In any normal year, summer is the time when thousands of Jews from America and around the world flow into Israel. Bar-Mitzvah tours in the Galilee, summer courses at Hebrew University, NFTY camp, birthright israel students- everyone is here. If you were walking down the Tel Aviv beach promenade last summer, you would have heard all languages but Hebrew. 2001 is going to be one of the poorest years for tourism ever. Israel hasn't seen such a difficult period in many years. The Tel Aviv promenade is empty.

Hello all of my dearests! So I am finally here in Israel. I am writing from the dan panorama hotel along the seaside of the med ocean. We (the people in my birthright Israel group) just returned from a frolic along the coast. The water had a very nice temperament--extremely warm and gentle waves. As a result, I have more freckles and a few nice sea shells.

Editor's note: This is the second e-mail dispatch from our beloved former staffer   Hinda Mandell from her recent birthright israel trip. To read part one, click HERE.

JAFFA, Israel, June 13 (JTA) – Zohar Reuben, 24, of Mumbai explores the narrow alleyways and stalls of Jaffa's outdoor flea market with fellow young Jews from India after a long journey that has taken them from the Galilee to Jerusalem.

It's on this birthright tour of Israel, thousands of miles from home, that Reuben has found, for the first time, close Jewish friends his own age from India.

There were many moments when it hit me, many moments when it struck me that Israel is more than the markets and the hummus and the desert and the Dead Sea and the Western Wall and all the other sites. It's a comfort, a sense of familiarity, of belonging and peace. I felt very safe in a space that is portrayed in the media as a war zone, in a land that once seemed so foreign to me. I didn't see a war zone or feel like I was far away. Instead, I saw and felt something else, something that connected me to Israel in a way that I wasn't expecting.

One morning in Israel last June, my Taglit-Birthright group listened closely to Neil Lazarus, a short man who spoke with a lively British accent, gestured wildly and paced around the room while lecturing on the conflict in the Middle East. The fact that I was listening to him in Jerusalem made the talk more personal. Sitting at lectures about Israel back in the States didn't hit home the same way. But hearing him speak about Israel in Israel captivated me.