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EASY ISRAEL TOURS Pty Ltd

WELCOME TO EASY ISRAEL TOURS

Our niche tours are especially designed for slow walkers or seniors at a relaxed and sensible pace. The comprehensive itinerary has minimal standing, steps, slopes or rough ground.

You won’t have to worry about struggling to keep up with a regular fast-paced tour.

We run our exclusive tours in spring and fall, the most comfortable seasons to visit Israel. The temperature is around 70F. Our aim is to provide you with a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime vacation and experience in the most special place on earth.

It would be an honor for us if you joined us on tour!

The hotels rooms have air con, TV and ensuite bathrooms with a walk-in shower. Hotels we use are frequented by locals for their own vacations, family celebrations
and business meetings. If these hotels don’t give good service and food, it will be around Israel on social media within days and give them a bad name. We all want quality as well as comfort, don’t we? Not the big soul-less tourist hotels.

Huge buffet breakfasts and evening meals are included in the tour price. Fresh from the kibbutzim, there are plenty of delicious choices for everyone’s dietary requirements.

Top, licensed, Jewish guides inform, inspire and lead us to authentic, interesting and often less-known sites as well the most desired places to visit.

Legends Tours & Travel, our agent in Jerusalem, book the hotels, transportation, entrances to sites, etc. Between the guide, Trish and Legends we have over 100
years of experience.

Starting in Tel Aviv with drinks, dinner and a good night’s sleep, we travel up to Caesarea and beyond for three nights in the Galilee/ Golan Heights, two nights over Shabbat at Ein Bokek on the Dead Sea and of course the jewel in the crown, Jerusalem for four nights.

The full itinerary can be viewed on the ‘Jewish Tours’ page on EasyIsraelTours.com

Keep scrolling down here for a summary….

While you are on the website, please check the ‘Reviews’ page to see what past guests have to say.

For more information contact Trish Duke, Founder and Tour Director on [email protected]

Cell phone: +61 414 543 843
(Our head office for EasyIsraelTours.com is in Australia, 12 hours ahead of EST)

Many guests like to arrive a day early to wander around Tel Aviv, enjoy the Mediterranean beaches and get over the jetlag.

Adding one day in Jerusalem at the end of the tour is popular. You won’t want to go home anyway! Visit the shuk, explore parts of the Old City not included in the tour, have lunch at the King David hotel… Possibly with new tour friends.

We can book the pre and post hotel nights for you to save another hotel change.

Talking of changing hotels…

There are only 3 hotel changes on our tours and a full porterage service, so you don’t have to move luggage from your room to the bus.

The luxury bus has air con, Wi-Fi and speakers so you can hear the guide. Instead of giving us the information at each site while we stand for 15 minutes or so, our guide give us most of their information while we are traveling in-between places. Saves time…and our bodies! There are more seats on the bus than we need so you can move around.

Seniors sometimes bring an adult son or daughter. The slower pace is not frustrating as they also enjoy the relaxed itinerary. There are opportunities for the more active guests to walk further in some places or have a swim or walk before the evening meals.

It would be an honor for you to join us!

For more information contact Trish Duke, Founder and Tour Director on [email protected]

Cell phone: +61 414 543 843

(Our head office for EasyIsraelTours.com is in Australia, 12 hours ahead of EST)

Jewish Vienna, Austria: A Community of Influence and Suffering

The History Jewish Vienna: Amazing and Devastating

Vienna is a city with a rich artistic and intellectual legacy. With its palace-like architecture, decadent chocolate and iconic waltz, it is one of Europe’s shining jewels. Vienna’s Jewish community had a large hand to play in forming this respected reputation. For years the Jewish community was the intellectual life blood of Viennese culture. Several times throughout their history the community has known devastation and rejection. Even till today antisemitism occurs within the nation, despite the lessons of history that followed the destruction of the Holocaust.

The Difficult Beginnings of Jews in Austria

Since the 12th century Jews have made a home for themselves in Vienna. The first employment Jews had within Vienna were as financial advisors and mintmasters to Duke Leopold V. Not long after they arrived they were in need of protective orders. The antics of the third crusade had resulted in murderous devastation for the community. In 1238 Emperor Frederick II gave the Jews a charter of privileges allowing them a certain level of protection and autonomy. However, this didn’t last long.

Over the next few centuries the Jews of Vienna continued to fall victim to brutal persecution. Oftentimes they were either annihilated or baptized by force. The community was finally expelled in 1420, although some families remained undercover or lived their lives as Christians.

Judenplatz: The Jewish Ghetto of Vienna

There would not be another large wave of Jewish immigration till the 17th century with the arrival of Jews from Ukraine. Around that time Emperor Leopold established the first Jewish ghetto, Judenplatz, which is today the Leopoldstadt area of Jewish Vienna. There were roughly 130 households within the ghetto, and within its walls Jews were left to conduct their affairs in peace.

The Jewish Ghetto of Vienna, Judenplatz

This small window of acceptance allowed the community to thrive both financially and intellectually. However this happiness was not meant to last with more waves of increasingly violent antisemitism crashing through the walls of the ghetto. The Emperor eventually liquidated the ghetto and evicted all its inhabitants. One of two great synagogues in the ghetto was repurposed as the Church of Leopold. Today the quarter remains a historic site, complete with additional monuments dedicated to preserving Jewish history.

The Rise and Fall of Jewish Vienna

Despite all the barriers, expulsions, and pogroms the Jews of Vienna continued to grow exponentially. This had a great deal to do with the fact that Jews had been granted lawful citizenship in 1867. With this development waves of Jewish immigrants arrived to make the city their home.

By the 19th century Jews played major roles in the academic, musical, intellectual, and artistic worlds of Vienna. Three out of four Nobel Prize Winners at the time were Jewish. This was also when the birth of the Haskalah movement, or Jewish enlightenment, took place. It is no surprise that with such a rich intellectual and cultural pulse the Jewish community of Vienna has produced some of the most influential Jewish figures in history.

One area of expertise in which Jews seemed to thrive was in the concert halls of Vienna. Arnold Schoenberg is one such name with a heavy degree of weight and brilliance. He is hailed as being one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Most notably he is recognized for his unique contributions to Austria’s expressionism movement.

Arnold Schoenberg twelve-tone composition for the opera Moses and Aron, on loan from the Arnold Schoenberg Foundation

By 1938 the community of Jewish Vienna had made a reputation for itself as one of the most influential Jewish communities in the world. The antisemitism Jews had experienced seemed to be a thing of the past.

However under the surface the seeds of hatred still ran deep. When Austria was annexed to Germany, an event known as the Anschluss, violence and torment amongst the community returned. Jews were forced to close their businesses, were banned from most public spaces, and had their property confiscated. The Viennese Jewish community was also one of the first to be deported to concentration camps. More than 65,000 Jews were sent to the camps and only a handful returned.

Encounter the Past of Jewish Vienna

All this history and more can be found at the Jewish Museum of Vienna. Established in 1895 the museum houses some of the oldest surviving Jewish Viennese artifacts. While most of the artifacts were either destroyed or sold by the Nazis, the museum has managed to reclaim numerous items. However, the whereabouts of over half the original collection remains unknown. Nevertheless, the museum manages to take visitors on a journey of discovering the religious, cultural, and spiritual history of Viennese Jews.

Of course when discussing the history of Jews in Austria, attention must be paid to sites commemorating the Holocaust. The Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial also known as the Nameless Library almost resembles more of a military bunker than a monument. The concrete shelves house books, whose spines have been turned inward. The intention behind this choice is to commemorate the empty space of memory that came with the murder of 6 million Jews. Entire generations were lost and with them their knowledge, traditions, and families.

Austria is Celebrating Jewish Culture Once Again

While there are plenty of avenues to explore the extensive past of Jewish Vienna there are also ways to celebrate its present. The Vienna Jewish Film Festival offers a rich outlook into the various shades of Jewish life from around the world. The films shown at the festival cover a whole range of international Jewish films. At the end of screenings guests can ask the director questions, sit in on specialist lectures, and other activities to better connect with each film.

Jewish culture and history is once again being celebrated in Vienna, yet the horror of its past will never be forgotten. It is even more amazing that with such a dark history the Jewish community of Vienna managed to fulfill a major Torah requirement. They were and are a light unto their nation.

Western Wall (Kotel)

The Western Wall: A Symbol of Hope and Resilience

Also known as the Kotel or the Wailing Wall, the Western Wall in Jerusalem is a major tourist and pilgrimage destination. As the holiest site in Jerusalem, and possibly all of Israel, the Western Wall is the only existing part that remains of the Temple Mount. The Wall is an important place to Jews, since they can connect with their faith and feel with the palm of a hand a living part of ancient history. Each Friday during Shabbat, hundreds of Jews and visitors alike come to the Western Wall to pray.

The Wall was originally built by King Herod in 20 BCE during the expansion of the Second Temple. Built with thick white blocks of meleke limestone, the Wall consists of 45 stone courses. Twenty-eight of those courses are above around and 17 are below, creating an immense presence with a larger-than-life feel. After the Six-Day Ware in 1967, two more levels below the wall were discovered. Today, the wall has a massive physical and spiritual presence, and it’s a must-visit while exploring the Jewish Quarter.

Everyone is welcome to visit the Wall. Believers whisper their prayers aloud or write them down on paper, folding them up and placing them delicately in the wall’s many cracks and crevices. One side of the wall is reserved for men to pray, while the other side is reserved for women. For Jews, being part of the tradition is an emotional way to connect with their faith, while for others, it’s incredibly moving to see a tradition that has endured for over 2,000 years. On your visit, you can connect with your faith and participate in the sacred tradition of praying at the Western Wall, surrounded by fellow Jews, pilgrims, and visitors alike.

Spanish Synagogue of Ferrara

A plaque at n° 41 Via Vittoria commemorates the Jews who were expelled from Spain and Portugal in the late 15th century, then taken in by Duke Ercole I Este, who saw them as a resource for his capital city. The exiled were deeply rooted in their cultural heritage, and immediately established their own independent prayer hall and built a cemetery.

The synagogue remained open until the Second World War, and was closed after the Nazi-Fascists raided it. It was on the first floor of the building, and has the traditional two-sided layout with the tevah opposite each other on the shorter sides, and public seating facing the central aisle. After the war, the Baroque furnishing was partly salvaged and relocated elsewhere. The tevah and the central polychrome marble section of the Aron were transferred to the winter prayer hall of the Jewish community in Livorno, named after the Ferrara-born Rabbi Isacco Lampronti, who had commissioned the ark in 1710. The sides of the Aron, made in wood and green lacquer are in the hall of the former Italian Temple. In the 1950s the synagogue was converted for residential use.

This synagogue was the hub of an extremely cultured Sephardic community that had had many prominent figures from the 16th century onwards including Abraham Usque, who was a famous printer and published the “Ferrara Bible” (1553), a Judeo-Spanish translation of the Bible; his sons were Samuel and Salomon, the latter remembered for his Spanish translation of Petrarch. There was a circle of Jewish and Christian intellectuals, led by Samuel Abravanel (1473-1547) and Dona Grazia Mendes (1510-1569), who greatly helped the conversos (Spanish Jews who had converted to Catholicism) return to their roots and Amato Lusitano (1511-1568), essayist and lecturer at the faculty of medicine.

The Jewish Story of Pisa, Italy

Although according to historical sources, Pisa is a city of very ancient origins, the great expansion of the mediaeval city seems to have erased most evidence of Etruscan or Roman settlements. When it became a free commune in the 11th century, Pisa was already a maritime power engaged in the struggle against the Saracens and Arab expansion. The Maritime Republic flourished in the following century. Now, the city’s most famous landmark is the cylindrical Tower built from 1173 to the end of the 14th century which, because of subsidence, now ‘leans’. The base is decorated with blind arcades surmounted by six rings of arcades galleries enclosing a staircase of 294 steps leading to the very top of the tower, where Galileo performed his famous experiments on gravity.

Benjamin of Tudela, during his voyage from Spain to Jerusalem, also traveled through Pisa in 1160 and noted in his dairy that he had found around twenty Jews living there. Pisa’s Jewish community is thought to be the oldest in the whole of Tuscany: the first evidence of a mention in a deed dates back to the year 850 CE. The first group settled and increased in numbers over the centuries that followed with several migratory waves. Unlike Florence and Siena where the Medici introduced a ghetto, in the late sixteenth century Livorno and Pisa expressly invited Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula, offering them freedom and protection so as to boost trade in their maritime territories. Levantine Jews specialized in commerce and manufacturing, and they were soon to become the majority. However, in the same period, money lending was outlawed after centuries of activity, and due to the city’s economic problems the community moved, mainly in Livorno.

During the seventeenth century Pisa’s community dwindled to less than three hundred people, a trend reversed only in the early nineteenth century, when it totaled six hundred people. Over the centuries, the Jewish Community has always actively participated in a range of the city’s activities.

Al Madina

Al Madina is also and above all a space of culture, of discovery, comparison and encounter with the other. An ideal environment to meet and be together, savoring tasty dishes; an ever-new meeting of different worlds and cultures that you want to know each other by communicating with appetite. The wide choice of dishes is cooked with original ingredients and fresh of the day, according to a menu that varies over time: no skewers of frozen meat or prefabricated products from large distribution. At Al Madina everything is prepared day by day, with loving care. For this reason we can say that we have tasted the real Middle Eastern cuisine, spending little: we are wary of imitations! In addition, Al Madina offers in the menu of the day many other even more elaborate dishes such as: – grilled chicken or beef skewers – beef with apricots and almonds accompanied with basmati rice. At Al Madina you can also find mixed grilled lamb and sirloin … and much more that you will discover in Al Madina, day after day.

Ghetto of Padua

There are various traces indicating a stable Jewish presence in the city from the late 13th century. The group lived in relatively peaceful conditions, working mainly as merchants and moneylenders, for as long as the city was ruled by the Carraresi family (1318 – 1405). When the city was taken over by the Venetian Republic (1405), there was a gradual worsening of conditions, particularly with regard to business activities. However, the Jews were still permitted to graduate from the city’s prestigious university, albeit paying additional fees. It was from that period on, in fact, that Padua became an important hub for Jewish studies, hosting eminent academics.

The Jews were segregated in the ghetto in 1603. The area adjacent to Piazza delle Erbe was chosen, as the Jewish community had been concentrated there for some time and there were already Jewish shops and two synagogues in the area. Guarded gates isolated the ghetto during night hours: two on what is now Via S. Martino e Solferino (one just beyond Via Roma and the other on the corner of Via dei Fabbri), one at the beginning of Via dell’Arco, and another along Via delle Piazze. The residential area, for which high rents were charged, was cramped and unsanitary (containing 655 inhabitants in 1616); this led it to be developed in a vertical direction, by constructing tall buildings with low ceilings on each floor, such as in the residential towers on Via dell’Arco.

The main hub of the area was the courtyard of the Scola Todesca (Via S. Martino e Solferino, 20); according to a never-completed project, this courtyard was intended to englobe the adjacent Corte dei Lenguazzi, to become the ghetto’s central square.
The segregation order was dropped with the arrival of the French in 1797, and was not restored when the city came under Austro-Hungarian rule. Full equality was achieved in 1866 with the city’s annexation to the Kingdom of Italy.
Even after the ghetto was abolished, the community’s main existing institutions – the synagogues, the Rabbinical College, and the school – remained in this area.

Guided tours can be booked through the Museo della Padova Ebraica

Museum of Jewish Padua

The museum is in Padua’s Old Town, in the area of the Ghetto, inside the building of the former German Synagogue, the Scola Grande, built in 1682. In May 1943 the building was almost completely destroyed by flames set by the Fascist Squadrons and then restored by Padua’s Jewish Community in the post war period. In the museum are displayed traditional objects of the Jewish community, among which some Ketubboth (Wedding contracts), ritual objects for family use (candlesticks, spice-holders, plates for Pesach, glasses for Kiddush) and ritual objects for the synagogue (crowns, Sefer Torah, prayer books, musical scores, precious textiles). An Egyptian Mameluke manufacture parokhet dating back to the first half of the 16th century and Megikllath Ester manuscripted and decorated on parchment (18th century) are noteworthy.

A central and innovative element of the museum is the video installation “A generations goes, a generation comes” by the film conductor Denis Brotto. Ten representative personalities of history of the Jewish Community in Padua “get alive” together with the history and the places of the Jewish life.

Spanish synagogue

Looking up to the top of the building at number 8, Via S. Martino e Solferino, one notices two windows with colonnettes supporting an architrave; now the place is a private home. Now a private home, the top floor of the building used to house the Spanish rite synagogue, which the Marini family had built, beginning in 1617. In 1629, just a few years after its inauguration, the hall was seriously damaged by fire. It was later rebuilt and refurnished, and obtained its final layout in 1770. Like the Italian synagogue, it was an elongated rectangular space.

Its tevah and aron were made around 1729, and are placed at the centre of the longer sides. Here too there was a raised tevah with steps to either side and a baldachin with volutes.
The synagogue was active until 1892, after which only the Scuola Grande remained in use following the unification of religious rituals. After the war its furnishings were transferred to Jerusalem, and in 1958 they were relocated to the Hekhal Shlomo complex. In the current arrangement, in addition to different coloured paintwork, the tevah has been placed in the centre of the room, thus losing its original position against the wall for which it had been specifically designed.

Italian Synagogue

Only one of the three synagogues is still in use today. It was founded in 1548, perhaps to replace the previous Italian rite synagogue located in Piazza delle Legne.
Having been transferred to its current site as late as 1603, its interiors were completed during the 17th century and it was further renovated in the 19th century. It remained active until 1892, when the entire community decided to follow the Italian rite as standard, keeping only the Scuola Grande on Via delle Piazze in use. However, the Italian Synagogue was later restored after the Second World War, when the Scuola Grande was destroyed by fire and rendered inaccessible.

The hall is situated on the upper floor of a building which bears no external features to indicate its function. It has an oblong rectangular layout, organised according to the traditional bi-focal arrangement, with the aron and tevah placed centrally on opposite walls, in this case along the longest sides.

The seventeenth-century aron hakodesh has features in common with altars in various churches in Veneto from the same period. It is enclosed by carved, gilded wooden doors and is framed by an aedicule structure with veined grey marble columns and a semi-circular divided tympanum. On the opposite side, it is faced by an elaborate canopied tevah. This tevah, in keeping with a local tradition, was made entirely out of timber from a plane tree in the Botanical Gardens which had been struck by lightning in the 16th century. It has a raised base accessed by two curved staircases on either side.

The perimeter of the room is decorated with wooden panelling with seating for the public from the late seventeenth-century. The upper section of the woodwork, with marmorino inlaid panels, dates from work carried out in 1831, when it replaced gilded leather panels.

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