A few hours ago, we said goodbye to our new family, our guests from the Hadera-Eiron region through the Partnership2Gether (P2G) program, who had spent the last 10 days with us in our homes and in Nashville. But for our family, the honor of being a host was a gift that we received, not a gift we gave.
Seven teens and two chaperones from our partnership region came over after first spending four days in the partnership region of Prague in the Czech Republic. While my wife Abby spent two summers in an exchange program with Sweden and had grown up with au pairs, I had never had the experience of hosting international guests. I was a little intimidated because frankly, my Hebrew is nonexistent, but my concerns were allayed when we heard that the kids had English down solidly. And it turns out that good old-fashioned Southern hospitality is just about universal.
The young person who stayed with us was a 15-year-old young lady named Rotem. When we were paired up, her parents immediately reached out to us to connect, even before we had our official P2G Zoom session. Rotem is a really cool kid who loves music, hates sports and shopping, and splits time between living on a moshav with her mother, and with her father in the city. And, like much of my family, she is a vegetarian, so she truly was a perfect fit for our family.
On our first free day, we decided to take her to the Loveless Café, to give her a true taste of Nashville. She remarked that that the portion sizes were ridiculously large, just like she saw in the movies. Later that day we went on a lovely bike ride in the Warner Parks and decided to visit Game Terminal, a fantastic arcade with over a hundred period arcade cabinets from the 70s through recent times with dozens of pinball cabinets.
On Sunday, we boldly decided to drive to Santa Claus, Indiana to visit Holiday World. And of course, to give Rotem the true American experience, we had a stop off at Buc-ees. That was when she explained that in Israel, when something is abnormal, they refer to it as “special.” She definitely thought Buc-ees was… “special.” We had so much fun at Holiday World together, although I have to admit that Rotem was a bit intimidated after seeing the second-largest wooden roller coaster in the US, but after getting her started on some smaller rides, she was riding the biggest rides with no problems.
On Monday, she had a chance to go to my mom’s house to sample a 10-course feast of Southern cooking classics. Again, Rotem felt that the spread looked like something out of a movie. To be fair, my mother still finds it challenging to cook for under 10 people.
The visit was not without drama, however. On Tuesday, members of a white supremacist group, surrounded West End Synagogue – my shul. That evening, a busload of 70 kids from Camp Ramah Darom were due to arrive on a field trip. To make things even more complicated, the visiting P2G teens were also supposed to be there. I raced to West End as soon as I found out, and a large group of police cleared out those goons with about 45 minutes to spare before the Ramahniks arrived. My son Sammy asked to be picked up to go hang out with his Ramah friends, and the whole group was able to hang out safely in the synagogue, eat dinner, meet some Israeli friends, and have a group line dancing lesson; all blissfully unaware of what was going on.
On our last free day, we got a chance to take Rotem to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Since she is a guitar player, it was so cool to get to show her the instruments used by so many ground-breaking artists and bring the history of our city to life. After that, we took a tour of the Goo Goo Cluster factory and went on a walk on the pedestrian bridge. And then we finished off the day at one of the city’s last authentic, non-Disney Honky Tonks, Robert’s Western World, where she got to catch some truly gifted artists.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the amazing job that Federation team member Eitan Snyder did in planning this trip, organizing all the activities, and shuttling all the teens around our fair city. He did such a great job reinvigorating this program and doing such a remarkable job of communicating to everyone involved. I also must give credit to Gordon JCC CEO Jesse Feld and the team at the J for having the P2G teens be involved with Camp Davis. They loved getting to work with the kids and staff on their visit. I also loved meeting all the other host families – truly a group of kind, generous folks with so much extra love to give to some great kids and chaperone.
I think that now, more than ever, it was so crucial to bring this program back after all of the chaos of the COVID era. My daughter Zoe cannot wait to participate in this program, and one of the chaperones, Yifat, almost ended up taking her back with them. It was so important to the residents of our partnership region to know that they have support over here. When we realized that the Israeli teens had discovered that there were white supremacists marching in our streets, Rotem told us that she felt safer with us than she did back home in some ways, and that was sobering. While we may have our problems in the US, and while sometimes they can feel overwhelming, the truth is it is just a very different situation than being in a war, when you are surrounded by your enemies. It truly was a reality check on the privilege we enjoy every day in our country. And another reason we should take every opportunity to support our fellow Jews in that part of the world and everywhere. We are family.
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