A father-daughter team cycles for Gilad Shalit

Rena Weis, center, gets ready to say good-bye to her daughter Adina and husband, Mark, as they start their marathon ride to Florida.

First Published on

http://www.njjewishnews.com

by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Bureau Chief/Central

July 16, 2009

While bicycling

aficionados focus their attention on the famed Tour de France, a father and daughter team from Hillside are on a personal tour to focus attention on the plight of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Mark Weis and his daughter, Adina, 15, set out from their home in New Jersey on July 2 for what they intend to be a four-week bicycle ride to Florida.

The trip is a father-daughter adventure, a chance for Mark, a vascular technician and volunteer kids’ baseball coach, to lose weight, and an opportunity for Adina, a junior at Bruriah High School for Girls in Elizabeth, to increase her fitness.

But it is above all a way to raise consciousness about Shalit, who was kidnapped three years ago by Hamas. Sporting Israeli flags on their bikes, the Weises plan to talk to people all along the way, educating them about the soldier, and encouraging communication with legislators to further efforts to secure his release.

Mark Weis and his daughter Adina set out from their home in Hillside on a four-week ride to publicize the plight of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Shalit’s captivity is a deeply emotional issue for Mark, and he will speak out about it at every opportunity along the route.

“When I’m in Israel and an Israeli soldier approaches me, I feel quite shaky — almost in tears,” he said last week, speaking by cell phone four days into their bicycle marathon. “Here are these young people who are risking their lives so that we can have an Israel. And then something like this happens.”

Shalit was 19 when the Palestinian militants captured him, the age now of Mark’s oldest son. He and his wife, Rena, have four boys and two girls, including Adina.

“When I think of what he is going through every day, it’s almost too painful to contemplate,” Mark said. Why a country that could rescue a planeload of people from Entebbe, Uganda, can’t rescue this one soldier baffles him, he said.

When Mark spoke with NJJN, he and Adina had stopped along a roadside in Pennsylvania after having cycled a total of about 115 miles in their first few days; they hoped to do another 25 before stopping for the night.

The family belongs to Congregation Adath Israel in Elizabeth. Along the route, they were encountering communities quite unlike the Orthodox community they live in. “We live in such a Jewish area,” he said. “We forget how different it is in other places.”

The first weekend, however, they were in familiar territory. They stopped in Roslyn, Pa., at Mark’s mother’s house. He borrowed her car to drive home and get Rena and their two youngest kids, and brought them back there for a family Shabbat and Fourth of July weekend. On Monday morning, he and Adina hit the road, this time heading out beyond reach of such easy reunions.

If they can get up early enough each day — around 5:30, to make the most of the cool hours — they hope to average 40 miles a day. Adina was finding it hard to get up so early, according to her dad. “The secret is getting to bed early enough,” he said. But the riding was going well so far.

Come last Friday, they planned to stop for Shabbat in Washington and to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. A few weeks later, Mark said, they hope to reach Georgia in time for a family wedding. That is the one fixed date; most of their schedule is flexible.

Mark Weis lays tefillin before heading out on a four-week ride to Florida with his daughter.

Taking off like this, even for such a worthy cause, wasn’t easy. His five other “jealous kids” could not come along for the ride, he said. In fact, it wasn’t possible for any of the other Weis kids to take part; the oldest two — aged 19 and 18 — are working and studying; the youngest three — 10-, five-, and three-year-olds — are attending summer camps.

“Adina is my adventure mate,” their father said. Together in Israel last year, they were the only two members of the family to climb Masada, no big deal for the tall, thin young athlete, who plays basketball and softball, but much more of a struggle for her father.

Like all teens, Adina has her cell phone with her and has done plenty of texting during breaks. She also brought her MP3 player along, but she wasn’t using it much. Her father was pleased by that. Though he works with computers and ultrasound machines, he describes himself as “a little old-fashioned” when it comes to high-tech gadgets.

Meanwhile, back in Hillside, Rena was worrying that Adina might lose too much weight on the ride. “She’s already very slim,” she said. She stressed to her daughter that if the going gets too tough, if for any reason she wants to stop, she must do so. But, she acknowledged, that’s not likely: Adina, she said, “is very stubborn” — a quality that might, in fact, be just what is needed to complete the physical challenge and fulfill the mission to raise awareness of the plight of Gilad Shalit.