The weather here is great! Back in New York, it is freezing! Literally!

Hi, there!

It’s now Winter Break in New York and one of my old friends, Eli, is here visiting Eretz Yisrael with his family! Eli and I were best friends back home. We went to school together since preschool and we were in the same Sunday baseball league.

I was super psyched to hear that he was coming and I somehow even managed to convince my mom that I should be able to take off a day from school to hang out with him! We decided that his parents would drop him off at my house on a Sunday afternoon, let me show him around my new town, have him sleep over, and then when his parents came to pick him up Monday morning, I would also go with them and join them in their plans for the day.

Eli and I are having a great time together! When he asked when I was coming back to New York for a visit, I told him about this deal I have with my mom. I explained that I have to come up with 50 cool things about living in Israel before my cousin’s bar mitzvah in May. If I could finish my list in time, I would get to go with my mom to New York. Eli thought that was a cool idea and decided to help me out with it. So right now, as we’re sitting in a restaurant eating falafel for lunch, Eli is going to be adding to my list of awesome things about Israel.

Introducing the amazing and talented Eli Klein! Here he is, folks! Enjoy!

43. The weather here is great! Back in New York, it is freezing! Literally! Here I can walk around in January in just a sweatshirt and my mom isn’t yelling at me to put on my winter jacket, hat, and gloves. Plus, no snow means it’s always baseball weather!
44. I really like that there are parks and playgrounds all over. It seems like cities in Israel are built for kids. In New York, if I want to go to the park, my mom has to drive me. Here, Binyamin tells me, you can just walk to the park by yourself because there’s always one close by.
45. We had an awesome time this morning digging at an actual archaeological site! We found really cool stuff from the time of the Beis Hamikdash. That means we were holding pieces of pottery and old coins that were held by Jews living in Israel thousands of years ago! In New York, when you learn about stories from Tanach, you just read about them. Here, you can actually visit those places. Binyamin said when his class learned about Shmuel Hanavi, they actually went to his kever, his burial spot. And when they learn about David and Goliyas next year, they’ll visit the exact place where that battle happened. Here, you can literally walk through history!

(Excerpted from Mishpacha Jr., Issue 789)