Saturday, March 17th, 2012
Texas Hillels: Day 4
Day 4 was a long day. We left our hotel in Budapest at about 9 am to head for Arad, Romania. The bus ride took a lot longer than expected. We had to wait about an hour at the border of Hungary and Romania to get all of our passports checked and stamped. Once all of that was over it was a quick ride to the Arad Jewish Center in Romania.
The Arad Jewish Center gave us a very warm welcome of a delicious three course meal. During our meal the President of the community told us about Jewish history in Romania and Arad.
Once we were all done eating we split into groups and visited some of the elderly living in the community, JDC-supported elderly home. One of the groups met with a few women who were very excited for us to be there. It was a great feeling knowing that we were really making an impact on the people in this small community who don’t get very many visitors. I saw that one group received beautiful drawings from one of the residents.
After our visits we were shown great hospitality of a couple of really great singers singing some songs in Hebrew while we drank coffee and ate some birthday cake in honor of one of the residents. After we were finished at the center we took a tour of Arad and visited the synagogue there.
We then finally reached Timisoara. We had dinner at the community’s kosher restaurant. There was so much delicious food there. After dinner we did some folk dancing with the Romanians. It was a lot of fun!
-Yamit L.