Like Webster’s dictionary, we’re Morocco bound….. I’ve always loved that line and sing it with some frequency. It never occurred to me that it would apply to me: that Barbara, who loves to travel, and I, who could just as easily stay put, would join an A.A.C.I. excursion to that selfsame country. But that’s what happened. It was either a trip to Lapland or Morocco. (If you put it to me that way….)

There were definitely some positives to our choice – not just that it was better than going to Lapland or some such place. Sooner or later, I would need to visit some part of the real Arab world that isn’t Ramallah, and Morocco is definitely the friendliest and the safest such place to visit, besides being in its own right a beautiful country with a lush landscape, high mountains, and the edges of the Sahara Desert (that we didn’t get to see). There has also been a Jewish presence there from way back, even if it’s merely a a tiny fraction of what it once was. And a lot of the Jews (or their descendants) who used to live in Marrakesh or Casablanca now live in our neck of the wood. If I said it once on the trip, I said it fifty times, there are more Moroccans in Ma’ale Adumim than there are back in their own back yard.  Maybe I might learn something about their heritage, about which I knew nothing. So we went and have returned, happy on both accounts. What follows are some of my thoughts and some of the photographs I made on the way – in no particular order, just the way my mind works. Continue reading →