruled out and so the days become a time to have fun and relax. We made sure that we did!

We went to "Erez Chavat Chalav" dairy farm, a real gem of a place where we got to bottle feed the calves, toss hay at the cows, 'milk' a cow with a quick squeeze at the base of the teat and then finally we watched how the milking is really done these days with huge, computerized machinery. I'll let you into a secret. I am not sure who had more fun, the youngest son and his friend who had joined us for the day, or I?

The next day we stayed near home to visit the Hiriya Recycling Park. Less than a decade ago the Hiriya mound was an active landfill and a dreadfully smelly one at that! Today the recycling park and the in-progress Ariel Sharon Park have become symbols of renewal in Israeli society. Refuse is still brought to the Hiriya but it is now disposed of properly elsewhere and the visitors centre, where virtually everything is recycled, is a great place to learn how to protect and rejuvenate the environment (below).

The eldest son came back from his youth group camp two days into the holiday and together we took a tour of the experimental Palmach Museum in Tel Aviv. The Palmach was a special military force of the Hagana - the underground military organization of pre-State Palestine. There are no displays or documents in this relatively new museum but rather we followed the story of young Palmach recruits through various rooms, films and special effects. It was a fascinating and thoroughly moving experience.

Later that day we stopped off at the Buffalo Dairy on a moshav about an hours drive away from Tel Aviv. This unique farm serves as a kind of tourist attraction as well as a working dairy. The buffalo herd was imported from Italy in 1995 when the owners saw that the Israeli market was over-loaded with milk products and needed a new direction. Milk from water buffalo, I learned, is thicker, sweeter, and richer than cow’s, goat’s, or sheep’s milk and is higher in calcium, proteins, and healthful fat than any other milk. Certainly the yoghurt and soft cheeses we bought in the little shop were delicious!

We really did have a busy few days but the last day trip I want to share with you for now (I have more to come!) was to the Electricity Power Station in Hadera, a town in central Israel. The pre-booked tour included a film and a bus ride around the power station and all the way up the pier over the sea to (potentially) watch the coal being brought by ship and sent down to the station to be turned into electricity. Unfortunately there were no ships in dock during our visit.
Afterwards we went nearby to the Beit Henkin restaurant in Givat Olga, right on the beach. The restaurant, situated in a historic Bauhaus building high up on a cliff edge overlooking the sea, served some delicious pasta. Later still we hit the the beach which was practically empty, clean and had some rock pools for exploring. A great day out!