Our First Shabbos As Israeli Citizens:

7/8/2017, Motzie Shabbos:

Our first eruv Shabbos started off sweet. We received several invitations to go to people's houses for Shabbos meals which was so nice. However, we decided we wanted to stay home our first Shabbos in Israel, since we were still getting adjusted and tired from jet leg. A bunch of  families came by and dropped all kinds of goodies for us to enjoy for Shabbos. Everything from home made Challah, to salt, and cookies made out of Israeli flags that a mother and her kids made for us along with some adorable "welcome to Israel" pictures for us.

One of my favorite things about getting to celebrate Shabbos is Israel is candle lighting time. In Israel, sirens go off around the Jerusalem area to alert people that it's almost candle lighting time. When it goes off the kids running in from outside the house with looks of excitement yelling "it's time for candle lighting" and makes the experience of lighting candles and much more epic sort of experience.

Some of the highlights for our first Shabbos in Israel was my husband, Stephan discovering how much he loved the dovening at Shul Friday night. He said that if we would have gone to that shul last year during our pilot trip he would have demanded that we go to beit shemesh because of how much he loved the dovening. We both love music and at shul there was a lot more singing then he's seen in any shul. Someone was keeping the beat on the bimmah, the acoustics were nice, and they were picking a lot of  his favorite tunes. The weather was hot but comfortable. One of the ladies who was making a meal told me they have Tehillim at the park for kids at 10:15am Shabbos morning so we went to that. It was cute, at the end they give the kids popsicles and other treats so of course the kids like it then. We went to Shul afterwards for the kiddush which was nice. There were a lot of people coming up to us and introducing themselves. We feel we really lucked out on being in Beit Shemesh since we are really comfortable here already in the community because of the people. Later that Shabbos Cyrus had two boys show up and ask him if he wanted to play easing my fears of him making friends.  It was a great first Shabbos as Israeli citizens in Israel for everyone.