Between missiles and swifts: A stay at the Gordonia hotel - review

We were all gathered at the newest hotel in Israel. Despite the extraordinary tensions in Israel, there was the ebullience of being together, as if we’d met fellow Israelis in a Chabad House in Seoul or Fairbanks, Alaska.

A dear friend from abroad called me recently to ask what I was planning for August, and I started to laugh. “We hardly know what we’re doing next week!”

The Israeli reputation for spontaneity and improvisation has never been needed so much as we do our best to pursue our occupations, avocations, and religious obligations despite missiles and rockets falling, airports closing, and family members serving in reserves. The Kotel was blocked to devotees, and even the number of travelers on intercity trains to and from Jerusalem was restricted. Not to mention that national parks, theaters, and many hotels closed. Even our dependable Waze seemed to be malfunctioning, possibly purposely. My daughter was returning to Jerusalem from the Carmel coast when the world’s best satellite navigation software advised her that she was driving through the Mediterranean Sea.

Which is why the opening of a brand-new, glorious hotel is a particularly exuberant occasion for celebration.

The tour reminded me of one I took in 1989 in Las Vegas. The late entrepreneur and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson walked a small group of us attending a Hadassah convention around a still under-construction hotel called The Venetian. I later returned to the hotel and experienced the magnificent reality, with its indoor, air-conditioned Laguna di Venezia, complete with gondolas. It was everything Adelson rhapsodized about and more.

What was already in place at the Gordonia in November was an 80-meter infinity swimming pool on the cusp of the hillside. I stood at the edge of the pool as the sun set over the verdant hillside, with the Mediterranean below, and I literally had to hold myself back from slipping into Israel’s longest swimming pool, even in its then unheated state. The pool would be warmed to 28˚ C through the winter, promised the hotel guide.

So when my husband and I were choosing a hotel for spring vacation, he agreed that I needed to swim in that pool I’d been talking about for months.

I’d been regularly calling a Jerusalem hotel where I’d promised a birthday breakfast for a granddaughter but was repeatedly told the hotel was closed for the duration of the war. Afterwards, I would phone the Gordonia, just to make sure it was really opening soon, and I always received cheerful assurances that it would indeed open.

Jerusalem to Zichron Ya’acov is an hour and a half drive, but it was our first out-of-town trip since the Roaring Lion war began. A grandson offered to drive us when we fretted that we would panic if sirens sounded on Highway 6.

I was so relieved to get there and so eager to get to the pool that, to the distress of the solicitous hotel manager, I actually walked into a glass wall leading to the outdoors. Thankfully, a little bruising but no breaks in either this writer’s forehead or the spotless glass.

I remembered, to my chagrin, that when I wrote the pre-review, I’d lauded the ubiquitous use of glass, stone, and wood to echo the Gordonia’s overall theme.

The hotel chain is named for the bearded Zionist pioneer Aharon David Gordon (1856 to 1922), who believed in honoring nature, manual labor, and settling the Land of Israel. His followers in the Gordonia youth movement, based on A.D. Gordon’s teachings, founded Kibbutz Ma’aleh Hahamisha in 1938.

In 1940, the pioneers opened the first convalescent home in the Judean Hills near Jerusalem. The Gordonia hotel chain owners preserved the historical name in their flagship project, a renovation of Ma’aleh Hahamisha, and also now in Zichron Ya’acov.

I don’t think I’d ever been in a hotel where I was the first to sleep in the bed or to use the rainforest shower. In the guest suites and the synagogue, the furnishings still exuded a woodsy aroma that blended with the Gordonia’s pervasive signature scent, a mix of patchouli, freesia, and pear.

Chatting in the lobby over Gordonia wine and lemonade with the manager and the vice president of the Gordonia chain, I learned that the months before opening were full of anxiety and apprehension for them. They were enormously relieved and proud that they’d opened despite the challenges. They still looked hyper-vigilant as the all-new staff, check-in clerks, and waitpersons  fulfilled their tasks.

Also contributing to the family-esque feeling, local post-army and university students had answered the hotel’s help-wanted ads and could have been our grandchildren. The blond barista told us he’d spent two years operating drones in Gaza as he poured the gratis ice cappuccinos into plastic highball glasses so we could drink them on the chaises near the pool. The young woman who escorted us to our dining table had just finished serving in the Home Front Command.

Even though the hotel has 141 rooms, it felt like a small hotel. The omelet chef remembered from one day to the next how we liked our eggs. After the five-star Israeli hotel breakfast, when one is certain one could never eat another bite until dinner, there’s a welcome free light buffet at mid-afternoon to stave off any nascent hunger pains.

My husband deemed the hotel’s theme “nothing spared,” from the snow peas and blueberries on the buffet tables (my favorites were the hot cheese-stuffed portobello mushrooms and marmalade salad) to the narrow couch at the foot of the bed, perfect for tying sneakers. Even the shining Sephardi Torah scrolls in repoussé silver wore elaborate tasseled crowns.

One morning, I was the first to the pool. Swimming alone, looking at the fertile fields and cobalt sea, I was particularly meditative. Suddenly, I was joined by four swifts, swooping down to get a drink, and then soaring back up to the cerulean sky. Swifts are annual visitors to Israel, sleeping and even mating in the heavens, then leaving their eggs to hatch as avian Sabras.

Watching them rise effortlessly into the sky, I realized they shared the Israeli airways with missiles and interceptors, yet returned the following year, living, like us, between uncertainty and faith.■