JHK Entry: Top Ten Surprises, Both Good and Bad

10) Flesh. More specifically, the men at the Tel Aviv beaches, half of whom seemed to have six packs (including a man I saw who looked to be sixty-five), and the women at the Tenerife beaches, a quarter of whom went around topless. In Tenerife I barely noticed the (lack) of attire, given my happy marriage, but it did make me wonder why Tenerife women seemed so much more comfortable in their skin than women elsewhere.

9) Hiking trails in Tenerife, which were abundant, varied, and routinely spectacular. I particularly loved this one hike we did on a narrow path, with a steep drop-offs on either side, surrounded by green mountains. Down below we could easily see a beautiful beach, and a rock formation coming out of the water that looked like a bear taking a nap.

8) Safety in Israel. We went to Israel three weeks after the direct Iran-Israel conflict ended Before we arrived, I was fearful that hostilities would break out again, we’d have to repeatedly race to bomb shelters, and our kids would be traumatized. Once I arrived in Israel I realized that these fears were completely overblown, as (1) generally we stayed in apartments that had a kids’ bedroom that doubled as a safe room, and (2) Israel’s enemies generally send their missiles at night. So we didn’t even have to wake our kids when the alert apps on our phones went off, and they remained blissfully unaware of the conflict.

So strange to think about how Israel is so used to getting bombed that since 1993, it has required every new residence to have close access to a protected space, and how this rule creates a new kind of inequality, since half of Israel homes were built before the rule was enacted. For background, see https://israelnationalnews.org/2025/274 .

7) Time, and how VHS tapes can deteriorate over forty-five years. One of my self-assigned sabbatical projects was to review and create a chart of 50+ old family videos my mom recently digitized. But to my deep disappointment, when I watched the videos (when I was in Tenerife, while my kids were in school) I learned that the sound on many of the videos is terrible. I so hope that I can get the sound restored, and can get to hear the voice of my dad, who’s been dead now for 28 years. Reminds me of a paragraph from a good novel I’m currently reading: “Books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.” Anthoney Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land, pg 52.

6) Public infrastructure, and specifically, the contrast between that of

a. Costa Rica, where there are no cute towns (historic or otherwise), practically no sidewalks, and terrible roads – even those in front of fabulously expensive vacation homes. Indeed, the roads are often so bumpy that driving on them can feel more like horseback riding, and the roads routinely fill with puddles so large that they become nearly impassible. I suppose this is partly because Costa Rica is still poor, and has a rainy season so intense that roads don’t last.

b. Israel, which had bike paths, free public adult workout areas, and playgrounds vastly superior to those in New York, both in terms of quantity and quality. For example, we went to numerous playgrounds that included bouncy houses, fifty-foot slides, and grounds as soft as mattresses. Perhaps this social infrastructure is so good because Israel used to be a socialist country, is relatively warm most of the year, and lacks American-style suburban houses with huge backyards, so good shared public space is critical.

5) Guns, and how ubiquitous they are in Israel. At a playground in Jerusalem we met up with a friend of Yonit’s (an immunologist and former colleague of Yonit’s) and her husband, who’s orthodox and a dentist. Of course he brought his Glock with him to the playground. And often on a public bus, I find myself riding next to a young person wearing regular clothing and carrying an assault rifle. 

4) Beaches, and how different they can be. In Costa Rica, the water is cloudy and warm like a bathtub; in the Canary Islands, even in late June the water is freezing; and in Sardinia and the British Virgin Islands, the water is clear light blue, filled with fish, and the perfect temperature. Oh my how particular I’ve become!

3) My kids and how kick ass they are. For example, Shiloh turned out to be more like a dandelion than an orchid, i.e. resilient and adaptive, routinely and quickly making friends and playing games with kids who spoke zero English. Below is a photo of Shiloh playing ball on a moshav with some Hebrew-only speaking kids he met five minutes beforehand. 

And Adira was amazing too, making a best friend with this Spaniard named Jade (pronounced "Ja-deh") who doesn't speak English.

As another example amazingness, at the start of our trip, if you put Adira into the water, she’d sink like an anchor. And we wondered if that’d ever change. But then, as if by magic, a couple weeks into our trip she learned to tread water, and swimming followed soon after. Perhaps this is simply normal childhood growth, but it still blows me away, and makes me so proud.

2) Smart phone usage. I am a big believer in Jonathan Haidt’s view that kids should not have cell phones until they are older, and was quite surprised that every first grader in Shiloh’s surfing camp had a smart phone. One theory we had is that given the security situation, parents want every possible way to be able to get in touch with their kids. But that didn’t make it any less frustrating for us, or for Shiloh. For more on Haidt’s ideas, see https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/opinion/parents-smartphones-tiktok-facebook.html

1) Wildlife. In Costa Rica a bat came into our house twice, and we saw wild monkeys every week or two. I will always remember.