Maintaining the Tour Site

Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld's trip and Web site of 1996 gave me the idea of maintaining a WWW site for our Israel Trip.

Without a clear understanding of what it might entail, I presented the concept to those who attended our recruitment meetings. I thought some people might even think the idea exciting enough to want to join the trip. Well, that didn't happen, but no one backed out because of it either. After all, their pictures would be available for the whole world to see.

As with other thoughts about the WWW, I imagined the Web site as a way to knit the community closer together. Those who were unable to go with us on the trip would be able to participate vicariously (or to use the appropriate cyber term: virtually) with those of us on the other side of the world.

Once I had committed myself to developing the Web site, I had to prepare the tools. Nisus Writer 5, with its new Web authoring capabilities had just been released. I had already posted the itinerary and a printable registration form for the trip at Computergeeks.com. (I did get someone from the other side of the country to express interest in the trip because of the itinerary and registration form on the WWW!) With Joe Kissell I set aside a special area at Computergeeks.com for the files. I was using a PowerBook 520 to take home to do additional testing of Nisus Writer. Nisus Software Inc. took an interest in the project as yet another way to test Nisus Writer and "push the envelop" and offered to let me take the PowerBook with me. I checked on whether the PowerBook needed a power transformer (no) or just an adapter (yes) and started checking on the internal modem and what kind of adapter I needed for the phone connection and got those from Radio Shack. We couldn't get the internal modem to work so, already committed, I started testing my own external modem. I needed additional adapters for it. I looked into getting a short term ISP from Israel and decided that the easiest way was for me to use my brother Jay's account and connection.

Then, at the last meeting of the group (just a couple of weeks) before the trip, Rob Gilmore offered and brought a digital camera he had recently purchased for his work at Qualcomm. The software the camera came with needed a color monitor (which I didn't have) but (in the remaining days) we were able to test and confirm that Photoshop 3 would work with a stripped down system on the PowerBook. In the last few days before we left, I turned the itinerary into a "home page" for the trip and additional pages ready to add with links for each day.

Then the trip/saga truly began. We arrived in Israel after much travel and then I discovered that the adapter I had brought for the power supply of the PowerBook was not correct - even though it matched the one illustrated as being for Israel on the Radio Shack package. We tried to find an appropriate adapter, and finally asked the hotel for one.They simply reached into a drawer and asked "You mean one of these?" So that was one hurdle overcome. However, the modem did need a power transformer... unless I plugged it into the socket for hair dryers/electric razors in the bathroom. Luckily I had brought an especially long phone cord. Nonetheless, I was unable to get the modem to work. Even as it was, I stayed up late after everyone fell asleep downloading the pictures from the camera into Photoshop and cropping them if necessary and saving them as PICTs on the PowerBook then dragging them into Nisus Writer to have the files ready for posting.

Rob took an active interest in the problem. He had brought his PC laptop, but no floppy drive. He had been able to contact Qualcomm and download his mail so we knew it must be possible to make contact from the hotel room. Since he didn't have a floppy drive we couldn't transfer the files from my PB to his PC.

Early Sunday morning in desperation I called David Heyman of the Old Judaean network with whom I'd made contact just the day before we left. Also a Macintosh and Nisus Writer user, he invited me over to his apartment in the Nachlaot section (not far from where Debbie and I had lived our year in Jerusalem during the first year of Rabbinic School) of Jerusalem that morning to use his modem and his connection. The walk through downtown Jerusalem during rush hour on a chilly misty morning was both invigorating and a bit exhausting. I took a picture of David there but just then the batteries in the camera went dead and I didn't take another picture with the new batteries. We were able to upload everything I had prepared to that point and that's all anyone saw of the trip. (While I was with David he told me of how Yaara and Yishai's WEBding got put on the WWW.) We had no way of letting anyone know that we couldn't make contact as making contact was what we couldn't do. We worked till David needed to meet his ride. I walked up to the Supreme Court building from there and met the group (which is how I got that picture of the Supreme Court building from afar).

I tried to connect again in Jerusalem, but with no success.

When we got to Eilat, Rob again contacted Qualcomm and downloaded his mail. He and I tried to connect from the phone that our hotel room had in the bathroom. We almost made contact, but couldn't get out to Computergeeks. I decided to try a different technique. If I couldn't get out. I knew that Jay could. I saved all the files to three high density floppies and gave them to Jay when we met in Tel Aviv on January 2nd. We were at the Museum of the Diaspora which is on the campus of Tel Aviv University where Jay has his classes and one of his internet accounts. I figured that he should be able to upload the files from there. He was glad to help, after all he'd been involved in the project from its inception and I was using his account. He took the files, but when he met us at lunch he told me that he had been unable to connect to Computergeeks, as though Joe's server was down.

By then, our trip was nearly over. I had lots of pictures and the kids had written their daily reports. I had even begun to imagine additional links that would tie together threads of activities: in particular Rob climbing. It was a worthy experiment and we learned where the weakest link exists: international telephone connections. Presumably, by the next time we do this in 1999, two and a half years from now, this whole process will be much easier.

So, despite the technical problems, did it work? Definitely. There's no question that having the project of the WWW site added some fun to the trip. We knew we were posing for our friends - even after we became resigned to the fact that nothing more would get posted. When we returned, a number of people told us that they had checked the Web site and been disappointed to see nothing after December 27th (the materials David had uploaded for me). My first day back at work (January 6th, one day at the office before going to San Francisco for Macworld) I prepared the vast majority of the remainder of the files and uploaded them, so that if anyone still wanted to they could share in our trip. A number of people have since indicated that they have gone back to check it out and enjoyed sharing the trip. I have continued to upgrade the site with better links from the "home page" and I hope to make it more of a learning site so that visitors can link to additional sites beyond our trip to learn various theories about the finds at Qumran, visit other kibbutzim (perhaps Lotan has it's own Web site?) and other Reform movement institutions in Israel. (If you know of a link I should add, please let me know.) This is a fluid, public medium.

Mark Hurvitz

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Last updated:
February 5, 1997