Rejuvenation: Nothing ScaVentured, Nothing Gamed

[Music] hello everybody Eve hair Oh a rejuvenation for it the Land of Israel Network I am taping this actually on Friday June 8th 2018 25th day of ceylon I'm sitting here with Tali Kaplinsky Tarlow and her book Jerusalem the experiential guidebook it's Friday so that me and two Jewish women who have Shabbat coming up so but we really wanted to get this out Sunday's a busy day for both of us so you will be hearing this on Sunday but just know that we have the atmosphere of a beautiful and upcoming Shabbat in our minds as we tape this interview which I think always adds and for me just a little aside this week the 28th day of Sivan marks 30 years it's also my 37 wedding anniversary and as it happens 30 years since we made Ally out of the land of Israel so it's a really really big anniversary for us and we do what the Rambam Signet did for his family Maimonides which is say Hallel would you say the beautiful prayer for a personal miracle that happened to our family and that we were able to feel to understand the importance of living in land of israel of raising our children here and have really not looked back so with real gratitude to shem for this wild ride that he took us on sometimes with our seatbelts off but it's been it's been just really a tremendous gift and so I'm him sitting here with Sally who also lives here and who also has used her talents in order to make Jerusalem come alive for all of us so scavengers scavengers Jerusalem the experiential guidebook so Tali thanks for joining me on land whose own network that's a pleasure so lovely to be here all right so a little bit about yourself what your journey has been to get you here on a beautiful June day and Land of Israel all right so my journey started in South Africa in a beautiful city called Cape Town that's where I was born and that's where I grew up and while my parents were in education and over the years we would come and visit Israel and at a very very young age was actually five years I came on my first visit to Israel with my family who led tours and decided then that I don't I belong here and told my parents that I'm not going back to South Africa and my parents said yes you are going back to South Africa you were five I was five yes very very young and I went back because I was five and then years later when I was twelve we came again on a sabbatical to Israel and I told my parents I'm not going back and this time my parents really had to kind of carry me through customs you know through airports whatever and it was very very clear you know that that this is in in my mind and in my soul more than anything else that my place wasn't in in the land of my birth my place was in Israel and as soon as I finished high school I was 17 years old I kind of I remember my last exam I turned around and looked at all the people and said okay let's be nice but I'm out of here and I came to Israel then that's that there was the beginning of my journey and also the beginning of my life in many many ways and let me just say how much I'm relating to you by the way listeners I have not heard this story before I like it's not like I sit and do all this investigative journalism on a lot of my guests I also like to be surprised in them let the conversation go where it flows and I thought I was young because I came to Israel at 8 and fell in love it's just like a soul click it's a neshama thing like you have just been here we have Land of Israel Souls but it turns out that I was a late bloomer because this happened to you when you were five although I didn't come when I was five maybe would have happened then but I just love that I also spent a day this week with some South African women I was guiding a group of women that were here and some of them were from South Africa and they were just delightful and very very scientistic but telling me that there's a very strong Jewish life in South Africa so it's not so simple it's not like you were living in a place where you couldn't have had a full Jewish life it wasn't like you were necessarily running away from something you were running to something absolutely I mean as a community there was there's never any reason to run away because there is a very rich you know Jewish life and a very comfortable life as well for me I I had there was something about me that was you know my I felt alienated from from my surroundings the general and also the the Jewish surroundings I just didn't feel that i i i didn't you know it's kind of like a fish out of water kind of thing that that's that's where i was i was that that first cuckoo and then ask my kids had a children's book were or the ugly duckling whatever it is it's like somehow that's not somebody put you in the wrong place yeah totally I mean I had this experience later also when when I was already a young family with my husband and kids we went to England for five years to teach in the Jewish community there and it was fabulous and amazing amazing experience in London and I still have relationships with a lot of my pupils and it was great and I always of Z I was a young you know a young mother at the time and I always used to ask myself while I was there why am I just happy with teaching why don't I want to do more why don't I want to excel why don't I want to be a head of department you know teacher was wonderful and I put my heart and soul into it but why didn't I want to be you know a teacher plus and then when we returned to Israel after five years all of a sudden I realized that my creativity was kind of coming back to me and I I could be a teacher and I could be whatever else I wanted to be I could reinvent reinvent myself I could create curriculum and I can go out and guide the curriculum and I could do you know there was no limits I didn't want to be limited to one definition of myself and that that's what was confusing me when i was in england that i was that was prepared to be limited to you know tally as a teacher or tally as a mother and that was good enough for me now i I just keep on reinventing myself being a teacher being a mother being a creator being a developer being you know someone who you know who who will throw herself into anything that is important to her and I think that part of that is the Land of Israel existence that there's something that that my soul feeds off that doesn't exist for me anywhere else and and just allows me to just keep on evolving keep on changing keep on creating in in the most amazing way so it's I said at the beginning that like the spirit of Shabbat maybe is infusing us a little bit so as part of this group with the South African but other women I was in sheilo with them and in sheilo I talked about Shabbat because she knows where the tabernacle was it's where the Mishkan was and the things that we don't do on Shabbat the so-called work right that we don't know and Shabbat is the things that we did to build a tabernacle meaning Hashem messaged us about how important the Sabbath is Shabbat is knock-off building my house for Shabbat I am the creator but I don't want to be known as my day job which is what I did during the week and that is so great about what you just said right now is it very often we put a label on to ourselves in adjectives and this is what we are and part of what Shabbat is and we're really in a few hours going into that 25 hours of we can recreate ourselves every single week Shabbat when you take away what you have to do to make a living or whatever it is that you enjoy you go for 25 hours into who you really are and I think more than just we can't do this we can't do that and all those kinds of things that unfortunately been tagged on Shabbat it gives us the little space especially in a very busy very noisy world right now to say what else can I do who else am i besides what I did all this week grading papers or whatever it is so really it's so great that we're doing this on Friday afternoon because because you Shabbat infuses our workweek here I think in Israel it frames our week because even Israelis who may not be observant and I hate the terminology as my my listeners very much know Shabbat is still a special day in Israel it's a it's a tie there's very few things that you have it or a time that you can carve for yourselves and that allows us to do that so you're doing that so let's get to the book because you have now chosen a way of educating people about Jerusalem in a very creative way yes I actually just a bit of background to where I have you know where I started writing this book about eight years ago funds at a company which at the time was called Jerusalem scavenger hunts and very very quickly evolved into Israel's sky ventures that's a combinational scavenger hunts an adventure and the what we do in this company is we create games tour games where a group will come and explore the story of an area in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or sit on Yaakov or wherever it is in a game in a scavenger hunt and during each person has a role you have a navigator you have a detective you have a prophet you have I can't even remember what but we have a bunch of six or seven roles of photographer a notes keeper and each person has a role and you navigate your way from one area from one station in the area that you've chosen to the next and you do missions at every station so I founded the company about eight years ago and very very quickly the company saw a lot of success within three months I had hired eight guides to work for me and we're excellent by the way because I have also done scavenger hunt is in the Old City of Jerusalem with some of your guys are amazing that's amazing so yes I've got great guides and what I decided to do is people always at the end of a game would say oh can we buy the material how can we do it again people even wants her to come back to do the same roots again and again and again which is why I started you know developing other roots and in other areas in Jerusalem and outside of Jerusalem and I decided that what I really wanted to do is make the roots as accessible to people as possible because the the experience is so meaningful and is so inspiring and so educating yes it doesn't feel that way it just feels like fun which should be the goal and the way of educating just to sit and look it up bored is ridiculous and here what we have in Israel and I feel as an educator also because at least in Hebrew or more out there there's not a tour guide it's an educator on the way and Israel is my classroom and that makes it so much more meaningful but as you said it should be fun if if you're learning in a fun way it's completely different than feeling like all these facts are just being rammed down my throat exactly that's that's always you know the way I've approached as a formal teacher in the classroom I've always tried to to sit and figure out how do I make the experience how do I make the lesson experiential so that they feel the story they feel what they're learning not just learning by rote so that's you know that's how my business you know that that's kind of the foundation of the business and my company that is really ventures and it's also the foundation of the book ah so when it comes to the book so somebody could say alright you know it I don't now don't have to use your guides and pay your company because they've got the book so I can do it by myself so was that a consideration when you put this out there that you might be undermining a little bit some of what you do I don't actually think that it's undermining first of all none of five roots in Jerusalem they're five different areas that you can explore in Jerusalem through the book and none of them are identical to the games that we play the Tor games that we play even though they're in the same you know they may be in the same neighborhoods but Jerusalem is so rich with stories and places and undiscovered secrets and whatever so if I tell some you know secrets on my game I've told other secrets inside the book so people can play the game and buy the book and I in I I kind of feel that this is a way of you know sometimes there are smaller groups you know two people or a family of five people and you know they want to be able to do it in their own time learn Jerusalem their own time they wouldn't necessarily book a scavenger hunt but here they have a book where they can where they can do it at you know again different routes maybe they'll be inspired to come and just Gavin Joe hand with us afterwards next time they come to Israel but it's about making the story accessible and and I believe that it only opens opportunities for people to be inspired and come back and and just get a scavenger hands in a bigger group with lots more people where two or three families can compete against each other at the same time I feel like it only opens up opportunities yeah I have that actually with one per Mitzvah group that I did that was very large and they divided into three or four different groups and it was some kind of competition and it was really a lot of fun and kept everyone engaged but what I loved about this book is that it's not just for people who are coming to Jerusalem and want to do explore in a different way that even people who are not going to be in Jerusalem you can learn a tremendous amount of history from this book you don't just say go from point A to point B and find mosaic picture of pomegranate on the wall while you're on the way give a tremendous amount of background like one of the tours here is something that some people might find odd the Mount Herzl National Cemetery so it's like really you're doing a scavenger hunt in a cemetery but I know that I explained to people that that cemetery has an incredible amount of history in it and I obviously see that you feel the same way so how was it about putting that cemetery into your into your guiding alright so just at the introduction to that chapter I've you know I kind of made a kid that that's you know this is ins we can't run around the cemetery and and play in shouts and whatever the the moods of of this place is completely different to doing it let's say in in the money with markets so so first of all you know there is that second of all the components of of the chapter are all there still because we want to bring you to the story and let the story tell itself and so if the detective is in charge of finding photographs the photographs are you know of the most amazing phenomenal interesting monuments that the detective will find and then figure out you know figure out the story the information is there I have people that have you're just saying that you know even people that you know that are necessarily in Jerusalem can can read the book I have people who even in Jerusalem that spent a Shabbat reading the book cover to cover being a astounded by the richness of information and the secrets and the stories and the events and the people that are highlighted be the book is done in a way that it's it's a coffee table book the photos are stunning and they range from the Sun I think the earliest photos are like from 80 years ago I have one neighborhood where over the course of the the chapter it's the young men Rochelle Michigan or China name neighborhood which is the first Jewish neighborhood that was built outside the walls of the old city so over the course of the chapter we have shown I think four photographs of the same spot so you can see the evolution of of the neighborhood which which is awesome we and we've done that in other places also in the book we've just got um you know we've kind of highlighted you know Ben Yehuda Street 40 years ago and the same in the same place today so it's just a gorgeous book to look at and to you know to look through the the graph the design of the book spends hours and hours a name is Arielle Cristo spent hours and hours designing it and and it's really coffee table quality so you said you have Jerusalem and you also are you gonna come out with another book besides just look like somebody who just kind of sits around and says okay I'm done for now no I wish I wish I had some of that in me I have a few plans running around my head's in terms of the book there are a few options that I haven't I haven't decided which one you know comes first I'd actually really love to to make a Christian Zionist version of it so that might be the next step can you elaborate on that a lot of my listeners would fall into that framework I think they've been interested in that right so so there's two options the the one option is to keep it in Jerusalem and and just you know tweak it to highlight to highlight stories that up of particular interest to to Christian Zionists so you know in the old city perhaps and the cemetery I think is still very very important chapter and money you heard of the shook the market is also very very important chapter and I don't I don't even think it needs a lot of tweaking but I would like to write in a voice that that you know a Christian Zionists you know a friend of Israel feels at home in that voice like an updated Via della Rossa if you will exactly exactly so that's one option the other option is to do one of Israel I wouldn't necessarily do Tel Aviv like I did streusel embed I might take five more locations in Israel and make that into another books masada maybe a lights maybe tel-aviv or old Jaffa and you know something else from Jerusalem I'm not I'm not exactly sure and another option a third option is to translate it into to Hebrew I was gonna ask you about that yes look it's a very important direction to go as well because there are a lot of Jerusalem books out there in Hebrew but I have never seen anything like this which engages people with the place and with each other at the same time what about taking it to the education ministry for example and having at least some of these ideas incorporated into the curriculum that they have in the educational system here in Israel that's I never even thought of going in that direction and it's a great idea that's definitely definitely a way to do it again as I said before I just want to make the story of Jerusalem accessible in a way that's inspiring meaningful and fun so you know for sure I mean I've had people do the scavenger hunt family stood where the kids have said to the parents afterwards I wish we learned in this way you know we went you know they there were perhaps in the Nakhla odd neighborhood and they learned the things that they learnt about in school but now it made sense and now it was fun and I was interesting and now they integrated it into who they are as a person as opposed to keeping it external like you know it was when they were in a classroom in front of a board listening to a teacher I had someone say that to me this week I wish you could be my daughter's history teacher because when you're here you make it come alive in a way that just doesn't happen look your notes you're a longtime educator I think we were all going to agree from wherever we're sitting that education needs to be changed and changed radically in not you know in in almost every level be a secular studies be a religious studies there's so much out there that is grabbing our children's attention that's not necessarily what we want them where we want them to go and so the education is and all that the garbage is fun and nobody's got any attention span anymore so I think that this is really a brilliant way of doing that has this changed your classroom methodology that you're out of the classroom so much that you see that you feel limited now when you're in a class I'm actually never in the class anymore the world is my classroom the streets of Jerusalem are my classroom yeah that's yeah I am at a certain stage from the time that I found it's the the company it was clear to me that that I you know that my you know the walls couldn't hold you in any more no more no more and how about your kids did they have they benefited from what you're doing here did they like when you're say thinking of doing a chapter are they your experiments you like how a baker right she's gonna the family's gonna eat all the the stuff before she actually nails down the recipe so do you drag your husband and kids out into the streets and see what's working for them and then maybe that helps you with with the books so it's a combination of the baker whose kids get lots of lots of food and the shoemaker whose kids got Sheila's and I'm married to a physician so we don't even want to go there with the rest of that sense right exactly so my kids have definitely benefited from it they're not generally the first people to try it out so I I do often try out the scavenger hands with new routes and write up on on other people not generally on them but my kids love being part of the action one of my daughters often if I've got a very big event is my right-hand person she is fabulous put together organized does my billing at the ends of the month she's 15 years old yeah and and she's just like you an early bloomer I think she's much earlier blooming than me I was actually a late bloomer in terms of in terms of that I didn't really find my place until I got back yeah to Israel so so one of my kids you know is that then then the rest of the family just come along whenever I have big events they come along there they're enjoying their in Hebrew this a word what's actually a Yiddish word called Nahas knotless means you know the the joy of human origins tremendous joy and satisfaction that you get especially from your children when you see them doing something that just is making the world a better place you just know is like this is this is I'm so proud of them this is a wonderful thing but it's a it's a word that's very difficult to translate yeah right some so my kids get that from me you know I get it from them as well but my little son when I you know he saw me run any event and and you know speak in front of 500 people and he never forgot that you know and and I like to feel like I'm inspiring my kids to be the best that they can be to pursue their dreams to follow that you know that their calling inside of them to do what is meaningful and and they see it on me and and I think in that way it's a very unique kind of parenting opportunity and in that way they they benefit a lot but besides for that at the ends of the summer when when all the summer camps are over I'll be taking my kids with the book that's sitting in front of us and we're going to learn Jerusalem again you know through through the chapters we'll go to the market we'll go to the old city we'll go to you know the first neighborhood you mean my share and we're going to explore it just like anyone else would do it they differ many young kids does anybody ever I always have to ask this question have any security concerns when they say oh you know we're going through the old city because unfortunately that's what's on people's heads and it's understandable I know I come up to that when you know what I want to take people to a place like she lower Chiron oh we really want to go but and even though we all want to say we're all gonna do it anyway we don't let the bad guys rule art dictate our day there is you know a certain sense of responsibility about putting people in situations do you ever does that ever come up um in terms of the book you know people can fit all the maps that we've given are very very well written and it's very clear that everything is on Mount Zion and the Jewish quarter which are wonderful places to hang around wonderful and tranquil except for winners festivals when it's crazy and wonderful as well so the map makes it very very clear what what areas you know are you know nice areas to to hang around and they feel safe and and also it's nice about the book is you choose when you want to go and when you feel good about it and the time that you want to go and whatever so because there is so much of you choose when you go out I haven't really had people saying to me oh is it safe is it whatever but I'm looking forward to a time personally when this question won't even come up and where you can say oh and when you're on the Temple Mount look for that column from the Second Temple period wouldn't that be an amazing thing to add to your scavenger hunt oh yeah totally and and don't think I haven't thought about it and I also hope that one day you know we'll be able to do it in in yeah we'll be able to explore that area as well please God not have to even ask that question because everything is just gonna be wonderful and great so we all have what to look for okay so tally Kaplinsky Tarlow thank you I'd love the elyda you know if you drop to the maiden name the tally tardo I love her litter ated names that's fine it just flows okay well thank you so much for joining me today and for really illuminating Jerusalem in a completely different way Jerusalem the experiential guidebook where can people pick this up currently the book has just been launched just about two months ago I think currently the best place to get it is from our website which is Israel scavengers comma I'm sure that there'll be a link to it in the you know by by this podcast you can also pick it up at the shore Ashim gift store in the Jewish quarter I know the reason Kempinski he's great exactly exactly so they have copies of a daily you can pick it up there and I'm hope I'm hopeful that we'll be up on Amazon in the near future fantastic okay thank you so much for joining me today now you and I are both gonna get Shabbat ready and thank you everybody for listening once again thanks to Tabitha thank you to Ben and everybody associated with the Land of Israel Network who give me the opportunity to just have you meet virtually at least at least for now meet so many of the wonderful people that I get to hang out with here in the Holy Land it's really incredible experience ago I just want to say that talk about a small world the three the three blurbs on the back of the book I know all three of these people so it's really it's really wonderful okay everyone's have a wonderful week Eve Harrow rejuvenation on the land of israel Network take care everybody goodbye for now [Music]