By Donald H. Harrison
CARLSBAD, California – Talk about multi-tasking. Ulla Hadar of Kibbutz Ruhama, Israel, “trained” for an upcoming bike ride to raise funds for a rocket-proof high school in Sha’ar Hanegev while paying a nostalgic visit to a tourist attraction here that is based on one built in her native country.
Hadar, a Danish born Israeli, went to Legoland on Saturday, May 7.
She already was well-acquainted with the parent amusement park in Billund, Denmark. She described the one here in San Diego County to be similar in some ways but also, in some ways, quite different.
There were many more rides, outside vendors and attractions competing inside the park for the tourists’ attention than there are in Denmark. Additionally, many of the attractions at the local Legoland were “off-theme,” that is, they utilized few or no Legos in their construction. In Denmark, she said, almost every aspect of the park is Lego-related.
For example, whereas the Sealife Aquarium experience in Denmark starts with a cartoon presentation imagining Lego characters under the sea, in Carlsbad the Legos are deemphasized and there is much more attention given to the live fish and other sea creatures. The cartoon presentation also can be seen in San Diego County, but in front of a small TV monitor surrounded by the hubbub of the aquarium rather than in an entry-way theatre.
Hadar said the Lego exhibits in Carlsbad seem a bit more worn than they are in Denmark – perhaps because the park doesn’t close down here for the winter as it does in Denmark, so workers don’t have the same kind of opportunity they have there to really spiff it the exhibits each year. All that California sunshine, perhaps, fades the colors of the Legos.
The name “Lego,” she said, was created from two Danish words: “Leg,” which means “to play” and “Godt,” which means “good.” So put them together in a single name and you get “to play good,” she said.
In the Miniland USA section of the Carlsbad park, Hadar snapped numerous photos of various Lego-engineered, American city scenes such as those of New York, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. Then, from the “Coast Cruise” boat, which passed by the other side of these city scenes, she took more photos, utilizing the different angles afforded from the amusement park’s artificial lake.
A highlight for Hadar was the “Sky Cruiser,” which allows seat-belted visitors to pedal a Lego-mobile on a suspended track around the “Kid Power Tower.” This attraction gave Hadar an opportunity to exercise her feet, calves and the rest of her legs for the upcoming days in which she and seven fellow Israelis will team with members of the San Diego Jewish community in a series of bike rides around the county, culminating on Sunday, May 15, with a 63-mile ride that will end at the Ski Beach area of Mission Bay during an Israeli Independence Day festival for Yom Ha’atzma’ut.
Why 63 miles, and not, say, 50 or 75? This is Israel’s 63rd year of Independence, Hadar explained.
Hadar, who has served as a correspondent in Sha’ar Hanegev for San Diego Jewish World, has numerous friends in San Diego County, particularly among the congregants of Temple Solel, where some of the art works by her husband Rafi’s late uncle, the Italian Jewish artist Emanuel Luzzati, hang in a collection that the couple donated. Hadar frequently has hosted San Diego County residents at her kibbutz home, and has visited San Diego County before. So she came in a little ahead of her fellow bike riders from Sha’ar Hanegev in order to visit and to tour.
A competitive biker and runner, Hadar has twice participated with San Diego County visitors to her country in Bike Israel fundraisers, in which participants collected per mile donations for construction of a safer high school in the Sha’ar Hanegev municipality, The high school, adjacent to Sapir College in the vicinity of the city of Sderot, has been designed with strong roof, windows and walls in order to withstand the rocket and mortar attacks that frequently rain down from the neighboring territory of Gaza, which is controlled by the Hamas terrorist group.
Like many of her neighbors in the municipality which includes kibbutzim, a moshav, and the Ibim school for immigrants, Hadar said she believes that the reinforced high school can help demonstrate to Hamas and its allies that Israelis will not be pushed out of their homes, no matter how many rockets and mortars are indiscriminately lobbed over the border.
The high school, when completed, will be more than an educational fortress. It also will attract students from other areas—perhaps even encourage people to make their residences in the area – by offering high-academic courses and concepts drawn from two well-known San Diego County educational institutions – the San Diego Jewish Academy, whose principal Jeff Davis is organizing the San Diego-Israel bike rides this year, and High Tech High School, one of three finalist schools for the honor this year of having President Barack Obama deliver its Commencement day address.
Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs are mentors of High Tech High School as well as activists within the San Diego Jewish community – Gary having been a president both of the Lawrence Family JCC and the Jewish Federation of San Diego. The couple also founded the Jacobs International Teen Leadership Institute (JITLI) which brings American Jews, Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs together on joint travel trips to San Diego, Spain, and Israel. Emphasis on these trips is for Arabs and Jews to learn about each other’s histories, and their common history in Spain’s “Golden Age” prior to the Expulsion of 1492.
Hadar said she has brought along her blue and white shirts—“Israel’s colors”–from the last two Bike Israel rides and looks forward to adding to her collection of bike wear by participating in the San Diego County outings. On one of the Israel trips, riders from the U.S. and Istrael went all the way from Metula, a city on Israel’s border with Lebanon, over mountains, plains and high desert to Sha’ar Hanegev. Now Hadar is anticipating the joy of experiencing San Diego County’s topography from the seat of a bicycle, she said.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be reached at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com