The best way to discover Mozart here might be a night at the Vienna Opera. I was lucky enough to attend a performance of \”The Magic Flute\” during my visit, which was sponsored by Austria Tourism. This was classical Mozart through and through in terms of the music, but the performance was strikingly modern.
The three-part \”Walking the Bible With Bruce Feiler\” follows the recent documentary trend of sending a charismatic host to a series of dangerous or hard-to-get-to places. Accompanied on occasion by archaeologists, scholars, Egyptologists, and theologians, Feiler tracks his way through places in the Middle East where the biblical stories of Genesis and Exodus are assumed to have occurred.
Spain\’s Andaluca is romance. It\’s orange blossoms perfuming the air. It\’s golden drops of sherry sliding down your throat in a smoky bodega. It\’s fingers dancing on the strings of a flamenco guitar.
Spain\’s Toledo contains — along with spires, damascene jewelry and scrumptious marzipan — a treasure trove of Jewish memories.
Skiers and snowboarders who want vacations with fresh powder have an avalanche of options this winter. Jewish ski trips abound for teens to 40-somethings of all skill levels.
The leaves have turned, the days are shorter and Chanukah, the holiday of lights, glimmers ahead. With the winter looming, juicy possibilities await, with plenty of exotic, warm weather options. So go ahead and plan your first big escape of 2006. Or surprise a loved one by booking a post-Chanukah adventure. This might just be the trip of a lifetime.
Cruising isn\’t what it used to be. And to the more than 10 million people who took to the high seas last year, that\’s a good thing.
Long before there was a State of Israel, there was a state of the Jews. Its name was Gibraltar, and it was ceded to Conversos — Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism — in 1474 at the urging of Pedro de Herrera of Cordoba, himself a Converso.
Herrera convinced the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had led the recapture of Gibraltar from the Moors in 1462, that special taxes and costs born by Conversos to build homes and maintain a cavalry on the rock would make it worth his financial while to give the Conversos control, as is detailed in a small book devoted to the subject published in 1976. For two years, 4,350 Conversos lived in Gibraltar, until the duke decided he would rather run the show and forced them to return to Cordoba and, ultimately, to the clutches of the Inquisition.
Masada, which represents a stronghold of Jewish courage and defiance, is among Israel\’s most visited sites. Located in the Judean Desert, adjacent to the Dead Sea, King Herod the Great built Masada 2,100 years ago as both his winter palace and a place where he would retreat in times of crisis.
Archaeologists believe the Essenes were highly concerned with maintaining their ritual purity and bathed at least twice a day. An aqueduct system caught water from the hills above and channeled it into an elaborate series of mikvahs, or ritual baths.
