Israel’s Dead Sea mountaintop fortress of Masada features at the top of any visitor’s itinerary: U.S. President George W. Bush walked through the site on Thursday, and the day before, a chief executive of another sort ran into a busload of University of Michigan students traveling with Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Alter Goldstein as part of their free Mayanot-provided Taglit-birthright israel tour.

Albanian President Bamir Topi, who was in the country to discuss foreign affairs with Israeli President Shimon Peres, was about to leave when Goldstein approached the head of state to introduce himself.

At the end of the exchange, Topi asked the rabbi, who co-directs the campus-based Chabad House at Michigan, to stay for a picture.

Reached Thursday night, Goldstein said that this year’s trip – his seventh – “was amazing.”

Some 100 students are taking part in the Michigan trip. …