Woke up early this morning, had breakfast and then walked the promenade. The Sea is beautiful and right across the street from the hotel. I walked for hours, had lunch, cleaned up and met the group at 2pm. It is an interesting group -- there are 5 of us and Mervin. There are professors from Emery, GW, University of Texas at Austin, Hunter College, and myself. There are two women and the rest are men. We started off sitting around a conference table talking about the day and coming week. We then left and went to the Tel Aviv Museum of Modern Art. It was interesting but modern art is not my thing. I really don't understand abstractism but they also has some old masters and one room in particular which was filled with displays of miniature future from different periods. We then went to Old Jaffa. That is one place I would love to return to and spend more time in. Our guide took us to the top of the mountain (?) where we could overlook Jaffa and Tel Aviv and get an excellent idea of how close things are.
There is a church in Old Jaffa -- St. Peter's -- named for the apostle Paul who visited there and preformed a miracle -- this was after Jesus death -- he brought a young girl back to life to symbolize that he was the successor to Jesus. This was also the area where Napoleon landed and killed all the residents to rid the area of Ottomans. The history here is amazing. The town is full of winding stairways and walks with small stores. None of which we got to stop and look at in much detail.
After this we went to Pinhas Maoz, an attorney, who has advised various political figures. Pinhas talked with us about law in Israel. We had a lively discussion about human rights. I did not know that Israel does not have a constitution. They have several basic laws but not written constitution. The main reason is how do you write one to cover all the various factions, sects, religions, etc. Fascinating talk. We discussed such things as who is a Jew? How do you define one? If you want to get married where and how? Different courts -- there is a rabbinical court for the Jews and a Muslim court for the Muslims.
After our meeting with him we joined one of Israel's leading political scientists , Gideon Doreon for dinner and had a wonderful free ranging discussion of the political system in Israel today and how they got to where they are today. Dinner was excellent and we walked back to our hotel. Keep in mind it is 10:47pm here and we are all worn out. Several of the group just arrived from the States today and they are really whipped.
As usual I managed to lose something, I always seem to leave things, this time it was my sun glasses. Am going to have to find a pair I can wear for the next week until I get home.
We are going to have a full day of meetings tomorrow which I will report on tomorrow night.
Statistics -- I walked 16,164 steps for a total of 6.63 miles.
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