Today is my last day in Israel and looking back, I can say that this has been one of the most amazing years of my life and I'm so happy that I got to share it with all of you! I have learned so much not only knowledge but also life skills. I remember first coming to Israel and wondering what was in store for me this year. I had no idea how much I would learn, how many places I would travel to, and how many new friends I would make. The people here at Harova are so amazing in each of their own different ways and I love them all for that. We are all going our own separate ways and living all around the world, but we will always be united by the year we spent together in Midreshet Harova. I love everything about this place. I love my friends, the teachers, my classes, the old city of Jerusalem, and everything else that made this an amazing year. I hope to take the things that I've learned with me for the rest of my life.
'Where did the time go?' my friends ask me. I reply that it went to hours of learning, a whole bunch of fun trips, and time to just hang out together. I have done so much this year and I've come so far. I really tried to take this year day by day.
I was re-reading some of my blog posts (which you should do too) and I just wanted to share with you a couple of my favorites.
My Schedule!
http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.co.il/2011/09/my-schedule.html
Kedma Medical Clowns!
http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.co.il/2011/11/kedma-medical-clowns.html
Eilat!
http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.co.il/2012/01/eilat.html
Yam L'Yam!
http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.co.il/2012/04/yam-l-yam.html
Yom Yerushalayim!
http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.co.il/2012/05/yom-yerushalayim.html
I would really love to hear from all of my readers what you thought of my blog. I know there are lots of you out there because Blogger tells me how many people look at my blog so please just send me an e-mail. My email address is saraej67550@gmail.com. I want to know, did my blog change your views on Israel, would you consider coming to visit, what do you think about taking a gap year before college?
Thank you once again to my parents for sending me to Israel. Thank you to all of my friends who made this year as amazing as it was. Thank you to my teachers and Rabbis for giving me so much knowledge and for always being there to help. Thank you to all of my readers for giving me the strength to write this blog and for always keeping me encouraged to continue writing even if it was late at night or if I had very little time because I was always so busy. Although this is my last blog post on this blog, it will hopefully not be the last of my experiences in Israel. Shalom!
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Last Tiyul and Last Shabbat
Here I am in my last few days in Israel, trying to make every moment count. After we finished classes, Harova took us on our last trip up North to the Galil. I sat next to Belle as we drove up for three hours until we got to Mount Meron, which we were on during Yam L' Yam. They took us to the most beautiful lookout point where you could see everything from Mount Hermon to Tzfat and many other places. Then we started out on a small hike that we actually hiked as part of Yam L' Yam and we reminisced about that crazy time that we hiked 75 km in 3 days. After the hike, they took us kayaking! We all organized rafts of six- eight people. We put on our life jackets, two people from each raft grabbed two paddles, and we were off. I took one of the paddles and sat at the back so I could steer down the narrow river. About 2 minutes in, there was a photographer who took pictures of us for us to see at the end. Right afterwards, everybody started jumping in to the river. Thoes who didn't jump in were 'helped' in with a little push from behind. Soon there were only two of us left controlling the raft. After a few minutes, someone switched with me so I could go in the water. I had such an amazing time just swimming in the river with everybody. I was splashing people and pulling them into the water from the rafts and overall we just had a great time. That night, after dinner, we went to the famous hot springs of Tiberias. There were three pools: two hot salt pools and one cold chlorine pool. I hung out in the hot pools for a while but then Hadassa and I decided to go into the cold pool. It was a really big pool and it was pretty empty because most people were in the hot pools so we started doing laps. Its been so long since I did laps in a pool and I found it very relaxing. Afterwards we went back to the hotel we were staying at and went to sleep.
The next morning, we woke up and started the day off with a hike. We went to the Banias national park which is one of the prettiest parks in Israel. There are beautiful waterfalls everywhere and if you're lucky, you'll get to see a destroyed Syrian tank. Then we went swimming in the Kineret Sea. It was so much fun to just hang out with everybody and be in the water. It was a long drive back to Jerusalem. Once we got back we had dinner and then some time to chill. Later that night, we had mishmar with Rav Milston and then the mishmar heads, Adi, Amy, Shira, and Tali spoke about what it means to have mishmar. They spoke about how important it is to always keep learning Torah and they ended the night off really nicely.
Our last Shabbat in Israel was similar to many other Shabbats because there was the usual singing, praying, and hanging out with friends, but this time it was also accompanied with a lot of crying. Rav Milston was with us for Shabbat just like he was with us for our first one. He spoke about how he watched us throughout the year and he has seen what we've done and how we progressed. Many girls also spoke about how they felt the year had gone and they spoke about many things that they learned. These last few days are precious. It is a time for finishing up things that I need to do, reflecting on things that I did this year, and spending time with the friends I made this year. Shalom V'lehitraot!
The next morning, we woke up and started the day off with a hike. We went to the Banias national park which is one of the prettiest parks in Israel. There are beautiful waterfalls everywhere and if you're lucky, you'll get to see a destroyed Syrian tank. Then we went swimming in the Kineret Sea. It was so much fun to just hang out with everybody and be in the water. It was a long drive back to Jerusalem. Once we got back we had dinner and then some time to chill. Later that night, we had mishmar with Rav Milston and then the mishmar heads, Adi, Amy, Shira, and Tali spoke about what it means to have mishmar. They spoke about how important it is to always keep learning Torah and they ended the night off really nicely.
Our last Shabbat in Israel was similar to many other Shabbats because there was the usual singing, praying, and hanging out with friends, but this time it was also accompanied with a lot of crying. Rav Milston was with us for Shabbat just like he was with us for our first one. He spoke about how he watched us throughout the year and he has seen what we've done and how we progressed. Many girls also spoke about how they felt the year had gone and they spoke about many things that they learned. These last few days are precious. It is a time for finishing up things that I need to do, reflecting on things that I did this year, and spending time with the friends I made this year. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Monday, June 4, 2012
Last day of classes :(
Remember all of those 'firsts' in the beginning of the year? Unfortunately, it's coming time for all the 'lasts.'
I've come a really long way since then. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.co.il/2011/09/first-day-of-classes.html
Last night we had a party for Rav Yonatan, one of the teachers that we were closest with. We bought him a salmon fillet for dinner from Cafe Rimon because on Sundays and Thursdays he always eats dinner with us and he always tells us that he hopes there will be "steak and chips." He also told us that his favorite food was salmon so once we asked him which he liked better, steak or salmon, and he said salmon, so that's why we got him salmon and French fries. Our Chumash BeIyun class were the ones closest to him because we had a three hour class with him twice a week and we all had at least one other class with him. We set up a nice table and then laid out the food so it would look all pretty. When he came in, he was so surprised and so happy! We reminisced about memories that we had and people who came and left the class. The survivors of the class were me, Amy, Sharona, Adi, Esther, Eliana, and Rinat.Today was our last class with him. We learned for a little bit and then he gave us lemon squares that he baked which were really yummy. We then talked about things that we enjoyed learning and what we got out of the class and things that he might be able to do that would be better for next year.
During lunch, Jane made an announcement that at 1:30 we would all meet in the main square where we would be doing a flash mob to one of our favorite Harova songs that we all knew that words and movements to. At 1:30, we were all standing around with our Israeli flags waiting to start but nothing was happening. I found out that they were frantically looking for a place to plug in the speakers and eventually they found a place. The flash mob started but it wasn't very well organized so our entrances didn't work out so well and then our flash mob was crashed by a group of random Asians! Anyway, it was still a lot of fun.
Tonight, a whole bunch of us went to a party at Chani's house. We started off the night with a talk from Chani's dad who is really cool. Then came the food because what's a party without the food! We had really yummy crepes with lots of different toppings. Then we just talked about funny memories that we had from this year.
I'm writing this just as I came back from cleaning out the school building from all of my books, notebooks, papers, and other stuff. It was really sad to see it emptying out and carrying all of my stuff to be packed away. I also took out my suitcases and am going to start packing tomorrow. Don't worry, I've still got a little bit more to write. Shalom V'lehitraot!
I've come a really long way since then. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.co.il/2011/09/first-day-of-classes.html
Last night we had a party for Rav Yonatan, one of the teachers that we were closest with. We bought him a salmon fillet for dinner from Cafe Rimon because on Sundays and Thursdays he always eats dinner with us and he always tells us that he hopes there will be "steak and chips." He also told us that his favorite food was salmon so once we asked him which he liked better, steak or salmon, and he said salmon, so that's why we got him salmon and French fries. Our Chumash BeIyun class were the ones closest to him because we had a three hour class with him twice a week and we all had at least one other class with him. We set up a nice table and then laid out the food so it would look all pretty. When he came in, he was so surprised and so happy! We reminisced about memories that we had and people who came and left the class. The survivors of the class were me, Amy, Sharona, Adi, Esther, Eliana, and Rinat.Today was our last class with him. We learned for a little bit and then he gave us lemon squares that he baked which were really yummy. We then talked about things that we enjoyed learning and what we got out of the class and things that he might be able to do that would be better for next year.
During lunch, Jane made an announcement that at 1:30 we would all meet in the main square where we would be doing a flash mob to one of our favorite Harova songs that we all knew that words and movements to. At 1:30, we were all standing around with our Israeli flags waiting to start but nothing was happening. I found out that they were frantically looking for a place to plug in the speakers and eventually they found a place. The flash mob started but it wasn't very well organized so our entrances didn't work out so well and then our flash mob was crashed by a group of random Asians! Anyway, it was still a lot of fun.
Tonight, a whole bunch of us went to a party at Chani's house. We started off the night with a talk from Chani's dad who is really cool. Then came the food because what's a party without the food! We had really yummy crepes with lots of different toppings. Then we just talked about funny memories that we had from this year.
I'm writing this just as I came back from cleaning out the school building from all of my books, notebooks, papers, and other stuff. It was really sad to see it emptying out and carrying all of my stuff to be packed away. I also took out my suitcases and am going to start packing tomorrow. Don't worry, I've still got a little bit more to write. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Birthdays and Holidays and People- Oh My!
As my days in Israel come near the end, so many fun things are still going on every single day.
If you don't read any of this, at least watch the video towards the end.
Wednesday night
My roommate, Hadassa's birthday was slowly approaching and since she always goes all out on everyone else's birthday, we decided to do as much as we could with as little money as possible for her birthday. At about 10:00 I walked into the kitchen where the preparations had already started happening. I got there just in time to save the cookies. We decided to make the cookies that they usually make on Tuesdays for Hadassa's birthday but nobody who was helping in the preparations really knew what they were doing so they kinda just made it up until I came along and showed them how to do it. They came out a little bit differently than usual, but they were still super yummy. We also made fruit salad, guacamole, cholent, and cheese cakes for birthday cakes. At one point Hadassa actually came into the kitchen and saw everything that was meant to be a surprise. We just told her that it was for something going on the next night. We cleaned up at around 1:00 and I finally dragged myself up to bed.
Thursday Night
The next day was fairly normal.
At night, after classes, we all went up to the roof of Sarah and Eve's apartment. We put out the fruit salad, the cholent, and guacamole and chips. At midnight, we all gathered around and we brought out cheesecake and balloons and sang happy. In honor of her own birthday, Hadassa prepared a really nice lesson for us about Megillat Ruth that we were about to read on the upcoming holiday Shavuot.
Friday
I woke up at around 8:00 as usual and did a few errands around the Rova that I needed to get done. At 11:00, I went to Sarah and Eve's apartment to pick up stuff for the picnic. We packed some blankets and a tablecloth and the rest of the food that we didn't eat from the night before. We went to Salati to get salads for lunch and then we went to Independence Park. We set everything up and then waited for Hadassa to get there. Reva took her to get a fish manicure where cleaner fish eat the dead skin off your feet leaving them nice and smooth, and then they walked over to the park. When she got to the park we all began singing Happy Birthday. Then we just sat out in the park eating and talking and having a good time. Eventually, we decided that it was time to go. When we got back to the dorms, I took a nap because of all the late nights that I've been having and the late night to come. I woke up a couple of hours later and by then, it was time to get ready for Shabbat.
Shabbat was just a normal in-shabbat with all of my Harova friends.
Saturday Night
The next part of the adventure started once Shabbat was over and the holiday of Shavuot started. Shavuot is the holiday of the receiving of the Torah.
After we prayed, we learned the laws about staying up all night which I was planning to do. It is customary to stay up all night learning on Shavuot because there is a story that tells us that we have to "fix" the fact that the Jews overslept on the day that they were supposed to receive the Torah which is why it's called "Tikun Leil Shavuot." For dinner, we had an amazing dairy meal with chocolate milk and pasta and an interesting new invention of tuna balls which dipped in cream cheese tasted very good. Then we went to the school building to learn all night which surprisingly wasn't that hard since we didn't finish dinner until about 11:00 at night.
Sunday
4:30 we went to the nearby Yeshivah where we heard Megillat Ruth. Afterwards was one of the longest prayers I've ever been to in Israel, almost as long as Rosh Hashana. It was about three hours or until 7:30 until we finished, and remember that we had all just stayed up all night. Right afterwards, I went to my room and I was in bed by 8:00. I slept until 1:00 in the afternoon when I woke up for lunch. It was a normal lunch but afterwards we started singing. One of the windows to our lunchroom was open and it was on the street level. People began looking in and they were listening to us singing and I think that we made some people really happy. I went back to sleep for another couple of hours and then the rest of the night we had some nice Harova activities.
Monday
This day was the second day of holiday for some, half a holiday for others, and for some people it wasn't a holiday at all. This happens because there is an argument about whether people living outside of Israel that are in Israel for the holiday, should they keep one or two days of the holiday? So it was really interesting to see different people relating to the day in different ways. For the entire morning we had seminars about going back home and going to college. In the afternoon, we had our Drama and Tanakh Presentations. For over half a year 7 of us have been working on monologues of characters in Tanakh. We first picked a character, then we did a ton of research. Next we had to start writing our monologues and once we were done with that, we then memorized and rehearsed them until they were amazing. We each had very different characters with very different styles. Tali was Chava, Abigail was Noach, Shana was Sarah, Kayla was Hagar, I was Dinah, Daniella was Delilah, and Leah was Devorah. Raquel video taped mine, but the beginning got cut off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tHXDEzbh7A You have to watch this! If you have any questions, please let me know because it is a very heavy topic with lots of research put into it and there may be things that you didn't quite get. We were all amazing and I'm very proud of everyone in the class.
Tuesday Night
Sarah and Sara have a night in the Beis...
What a crazy amazing week! I'm exhausted! Don't forget to watch the video! Shalom V'lehitraot!
If you don't read any of this, at least watch the video towards the end.
Wednesday night
My roommate, Hadassa's birthday was slowly approaching and since she always goes all out on everyone else's birthday, we decided to do as much as we could with as little money as possible for her birthday. At about 10:00 I walked into the kitchen where the preparations had already started happening. I got there just in time to save the cookies. We decided to make the cookies that they usually make on Tuesdays for Hadassa's birthday but nobody who was helping in the preparations really knew what they were doing so they kinda just made it up until I came along and showed them how to do it. They came out a little bit differently than usual, but they were still super yummy. We also made fruit salad, guacamole, cholent, and cheese cakes for birthday cakes. At one point Hadassa actually came into the kitchen and saw everything that was meant to be a surprise. We just told her that it was for something going on the next night. We cleaned up at around 1:00 and I finally dragged myself up to bed.
Thursday Night
The next day was fairly normal.
At night, after classes, we all went up to the roof of Sarah and Eve's apartment. We put out the fruit salad, the cholent, and guacamole and chips. At midnight, we all gathered around and we brought out cheesecake and balloons and sang happy. In honor of her own birthday, Hadassa prepared a really nice lesson for us about Megillat Ruth that we were about to read on the upcoming holiday Shavuot.
Friday
I woke up at around 8:00 as usual and did a few errands around the Rova that I needed to get done. At 11:00, I went to Sarah and Eve's apartment to pick up stuff for the picnic. We packed some blankets and a tablecloth and the rest of the food that we didn't eat from the night before. We went to Salati to get salads for lunch and then we went to Independence Park. We set everything up and then waited for Hadassa to get there. Reva took her to get a fish manicure where cleaner fish eat the dead skin off your feet leaving them nice and smooth, and then they walked over to the park. When she got to the park we all began singing Happy Birthday. Then we just sat out in the park eating and talking and having a good time. Eventually, we decided that it was time to go. When we got back to the dorms, I took a nap because of all the late nights that I've been having and the late night to come. I woke up a couple of hours later and by then, it was time to get ready for Shabbat.
Shabbat was just a normal in-shabbat with all of my Harova friends.
Saturday Night
The next part of the adventure started once Shabbat was over and the holiday of Shavuot started. Shavuot is the holiday of the receiving of the Torah.
After we prayed, we learned the laws about staying up all night which I was planning to do. It is customary to stay up all night learning on Shavuot because there is a story that tells us that we have to "fix" the fact that the Jews overslept on the day that they were supposed to receive the Torah which is why it's called "Tikun Leil Shavuot." For dinner, we had an amazing dairy meal with chocolate milk and pasta and an interesting new invention of tuna balls which dipped in cream cheese tasted very good. Then we went to the school building to learn all night which surprisingly wasn't that hard since we didn't finish dinner until about 11:00 at night.
Sunday
4:30 we went to the nearby Yeshivah where we heard Megillat Ruth. Afterwards was one of the longest prayers I've ever been to in Israel, almost as long as Rosh Hashana. It was about three hours or until 7:30 until we finished, and remember that we had all just stayed up all night. Right afterwards, I went to my room and I was in bed by 8:00. I slept until 1:00 in the afternoon when I woke up for lunch. It was a normal lunch but afterwards we started singing. One of the windows to our lunchroom was open and it was on the street level. People began looking in and they were listening to us singing and I think that we made some people really happy. I went back to sleep for another couple of hours and then the rest of the night we had some nice Harova activities.
Monday
This day was the second day of holiday for some, half a holiday for others, and for some people it wasn't a holiday at all. This happens because there is an argument about whether people living outside of Israel that are in Israel for the holiday, should they keep one or two days of the holiday? So it was really interesting to see different people relating to the day in different ways. For the entire morning we had seminars about going back home and going to college. In the afternoon, we had our Drama and Tanakh Presentations. For over half a year 7 of us have been working on monologues of characters in Tanakh. We first picked a character, then we did a ton of research. Next we had to start writing our monologues and once we were done with that, we then memorized and rehearsed them until they were amazing. We each had very different characters with very different styles. Tali was Chava, Abigail was Noach, Shana was Sarah, Kayla was Hagar, I was Dinah, Daniella was Delilah, and Leah was Devorah. Raquel video taped mine, but the beginning got cut off. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tHXDEzbh7A You have to watch this! If you have any questions, please let me know because it is a very heavy topic with lots of research put into it and there may be things that you didn't quite get. We were all amazing and I'm very proud of everyone in the class.
Tuesday Night
Sarah and Sara have a night in the Beis...
What a crazy amazing week! I'm exhausted! Don't forget to watch the video! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Yom Yerushalayim!
Part 1: Shabbat in Chevron
My crazy weekend started out with a nice quiet bike ride on Friday morning. Well it wasn't so quiet because Jerusalem was packed with people and it wasn't really that nice because I didn't realize that I was absolutely exhausted. Anyway, when I got back I had to pack for Shabbat. We left for Chevron at about 4:00. This was going to be my second time in Chevron for Shabbat but this time it was going to have a very different atmosphere. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/11/shabbat-in-chevron.html
We stayed again in Kiryat Arba in caravans that are part of a girl's high school. There was six of us staying in our little caravan but there were two bunk beds and one single. I opted to take a mattress and sleep on the floor of the other room, that way I wouldn't have to deal with any snoring people. We started off Shabbat by going down to Me'arat Ha'machpela with six guards where there was a beautiful davening. At about 10:00, we walked back and ate dinner and then went to sleep. Before we went to sleep we sang Happy Birthday to Esther and Dominique. The next morning we went through the usual routine of davening and eating lunch. I didn't take a nap this week, although maybe I should have, and instead I just hung out with people. At 3:00 we went down to Chevron for a tour. We visited the three Jewish neighborhoods which have about 90 families in them. We also visited Hadassa Hospital and the Abraham shul. We ended the night with a quick dinner, where there wasn't even enough food, we packed our stuff and left to get back to Jerusalem.
Part 2: Yom Yerushalayim
I hope you don't mind if I give a bit of a history lesson now. The crazy stories that come after it are worth it.
In 1976, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan all attacked Israel. In the span of six days, the Israeli Defense Forces destroyed the Egyptian air force, beat the Syrians and Jordanians, and they conquered a large amount of land. They conquered the Sinai Peninsula, which was given back to the Egyptians in an attempt to make peace, the Gaza Strip which was also given back, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank which included the Old City of Jerusalem, Chevron, and Gush Etziyon.
After we came back from an amazing Shabbat in Chevron, we all met up at 11:00 dressed in blue and white with Israeli flags tied on to us like capes. We were going to go around the old city walls. Led by Rav Shames and Rav Yonatan, all of the Harova girls were walking and dancing, skipping and running, and singing through the streets of Jerusalem. We made a few stops to talk about the history of Jerusalem beginning with our forefathers Abraham and Isaac who walked in exactly the same spot that we were standing in. We walked out of Zion gate, past Dung gate, and the Lion's gate. The second half of our late night walk involved going up to Mount Olives. We were escorted up by police as we hiked up the steep incline. We stopped at one particular spot where you could see directly below all of the graves of great people and if you looked out you could see the Old City and right in the middle, Temple Mount. It was an amazing sight to see as we sat there in the middle of the night singing our hearts out. This was one of my favorite nights of the year. We took a bus back at about 3:00 in the morning and a bunch of us decided to go to the kotel. We sat in circle right outside of the kotel area and began to sing again. (If you couldn't figure it out, Harova girls like singing... a lot!) I hung out till about 5:30 when we went to pray at the kotel. At this point it was still pretty empty but we knew that it would be full later in the day.
I slept from 6:30 in the morning until 12:30 in the afternoon. I woke up, ate lunch, and then chilled out until the next part of the day began. At 3:30, all of us in blue and white with out flags wrapped around us went to once again walk the streets of Jerusalem, but this time we were meeting up thousands of other Jews who were doing the same thing. As we walked through Mamilla mall, we began to sing and dance and the people around us stopped to watch and take pictures. We walked to the place where everyone was meeting up on King George Street. It was amazing to see how many thousands of people were there. It was also amazing that they had two separate streets for boys and girls. For about an hour we stayed on the same street where there was like a concert and everybody was singing and dancing and proudly waving their Israeli flags. Then, we began to move towards the Old City. There was one point where all the Harova girls just sat down in the middle of the street and began to sing. When we went through Jaffa Gate, the roads were extremely congested with people, so much so that you couldn't move because there were people pressed onto all sides of you. Eventually, I got out of the crowd and was able to make my way to my dorm. It was already about 8:30 and I ate a quick dinner and then a few of us decided to go down to the kotel. Chani, Sarah, Shira, Belle, and I all held hands as we went down to the kotel to make sure that we wouldn't lose each other in the crazy crowds. Once we got down to the kotel and the music began playing, everybody was dancing like crazy.
At around 10:00, I was tired of dancing so I went back. I was really excited because I saw Noga and a few of my other friends so we hung out for a while and then I decided that it was time to go home, write my blog, and go to sleep. So here's the blog post and now I'm going to sleep. It's been an amazing, yet exhausting day and I'm not sure how well I'll function tomorrow but I'm sure I'll get through it somehow. Shalom V'lehitraot!
My crazy weekend started out with a nice quiet bike ride on Friday morning. Well it wasn't so quiet because Jerusalem was packed with people and it wasn't really that nice because I didn't realize that I was absolutely exhausted. Anyway, when I got back I had to pack for Shabbat. We left for Chevron at about 4:00. This was going to be my second time in Chevron for Shabbat but this time it was going to have a very different atmosphere. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/11/shabbat-in-chevron.html
We stayed again in Kiryat Arba in caravans that are part of a girl's high school. There was six of us staying in our little caravan but there were two bunk beds and one single. I opted to take a mattress and sleep on the floor of the other room, that way I wouldn't have to deal with any snoring people. We started off Shabbat by going down to Me'arat Ha'machpela with six guards where there was a beautiful davening. At about 10:00, we walked back and ate dinner and then went to sleep. Before we went to sleep we sang Happy Birthday to Esther and Dominique. The next morning we went through the usual routine of davening and eating lunch. I didn't take a nap this week, although maybe I should have, and instead I just hung out with people. At 3:00 we went down to Chevron for a tour. We visited the three Jewish neighborhoods which have about 90 families in them. We also visited Hadassa Hospital and the Abraham shul. We ended the night with a quick dinner, where there wasn't even enough food, we packed our stuff and left to get back to Jerusalem.
Part 2: Yom Yerushalayim
I hope you don't mind if I give a bit of a history lesson now. The crazy stories that come after it are worth it.
In 1976, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan all attacked Israel. In the span of six days, the Israeli Defense Forces destroyed the Egyptian air force, beat the Syrians and Jordanians, and they conquered a large amount of land. They conquered the Sinai Peninsula, which was given back to the Egyptians in an attempt to make peace, the Gaza Strip which was also given back, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank which included the Old City of Jerusalem, Chevron, and Gush Etziyon.
After we came back from an amazing Shabbat in Chevron, we all met up at 11:00 dressed in blue and white with Israeli flags tied on to us like capes. We were going to go around the old city walls. Led by Rav Shames and Rav Yonatan, all of the Harova girls were walking and dancing, skipping and running, and singing through the streets of Jerusalem. We made a few stops to talk about the history of Jerusalem beginning with our forefathers Abraham and Isaac who walked in exactly the same spot that we were standing in. We walked out of Zion gate, past Dung gate, and the Lion's gate. The second half of our late night walk involved going up to Mount Olives. We were escorted up by police as we hiked up the steep incline. We stopped at one particular spot where you could see directly below all of the graves of great people and if you looked out you could see the Old City and right in the middle, Temple Mount. It was an amazing sight to see as we sat there in the middle of the night singing our hearts out. This was one of my favorite nights of the year. We took a bus back at about 3:00 in the morning and a bunch of us decided to go to the kotel. We sat in circle right outside of the kotel area and began to sing again. (If you couldn't figure it out, Harova girls like singing... a lot!) I hung out till about 5:30 when we went to pray at the kotel. At this point it was still pretty empty but we knew that it would be full later in the day.
I slept from 6:30 in the morning until 12:30 in the afternoon. I woke up, ate lunch, and then chilled out until the next part of the day began. At 3:30, all of us in blue and white with out flags wrapped around us went to once again walk the streets of Jerusalem, but this time we were meeting up thousands of other Jews who were doing the same thing. As we walked through Mamilla mall, we began to sing and dance and the people around us stopped to watch and take pictures. We walked to the place where everyone was meeting up on King George Street. It was amazing to see how many thousands of people were there. It was also amazing that they had two separate streets for boys and girls. For about an hour we stayed on the same street where there was like a concert and everybody was singing and dancing and proudly waving their Israeli flags. Then, we began to move towards the Old City. There was one point where all the Harova girls just sat down in the middle of the street and began to sing. When we went through Jaffa Gate, the roads were extremely congested with people, so much so that you couldn't move because there were people pressed onto all sides of you. Eventually, I got out of the crowd and was able to make my way to my dorm. It was already about 8:30 and I ate a quick dinner and then a few of us decided to go down to the kotel. Chani, Sarah, Shira, Belle, and I all held hands as we went down to the kotel to make sure that we wouldn't lose each other in the crazy crowds. Once we got down to the kotel and the music began playing, everybody was dancing like crazy.
At around 10:00, I was tired of dancing so I went back. I was really excited because I saw Noga and a few of my other friends so we hung out for a while and then I decided that it was time to go home, write my blog, and go to sleep. So here's the blog post and now I'm going to sleep. It's been an amazing, yet exhausting day and I'm not sure how well I'll function tomorrow but I'm sure I'll get through it somehow. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Thursday, May 17, 2012
A Not-Normal Day at Harova
Yesterday, I woke up extremely tired even though I slept for 7 hrs the night before and I went through my morning classes in a bit of a daze. During lunch I decided to take a nap and I was really happy when I woke up feeling much better. Later that day, or at night really, I was hanging out in school and I suddenly became super hyper and overtired. At first I couldn't really sit still and then I was just laughing and going a bit crazy. I was hanging out with my friend Sarah as she was working on Mishmar and we just had so much fun coming up with titles for different topics and me going crazy was also pretty funny. At around midnight, I decided that it was time for me to go to sleep. I walked back to my room and when I got there, I realized that we had both taken our flip-flops off but I wasn't paying attention and I put on one of my flip-flops and one of Sarah's flip-flops. I called her and we both laughed as we decided to trade back in the morning.
The next morning, I woke up, got ready, and then looked at my bag and I saw a huge bug on it with the longest antennas I've ever seen. I told my roommates to quickly evacuate the room while I throw my bag outside. I quickly threw my bag outside of our room and the bug fell off of my bag and then Talia stepped on it. So that was our nice little bit of early morning excitement. I went down to breakfast, did a little flip-flop exchange with Sarah, ate cornflakes, and then went to class. Then came the little ice cream episode. Just a little background on the ice cream, my friend Noga and I hung out on Monday night and we both bought these like tubs of ice cream. I didn't really finish mine so I put it in the freezer so I could eat it later. Things in the fridge/ freezer have a habit of disappearing but I didn't really care too much about my ice cream so I was just like, whatever. Today I found that it was still there so I took it out to eat it. Unfortunately, about twenty people were around and they were all kinda staring at me so I was like, okay I'm just going to put this away now. By the end of the day, almost everybody knew that the tub of ice cream was mine but I didn't mind too much. Maybe I'll eat it tomorrow.
For my Chumash BeIyun class with Rav Yonatan, we all had to prepare a short lesson to present to the class. There were three chavrutas and me and my chavruta, Amy, taught the class about a rebellious son. Afterwards, we had some extra time left so Rav Yonatan took us on a field trip. We went to a really cool rooftop lookout that I've never been on before where we could see a huge portion on the Jewish quarter. Then we sat outside and learned a little bit about Jerusalem being the place that god chose for his temple. When the class ended, we had to run back to our dorms where everybody was meeting to take a group picture of everyone in Harova. After lunch, we went on another field trip with Rav Shames for our class on the Laws of Shabbat.
Tonight, we had a guest speaker who was acting as a Palestinian activist and showing us what a presentation by such a person may look like. I must say, we've learned quite a lot about Israel and we were able to argue with a lot of the statements that he made and defend the State of Israel. Afterwards, Sarah taught us a few life lessons that she learned from Pirkei Avot that corresponded with life lessons that she learned from her friend Zachary who passed away one month ago from Leukemia. Then two other girls, Eliana and Aliza taught us about Jerusalem. This completed the end of a very interesting day at Harova. Shalom V'lehitraot!
The next morning, I woke up, got ready, and then looked at my bag and I saw a huge bug on it with the longest antennas I've ever seen. I told my roommates to quickly evacuate the room while I throw my bag outside. I quickly threw my bag outside of our room and the bug fell off of my bag and then Talia stepped on it. So that was our nice little bit of early morning excitement. I went down to breakfast, did a little flip-flop exchange with Sarah, ate cornflakes, and then went to class. Then came the little ice cream episode. Just a little background on the ice cream, my friend Noga and I hung out on Monday night and we both bought these like tubs of ice cream. I didn't really finish mine so I put it in the freezer so I could eat it later. Things in the fridge/ freezer have a habit of disappearing but I didn't really care too much about my ice cream so I was just like, whatever. Today I found that it was still there so I took it out to eat it. Unfortunately, about twenty people were around and they were all kinda staring at me so I was like, okay I'm just going to put this away now. By the end of the day, almost everybody knew that the tub of ice cream was mine but I didn't mind too much. Maybe I'll eat it tomorrow.
For my Chumash BeIyun class with Rav Yonatan, we all had to prepare a short lesson to present to the class. There were three chavrutas and me and my chavruta, Amy, taught the class about a rebellious son. Afterwards, we had some extra time left so Rav Yonatan took us on a field trip. We went to a really cool rooftop lookout that I've never been on before where we could see a huge portion on the Jewish quarter. Then we sat outside and learned a little bit about Jerusalem being the place that god chose for his temple. When the class ended, we had to run back to our dorms where everybody was meeting to take a group picture of everyone in Harova. After lunch, we went on another field trip with Rav Shames for our class on the Laws of Shabbat.
Tonight, we had a guest speaker who was acting as a Palestinian activist and showing us what a presentation by such a person may look like. I must say, we've learned quite a lot about Israel and we were able to argue with a lot of the statements that he made and defend the State of Israel. Afterwards, Sarah taught us a few life lessons that she learned from Pirkei Avot that corresponded with life lessons that she learned from her friend Zachary who passed away one month ago from Leukemia. Then two other girls, Eliana and Aliza taught us about Jerusalem. This completed the end of a very interesting day at Harova. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Lag Ba'Omer
Some holidays are celebrated much more in Israel than they are in America. Some holidays are even celebrated more in other parts of the country/ world than in my community at home. One example of this is Lag Ba'Omer. I can't think of anything that I've done for this holiday in the past few years. The night time is the best part of this holiday. All over Jerusalem and Israel people are lighting bonfires. We took a bus out to the middle of nowhere and we made a huge bonfire. One of the customs is to burn old wood that is no longer being used so we burned old doors from our school building. We cooked potatoes, hot dogs, and croissants while sitting around the fire with someone playing the guitar and the rest of us singing.
The next day, we went to the City of David. We split into three tour groups where they showed us around the ruins of King David's Palace. It was a really nice day outside and they had beautiful displays of flowers. One of the highlights was walking through the Hezekiah's Tunnels. Many tunnels were found and had lots of different uses such as moving water, sewage, and passageways. This tunnel was filled with water a little lower than the height of an average person's knee and it was pitch black. It was also so narrow that you could easily touch both sides of the tunnel with your hands and sometimes just walking your shoulders would brush up against it and the ceiling was often so low that even I had to duck. Walking in front of me was Rinat whose knapsack I was holding on to and behind was Paige and we held hands the whole time. Behind Paige were Sarah and Dani and both of them were about six feet tall so they had to go through almost the whole tunnel crouching.
Later on in the night, Raquel and I taught a lesson about the six reasons we found to celebrating Lag Ba'Omer.
1. That was the day that the Manna began to fall from heaven.
2.There is a custom that says that they wouldn't have weddings from the end of Pesach until this day.
3. From Pesach, Rabbi Akiva's students were dying from a plague and this is the day that the plague stopped.
4. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai died, but before he died, he gave over the kabbalistic book called the Zohar.
5. This was the date of the first successful rebellion against the Romans led by Bar Kochva.
6. (This one is my personal favorite) This was the day that they burned Hitler's body.
I hope you too did something special for this holiday. If you didn't there's always next year. Find some special way that you would like to celebrate. Shalom V'lehitraot!
The next day, we went to the City of David. We split into three tour groups where they showed us around the ruins of King David's Palace. It was a really nice day outside and they had beautiful displays of flowers. One of the highlights was walking through the Hezekiah's Tunnels. Many tunnels were found and had lots of different uses such as moving water, sewage, and passageways. This tunnel was filled with water a little lower than the height of an average person's knee and it was pitch black. It was also so narrow that you could easily touch both sides of the tunnel with your hands and sometimes just walking your shoulders would brush up against it and the ceiling was often so low that even I had to duck. Walking in front of me was Rinat whose knapsack I was holding on to and behind was Paige and we held hands the whole time. Behind Paige were Sarah and Dani and both of them were about six feet tall so they had to go through almost the whole tunnel crouching.
Later on in the night, Raquel and I taught a lesson about the six reasons we found to celebrating Lag Ba'Omer.
1. That was the day that the Manna began to fall from heaven.
2.There is a custom that says that they wouldn't have weddings from the end of Pesach until this day.
3. From Pesach, Rabbi Akiva's students were dying from a plague and this is the day that the plague stopped.
4. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai died, but before he died, he gave over the kabbalistic book called the Zohar.
5. This was the date of the first successful rebellion against the Romans led by Bar Kochva.
6. (This one is my personal favorite) This was the day that they burned Hitler's body.
I hope you too did something special for this holiday. If you didn't there's always next year. Find some special way that you would like to celebrate. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Chillin At Rav Ron's House!
Every other month or so, they take groups of us to different staff members houses. Tonight a group of us went to Rav Ron's house in Ne've Daniel. He teaches me Derech Hashem on Wednesday afternoons. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/12/derech-hashem-gods-oneness.html
He's a really cool and funny guy and his class is so interesting. We came into his house at about 8:30 and after we all sat down, he began to show us some of his scrapbooks. He had such an interesting life because he did so many unusual things and so many crazy things happened to him. First he showed us a couple of cartoons that he drew. He drew one about Bulimia Girl which was quite funny and there was another one that he drew about the ghost of an arm that got chopped off of a famous general and liked to play pranks on people. He then showed us his subpoena and told us about this girl Carol who was stalking him. She would follow him and call him and talk to everybody in the neighborhood about him. But then he moved to Israel so he never heard from her again. Then he told us the story of how he had to go to the local jail and testify as to whether certain inmates claiming they were Jewish, were or weren't. These big, black, bald guys all pretended to be Jewish so they could be moved to the nicer cells where they would get kosher food.
Next Rav Ron showed us a few of the times that he was on tv. He lived in Richmond, Virginia for a few years and he was the Rabbi of the only shul there, so anytime something happened with Jewish holidays of the synagogue, he would be on the local news channel. While watching these clips, he served us Oreo cake and chocolate covered pretzels. He was also on the show The Weakest Link. He's really smart, so not only did he know so many of the answers, he also kinda figured out how to cheat the system. He realized by watching lots of episodes that people who hesitated or stuttered most often got voted off. He was also really funny whenever the host spoke to him or asked him questions. In the end he only got runner-up and he didn't win any money. We were all really sad when we saw that he missed the last question. We quickly helped clean up and then we had to run out the door because our bus had already been waiting for us for a few minutes.
Everybody loves going to teachers' houses because you really get to know them better and it's always interesting to see where they live and how they live. Getting close with the people that you meet in Israel makes life long friends and ensures that you will always have a place to stay if you ever come visit. Shalom V'lehitraot!
He's a really cool and funny guy and his class is so interesting. We came into his house at about 8:30 and after we all sat down, he began to show us some of his scrapbooks. He had such an interesting life because he did so many unusual things and so many crazy things happened to him. First he showed us a couple of cartoons that he drew. He drew one about Bulimia Girl which was quite funny and there was another one that he drew about the ghost of an arm that got chopped off of a famous general and liked to play pranks on people. He then showed us his subpoena and told us about this girl Carol who was stalking him. She would follow him and call him and talk to everybody in the neighborhood about him. But then he moved to Israel so he never heard from her again. Then he told us the story of how he had to go to the local jail and testify as to whether certain inmates claiming they were Jewish, were or weren't. These big, black, bald guys all pretended to be Jewish so they could be moved to the nicer cells where they would get kosher food.
Next Rav Ron showed us a few of the times that he was on tv. He lived in Richmond, Virginia for a few years and he was the Rabbi of the only shul there, so anytime something happened with Jewish holidays of the synagogue, he would be on the local news channel. While watching these clips, he served us Oreo cake and chocolate covered pretzels. He was also on the show The Weakest Link. He's really smart, so not only did he know so many of the answers, he also kinda figured out how to cheat the system. He realized by watching lots of episodes that people who hesitated or stuttered most often got voted off. He was also really funny whenever the host spoke to him or asked him questions. In the end he only got runner-up and he didn't win any money. We were all really sad when we saw that he missed the last question. We quickly helped clean up and then we had to run out the door because our bus had already been waiting for us for a few minutes.
Everybody loves going to teachers' houses because you really get to know them better and it's always interesting to see where they live and how they live. Getting close with the people that you meet in Israel makes life long friends and ensures that you will always have a place to stay if you ever come visit. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Monday, April 30, 2012
Why Exploring is Awesome!
One of my favorite things to do in Jerusalem is just walk around and explore new places. Sometimes I walk in the same space and notice something that I've never noticed before. Sometimes there's a street that I've never seen before that I turn down to see what's at the other end. We actually have a class that does this called Siyurim which translates to touring. Every Monday from around 2-4 we take class trips walking around Jerusalem and learning about historical sites. Our two teachers who come with us, Rav Shames and Rav Sussman, are like two of the three stooges. They always have some sort of funny shtick to go with the story that they're telling about some old building or some guy who died to make it more interesting for us. It's also just interesting to take some time to get to know one of the most important cities in Israel or even in the world.
Every Monday night we have the night off from 7:00. My friend Adeena and I decided that every once in a while we would go on a walk together. We've walked together quite a few times now. Adeena walks pretty fast and I used to have a hard time keeping up with her but after I did Yam L' Yam, I realized that I could push myself even further than I thought and this week, I made her have to keep up with me. We always try to find a new area to walk which is hard sometimes because we don't like walking more than a half hour out. We somehow manage to find some back street that we've never seen before but we always end up walking in circles because we try to avoid the busier, more popular areas.
I also want to start exploring all of the parks near me that I've never really gone in to. On Friday mornings I take my bike out and I just go. I used to bike up the same street every time but bikes are really great for getting to new places faster and then I just cruise along and check out the sites. I once went into a park and found a group of actors rehearsing a Shakespeare play. I stopped for a few minutes to watch and I found it so interesting and entertaining.
Exploring the place that you've lived in for so long can help you learn so much more about the place. It also renews your love and appreciation for the place. Go, get off the computer, and check out your own neighborhood! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Every Monday night we have the night off from 7:00. My friend Adeena and I decided that every once in a while we would go on a walk together. We've walked together quite a few times now. Adeena walks pretty fast and I used to have a hard time keeping up with her but after I did Yam L' Yam, I realized that I could push myself even further than I thought and this week, I made her have to keep up with me. We always try to find a new area to walk which is hard sometimes because we don't like walking more than a half hour out. We somehow manage to find some back street that we've never seen before but we always end up walking in circles because we try to avoid the busier, more popular areas.
I also want to start exploring all of the parks near me that I've never really gone in to. On Friday mornings I take my bike out and I just go. I used to bike up the same street every time but bikes are really great for getting to new places faster and then I just cruise along and check out the sites. I once went into a park and found a group of actors rehearsing a Shakespeare play. I stopped for a few minutes to watch and I found it so interesting and entertaining.
Exploring the place that you've lived in for so long can help you learn so much more about the place. It also renews your love and appreciation for the place. Go, get off the computer, and check out your own neighborhood! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Shabbat with Amy
This Shabbat, I went with my friend Amy to Ma'ale Adumim. Her sister, Jill lives in Israel and she and her fiance, Ilan just bought a car so they said that they would be able to give us a ride since they were also going there for Shabbat. We had to wait for a little bit for her sister to come so we decided to go shopping on Yaffo St. I just looked around, but Amy got a really nice blue summer dress. Then, Jill picked us up and drove us to the family that we were staying at. I was in Ma'ale Adumim once during Succot so I remembered my way around a little bit. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/10/succot-in-maale-adumim.html
The family we were staying at had two kids, Matan and Eliana, and they just moved to Israel four years ago. After we got settled in, we watched Anastasia with the kids and then we went off to our room to hang out. Both Amy and I fell asleep until Shabbat began. We woke up just in time for dinner. They made really good food. I especially like the carrot kugel and the chocolate-chip cake. We talked with the family for a little bit after the meal about where they work and things that we've been doing this year and our plans for next year and then we decided to go to bed because we were exhausted.
We woke up the next morning at about 8:30, ate some more cake, and then went to shul. The shul that we went to is known as the happy shul because they love singing. It was one of the longer davenings that I've been to in Israel but it was really nice too. As we were walking down the road, I noticed how green everything was outside. I was really happy because when I came in the beginning of the year, everything was all brown and desert-like. For lunch, we went to their friends' house. We started off with salad, moved onto the main course, and of course there was a cake for dessert because it was one of their friend's, Annie's, birthday. She actually used to live in Brooklyn and she went to Flatbush. We talked for quite a while about all sorts of random things like flying in airplanes. By the time it was 3:00, Amy and I were kinda bored so we decided to go back to our hosts' house. We read for a little bit and then we took a nap. We woke up right before Shabbat was over and we watched the kids play chess together.
Amy's sister and fiance were able to drive us back to Jerusalem too. First Ilan dropped Jill off at her class and then started to take us back home. We kinda got lost in Jerusalem and ended up getting stuck multiple times at dead end streets, but in the end he agreed to use the GPS to get us back to where we needed to be. It was a very relaxing Shabbat and I'm really glad to have met that family. Shalom V'lehitraot!
The family we were staying at had two kids, Matan and Eliana, and they just moved to Israel four years ago. After we got settled in, we watched Anastasia with the kids and then we went off to our room to hang out. Both Amy and I fell asleep until Shabbat began. We woke up just in time for dinner. They made really good food. I especially like the carrot kugel and the chocolate-chip cake. We talked with the family for a little bit after the meal about where they work and things that we've been doing this year and our plans for next year and then we decided to go to bed because we were exhausted.
We woke up the next morning at about 8:30, ate some more cake, and then went to shul. The shul that we went to is known as the happy shul because they love singing. It was one of the longer davenings that I've been to in Israel but it was really nice too. As we were walking down the road, I noticed how green everything was outside. I was really happy because when I came in the beginning of the year, everything was all brown and desert-like. For lunch, we went to their friends' house. We started off with salad, moved onto the main course, and of course there was a cake for dessert because it was one of their friend's, Annie's, birthday. She actually used to live in Brooklyn and she went to Flatbush. We talked for quite a while about all sorts of random things like flying in airplanes. By the time it was 3:00, Amy and I were kinda bored so we decided to go back to our hosts' house. We read for a little bit and then we took a nap. We woke up right before Shabbat was over and we watched the kids play chess together.
Amy's sister and fiance were able to drive us back to Jerusalem too. First Ilan dropped Jill off at her class and then started to take us back home. We kinda got lost in Jerusalem and ended up getting stuck multiple times at dead end streets, but in the end he agreed to use the GPS to get us back to where we needed to be. It was a very relaxing Shabbat and I'm really glad to have met that family. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut
In Israel, two of the most special holidays are Memorial Day and Independence Day which come one right after the other. The first is a very sad day while the second is very happy and joyous. On these days it is customary to wear blue and white representing the Israeli flag.
Tuesday Afternoon
Our programing started the day before Yom Hazikaron. Right after lunch we had our first speaker, Cheryl Mandel who had lost her son during his military service. She spoke about hearing the news that he child had been killed. She spoke about how it affected her life and how she deals with this loss every day. She showed us a video made up of pictures of him and then afterwards, she shared some stories with us about her son. She spoke really well and it was a very emotional speech.
Our next speaker was Rivkah Moriah, the mother of one of the students killed at the Mercaz HaRav Massacre. She told us step by step, every detail of what happened that night culminating with her finding out that her son had been killed by a terrorist who had gone into the building shooting him and eight other boys in cold blood. Quite a few people were really affected by her story because they somehow knew one of the boys who were killed in this massacre.
Yom Hazikaron- Tuesday Night
After these two speakers we ate dinner and then went down to the kotel. The wall was empty. Not a single person stood beside it in prayer. You could even see the stones darker at the bottom because the sun never shines on it because of the people who come every single day. I have never seen it like that. Right in front of the kotel, soldiers were standing at attention while waiting to begin one of the biggest memorial ceremonies in Israel that night. At exactly 8:00, a siren went off for one minute. Every single person stopped talking, stopped moving, and lowered their heads to remember those who had fallen in battle and those killed in terrorist attacks. For those 60 seconds, we all stood together as a nation. The ceremony began with lighting a giant memorial candle. Then, the president, Shimon Peres, spoke. There were another couple of speakers that I didn't catch because the ceremony was conducted in rapid and more complicated Hebrew than I could really understand. Lastly, the Chief Rabbi of the army said a prayer for the fallen soldiers.
Once we all got back, the Israelis at our school prepared an amazing program for us. They told us famous stories of fallen soldiers through videos, songs and acting them out. There was one story about two men who had the same name and their parents had the same names. One of them died and they went to tell the parents but it turned out that they accidentally told the wrong parents. They apologized for the mistake and went to tell the correct parents, but in that time the second man with that same name was killed too. Their program really helped us understand how the people in Israel relate to memorial day because almost everybody knows of someone who was killed in the army.
Yom Hazikaron- Wednesday
The first thing we did that morning was listen to a story by Uri who is the head of all the technical things at our school. He told us an amazing story of how he was the assistant Rabbi in the Second Lebanon War. His main task was working in the morgue. He spoke to us about the horrors that he saw and about he had to mentally and emotionally cope with it. One of the stories that he told us was about how he had to hitchhike to Jerusalem. On the way out of the north, he was sitting on the side of the road with some soldiers who were just talking and playing backgammon. He eventually caught a ride down to Jerusalem and in the middle of the drive, he heard the news announce that a group of soldiers was hit by a rocket in the exact place that he had just been a couple of hours before. He immediately got out of the car and hitchhiked back because he knew that they needed him.
Afterwards, we got on buses to go to Har Hertzl, Israel's military cemetery. We were put in groups of three where each group got the biography of a fallen soldier. Talia, Dalia, and I learned about the life of Chaim Buskila. He was born in Morocco in 1952 and his family moved to Israel four years later. He was first in the "Golani" part of the army which is up north, but then later he began training for the Air Force. He was killed in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 three days after the war started. He was 21 and left behind parents, three brothers and four sisters. When we got to Har Hertzl, it was filled with people. There, soldiers giving out water bottles and stickers. The grave that we were looking for was in Section E, Plot 2, Row 3, Grave 14. Eventually we found it and at the grave we met his younger sister. She told us how amazed she was that people who come from outside of Israel care about the fallen soldiers and not only that, but she was so appreciative that someone cared enough about her brother to come visit his grave. I asked her to tell us a little bit about him and she told us that he was very smart and he wanted to be a doctor after he got out of the army. She told us that she remembered her last moment with him. It was the Shabbat right before Succot and she remembered that he told her to go decorate the succah. At that moment, he picked up his bag and left, and that was the last time she saw him.
At exactly 11:00, a siren went off for two minutes just like the night before. Everything stopped and we all stood in silence to remember the fallen soldiers. The prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu got up to speak. He spoke about how he lost his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, and he understood how the people felt. He said that he misses him every single day but he knew that he fell serving the country. After Bibi Netanyahu spoke, we had to make our way back to the buses which took a very long time because of the huge crowds that were at the cemetery.
A group of about 12 of us had to go on the mini-bus to set up for the party that was happening that night. We started out by setting up all the tables and chairs in three long rows. This didn't happen very quickly and was accompanied by much waiting around for our lunch. Finally, they brought us lunch and it was worth the wait because they brought us pizza from Pizza Hut. I was so hungry, I ate five slices. Then we brought in all of the food and after that was done we began to set the tables and decorate. We put blue and white table clothes on the table and plates, napkins, and cutlery. We blew up balloons and hung streamers all over the room. We finished after a few hours but they didn't get us a mini-bus for the way back so we had to take the train. In the time that we were setting up, we missed a movie about a soldier named Michael Levine. I had already seen this movie, but for the girls who hadn't, it can be found online. The movie is about the story of a young man from Philadelphia who wanted to be in the Israeli Army so badly, but when they finally sent him to fight in Lebanon, he was killed in the battle. Lastly, Rav Yonatan spoke to us about the transition between Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut. He spoke about how one cannot go without the other because in order for there to be an independent state, people have to fight for it.
Yom Haatzmaut- Wednesday Night
After a beautiful davening led by Sarah and Jane, we all got on the buses to go to the party that we set up before. When we first got there everyone was either taking pictures or dancing or singing and we were all having a great time. The Israeli program also came to join in the party. Then, we ate dinner and Rav Milston, the head of our school came in waving the Israeli flag high over his head. The head of the Israeli program spoke first and then Rav Milston gave his famous Aliyah Speech. We ended the night with more singing and dancing. By the end of the night everyone was going crazy and having so much fun. We got back from the party at about 1:30 last night and despite the music blasting outside my window, I fell asleep in under ten minutes.
Yom Haatzmaut- Thursday
We woke up early in the morning to start off our day. We davened, ate breakfast, and got on the buses to go to our hike. It was a nice and easy two hour hike right outside of Jerusalem. Along the way, our guide told us stories from the War of Independence in 1948. When we were on the top of a mountain, we were able to see Route 1, the main road from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv. Our guide told us about how the Arabs blocked off that road so the people in Jerusalem didn't have any water and she told us about how they suffered and how they dealt with it.
After the hike, we went to a picnic area where we were split up into six groups. Each group was given a grill, charcoal, matches, raw meat, and vegetables and were told to make lunch. We were group #4 and it took us quite a long time to figure out how to get the coals on fire to stay on fire. At least we didn't get help from other picnic goers like a couple of the other groups did. Hadassa and Meira were the main cooks. First they cooked the hot dogs and hamburgers and then they cooked the chicken after we rubbed spices all over it. The chicken tasted so good! We also cut up some peppers, cucumbers, and onions. We were all full by the end and we even had some left-overs.
These past few days were absolutely amazing and so meaningful to the people in Israel and even to those of us who don't permanently live here. It was a great experience that I have tried to describe, but you can't truly understand it unless you are here. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Tuesday Afternoon
Our programing started the day before Yom Hazikaron. Right after lunch we had our first speaker, Cheryl Mandel who had lost her son during his military service. She spoke about hearing the news that he child had been killed. She spoke about how it affected her life and how she deals with this loss every day. She showed us a video made up of pictures of him and then afterwards, she shared some stories with us about her son. She spoke really well and it was a very emotional speech.
Our next speaker was Rivkah Moriah, the mother of one of the students killed at the Mercaz HaRav Massacre. She told us step by step, every detail of what happened that night culminating with her finding out that her son had been killed by a terrorist who had gone into the building shooting him and eight other boys in cold blood. Quite a few people were really affected by her story because they somehow knew one of the boys who were killed in this massacre.
Yom Hazikaron- Tuesday Night
After these two speakers we ate dinner and then went down to the kotel. The wall was empty. Not a single person stood beside it in prayer. You could even see the stones darker at the bottom because the sun never shines on it because of the people who come every single day. I have never seen it like that. Right in front of the kotel, soldiers were standing at attention while waiting to begin one of the biggest memorial ceremonies in Israel that night. At exactly 8:00, a siren went off for one minute. Every single person stopped talking, stopped moving, and lowered their heads to remember those who had fallen in battle and those killed in terrorist attacks. For those 60 seconds, we all stood together as a nation. The ceremony began with lighting a giant memorial candle. Then, the president, Shimon Peres, spoke. There were another couple of speakers that I didn't catch because the ceremony was conducted in rapid and more complicated Hebrew than I could really understand. Lastly, the Chief Rabbi of the army said a prayer for the fallen soldiers.
Once we all got back, the Israelis at our school prepared an amazing program for us. They told us famous stories of fallen soldiers through videos, songs and acting them out. There was one story about two men who had the same name and their parents had the same names. One of them died and they went to tell the parents but it turned out that they accidentally told the wrong parents. They apologized for the mistake and went to tell the correct parents, but in that time the second man with that same name was killed too. Their program really helped us understand how the people in Israel relate to memorial day because almost everybody knows of someone who was killed in the army.
Yom Hazikaron- Wednesday
The first thing we did that morning was listen to a story by Uri who is the head of all the technical things at our school. He told us an amazing story of how he was the assistant Rabbi in the Second Lebanon War. His main task was working in the morgue. He spoke to us about the horrors that he saw and about he had to mentally and emotionally cope with it. One of the stories that he told us was about how he had to hitchhike to Jerusalem. On the way out of the north, he was sitting on the side of the road with some soldiers who were just talking and playing backgammon. He eventually caught a ride down to Jerusalem and in the middle of the drive, he heard the news announce that a group of soldiers was hit by a rocket in the exact place that he had just been a couple of hours before. He immediately got out of the car and hitchhiked back because he knew that they needed him.
Afterwards, we got on buses to go to Har Hertzl, Israel's military cemetery. We were put in groups of three where each group got the biography of a fallen soldier. Talia, Dalia, and I learned about the life of Chaim Buskila. He was born in Morocco in 1952 and his family moved to Israel four years later. He was first in the "Golani" part of the army which is up north, but then later he began training for the Air Force. He was killed in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 three days after the war started. He was 21 and left behind parents, three brothers and four sisters. When we got to Har Hertzl, it was filled with people. There, soldiers giving out water bottles and stickers. The grave that we were looking for was in Section E, Plot 2, Row 3, Grave 14. Eventually we found it and at the grave we met his younger sister. She told us how amazed she was that people who come from outside of Israel care about the fallen soldiers and not only that, but she was so appreciative that someone cared enough about her brother to come visit his grave. I asked her to tell us a little bit about him and she told us that he was very smart and he wanted to be a doctor after he got out of the army. She told us that she remembered her last moment with him. It was the Shabbat right before Succot and she remembered that he told her to go decorate the succah. At that moment, he picked up his bag and left, and that was the last time she saw him.
At exactly 11:00, a siren went off for two minutes just like the night before. Everything stopped and we all stood in silence to remember the fallen soldiers. The prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu got up to speak. He spoke about how he lost his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, and he understood how the people felt. He said that he misses him every single day but he knew that he fell serving the country. After Bibi Netanyahu spoke, we had to make our way back to the buses which took a very long time because of the huge crowds that were at the cemetery.
A group of about 12 of us had to go on the mini-bus to set up for the party that was happening that night. We started out by setting up all the tables and chairs in three long rows. This didn't happen very quickly and was accompanied by much waiting around for our lunch. Finally, they brought us lunch and it was worth the wait because they brought us pizza from Pizza Hut. I was so hungry, I ate five slices. Then we brought in all of the food and after that was done we began to set the tables and decorate. We put blue and white table clothes on the table and plates, napkins, and cutlery. We blew up balloons and hung streamers all over the room. We finished after a few hours but they didn't get us a mini-bus for the way back so we had to take the train. In the time that we were setting up, we missed a movie about a soldier named Michael Levine. I had already seen this movie, but for the girls who hadn't, it can be found online. The movie is about the story of a young man from Philadelphia who wanted to be in the Israeli Army so badly, but when they finally sent him to fight in Lebanon, he was killed in the battle. Lastly, Rav Yonatan spoke to us about the transition between Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut. He spoke about how one cannot go without the other because in order for there to be an independent state, people have to fight for it.
Yom Haatzmaut- Wednesday Night
After a beautiful davening led by Sarah and Jane, we all got on the buses to go to the party that we set up before. When we first got there everyone was either taking pictures or dancing or singing and we were all having a great time. The Israeli program also came to join in the party. Then, we ate dinner and Rav Milston, the head of our school came in waving the Israeli flag high over his head. The head of the Israeli program spoke first and then Rav Milston gave his famous Aliyah Speech. We ended the night with more singing and dancing. By the end of the night everyone was going crazy and having so much fun. We got back from the party at about 1:30 last night and despite the music blasting outside my window, I fell asleep in under ten minutes.
Yom Haatzmaut- Thursday
We woke up early in the morning to start off our day. We davened, ate breakfast, and got on the buses to go to our hike. It was a nice and easy two hour hike right outside of Jerusalem. Along the way, our guide told us stories from the War of Independence in 1948. When we were on the top of a mountain, we were able to see Route 1, the main road from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv. Our guide told us about how the Arabs blocked off that road so the people in Jerusalem didn't have any water and she told us about how they suffered and how they dealt with it.
After the hike, we went to a picnic area where we were split up into six groups. Each group was given a grill, charcoal, matches, raw meat, and vegetables and were told to make lunch. We were group #4 and it took us quite a long time to figure out how to get the coals on fire to stay on fire. At least we didn't get help from other picnic goers like a couple of the other groups did. Hadassa and Meira were the main cooks. First they cooked the hot dogs and hamburgers and then they cooked the chicken after we rubbed spices all over it. The chicken tasted so good! We also cut up some peppers, cucumbers, and onions. We were all full by the end and we even had some left-overs.
These past few days were absolutely amazing and so meaningful to the people in Israel and even to those of us who don't permanently live here. It was a great experience that I have tried to describe, but you can't truly understand it unless you are here. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Post- Pesach Tiyul
After Pesach, those of us who stayed in Israel went on a trip all the way up North.
The night before, the person in charge of all the technical stuff in the buildings, Uri, opened up the kitchen to us and he said that we could make whatever we wanted for dinner. Hadassa and Aliza started off by making grilled vegetables. Sarah and I made pizzas, Adi and Arney made pancakes, and quite a few people helped out making the cookies. We set up the tables really nicely in a circle and we all had a really great dinner while we talked about the trip for the next day.
The next day, we woke up nice and early to drive the four hours to the Golan Heights. We stopped after two hours at the usual rest stop for breakfast and then got back on the bus to drive the rest of the way. We basically went as far north as you could go in Israel, even past Mount Hermon. Our first hike of the day was a gorgeous waterfall hike. It wasn't a very hard hike and it was pretty short but we all stopped many times to look at all the pretty waterfalls and the other great scenery sights on the hike. Afterwards we went to Metsudat Choach, a memorial for 28 soldiers that fell trying to defend the land. We ate lunch there overlooking the Valley of Afulah. After lunch we went biking around a lake. The lake was originally part of a large amount of marsh land but they dried it up because all of the mosquitoes that lived there had malaria. The lake is a nature reserve where hundreds of birds stop during their migratory seasons. We got to see quite a few birds and learn all about them. One of the times that our tour guide was talking, I happened to look to my right and I saw a bird flying off with a snake in its mouth! The bike ride was really nice because we had great weather and it was a really nice lake. One of the times we stopped was under this beautiful dock right on the edge of the water and so we all decided to sit down and play Duck, Duck, Goose! It was so much fun!
That night, they took us out for dinner at a really nice meat restaurant. I had a really yummy chicken sandwich. Afterwards, we walked around on the boardwalk look at all the clothes and jewelry. Four of my friends decided to get their ears pierced so they went to this random jewelry stand on the boardwalk and got new earrings! That night we were sleeping at the same hotel that we slept at during the Zionist seminar in Tiberias. All of the people in my room were already there when I got there. When I walked in, they were all staring at me. Melissa told me to look down and I saw blood on the floor. I was so confused. Then I looked at Daniella and I saw that her foot was bandaged. I asked them what happened and they tried to give me this made up story about a strange man coming into the room and knocking her over, but really she just slipped and hit her foot on the edge of the bathtub.
The next day we were going on a much longer hike along a river. It was a slower pace than Yam L' Yam which was nice because we could look at the scenery, but at the same time you still had to be careful and watch your step because at times there were a lot of rocks and it was very slippery. About 1/3 of the way into the hike, we stopped at another waterfall. Eliana and I decided to go swimming. It was so much fun but the water was freezing! It felt really good afterwards when we were walking under the hot sun. We finished our hike pretty quickly after only a few hours of walking and then went to eat lunch. Our bus driver, Nissim, had to go buy food for us at a local supermarket because we didn't really have anything to eat except for bread and cookies. That was pretty much the end of our day except for a pit stop that we made where they bought ices for us. I got a passion fruit flavor and it tasted so good!
We got back to our dorms just in time for a great pizza dinner. We also got to see so many people coming back from vacation which was really cool because we haven't seen some of them for weeks! I'm so excited for the upcoming events of the rest of the year! Shalom V'lehitraot!
The night before, the person in charge of all the technical stuff in the buildings, Uri, opened up the kitchen to us and he said that we could make whatever we wanted for dinner. Hadassa and Aliza started off by making grilled vegetables. Sarah and I made pizzas, Adi and Arney made pancakes, and quite a few people helped out making the cookies. We set up the tables really nicely in a circle and we all had a really great dinner while we talked about the trip for the next day.
The next day, we woke up nice and early to drive the four hours to the Golan Heights. We stopped after two hours at the usual rest stop for breakfast and then got back on the bus to drive the rest of the way. We basically went as far north as you could go in Israel, even past Mount Hermon. Our first hike of the day was a gorgeous waterfall hike. It wasn't a very hard hike and it was pretty short but we all stopped many times to look at all the pretty waterfalls and the other great scenery sights on the hike. Afterwards we went to Metsudat Choach, a memorial for 28 soldiers that fell trying to defend the land. We ate lunch there overlooking the Valley of Afulah. After lunch we went biking around a lake. The lake was originally part of a large amount of marsh land but they dried it up because all of the mosquitoes that lived there had malaria. The lake is a nature reserve where hundreds of birds stop during their migratory seasons. We got to see quite a few birds and learn all about them. One of the times that our tour guide was talking, I happened to look to my right and I saw a bird flying off with a snake in its mouth! The bike ride was really nice because we had great weather and it was a really nice lake. One of the times we stopped was under this beautiful dock right on the edge of the water and so we all decided to sit down and play Duck, Duck, Goose! It was so much fun!
That night, they took us out for dinner at a really nice meat restaurant. I had a really yummy chicken sandwich. Afterwards, we walked around on the boardwalk look at all the clothes and jewelry. Four of my friends decided to get their ears pierced so they went to this random jewelry stand on the boardwalk and got new earrings! That night we were sleeping at the same hotel that we slept at during the Zionist seminar in Tiberias. All of the people in my room were already there when I got there. When I walked in, they were all staring at me. Melissa told me to look down and I saw blood on the floor. I was so confused. Then I looked at Daniella and I saw that her foot was bandaged. I asked them what happened and they tried to give me this made up story about a strange man coming into the room and knocking her over, but really she just slipped and hit her foot on the edge of the bathtub.
The next day we were going on a much longer hike along a river. It was a slower pace than Yam L' Yam which was nice because we could look at the scenery, but at the same time you still had to be careful and watch your step because at times there were a lot of rocks and it was very slippery. About 1/3 of the way into the hike, we stopped at another waterfall. Eliana and I decided to go swimming. It was so much fun but the water was freezing! It felt really good afterwards when we were walking under the hot sun. We finished our hike pretty quickly after only a few hours of walking and then went to eat lunch. Our bus driver, Nissim, had to go buy food for us at a local supermarket because we didn't really have anything to eat except for bread and cookies. That was pretty much the end of our day except for a pit stop that we made where they bought ices for us. I got a passion fruit flavor and it tasted so good!
We got back to our dorms just in time for a great pizza dinner. We also got to see so many people coming back from vacation which was really cool because we haven't seen some of them for weeks! I'm so excited for the upcoming events of the rest of the year! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Yam L' Yam!
It's been a long time since I've posted and I know I've been a little bit lazy this past month but this post is so amazing that it's going to make up for anything lacking in this past month. This past weekend, I completed the cross-country hike known as Yam L' Yam, literally translated as sea to sea. This is a 3 day hike of 75 km/46 miles from the west side of Israel, the Mediterranean Sea, to the east side of Israel, the Sea of Galilee. Hadassa, Raquel, Aliza, Eve, Shevi Adi, Belle, and I did this hike from Sunday to Tuesday. This was one of the most physically challenging and mentally demanding things I have ever done.
Thursday night and Friday we spent packing for the trip. We had huge bags in which we packed sleeping bags, some extra clothes, toiletries, three bottles of water and some other personal things. We also each had to leave room for food and other supplies that we had to take with us that everybody would use. The kitchen at school was really nice and they really helped us out by giving us a lot of food that we needed that they were getting rid of anyway because of Pesach. We took fruits and vegetables, bread and spreads to go on it, a pot and a burner and quite a few other things. I carried the onions and potatoes that would be for dinner, plastic bowls and plates, and a loaf of bread. Our bags weighed about 30 pounds! The first time we picked tried to pick up our bags, we had such a hard time getting them on our backs and then moving our feet but we eventually got the hang of it and eventually we didn't even think about it. We all made sure our shoulder straps were well adjusted but it was still hard to carry. I then figured out how to use the waist strap which takes a good percentage of the weight off your shoulder and back and transfers it to your hips.
Raquel and I spent Shabbat in Herzliya at my Israeli Chavruta's house. She had a gorgeous house and they fed us so much food. It was really great to have a nice relaxing Shabbat before our hike started. They also helped us out quite a bit. They let us put our deli meat in their freezer until we left and they gave us goodie bags filled with candy. It was a bit awkward when we asked them if we could use their nail clippers to cut our toenails but they let us do that too.
Day #1
We woke up the next morning at 5:00. We got dressed and ate breakfast and called a cab to take us to the train station. We got on a 6:15 train to Nahariya where we would be meeting the rest of the crew. Our train arrived at 8:00 and we met everybody else including our guide Yotam and his friend Oz who was coming along with us for the day. We started our hike at 9:00 and we were supposed to go 24 km on the first day. We started out following the green trail which goes along the Kziv River. About 15 minutes into the hike we come to a river that we have to cross. Yotam and Oz hop across the river on some rocks. Next, Aliza goes and as she was going she slipped a little bit and one of her shoes got soaking wet. Next, I went and as I was stepping on the rocks to get across, I lost my balance just a little bit because I wasn't used to having an extra 30 lbs on my back, and I completely fell into the river. I stood up soaking wet but unhurt because my huge bag broke my fall. Everyone else, also not wanting to fall in, took off their shoes and socks and walked across in the water. After they crossed, they looked up and saw another river just a few feet away. They hopped along bare foot and walked through the next river. We spent a few minutes after that drying off and then continued walking. A few minutes later we came to another river. At this point, nobody really cares and we all just walked through the river with our shoes and socks on. About an hour into the hike, we stopped for a water break. As we were standing around cooling off, I noticed that there was a massive bee with a huge stinger on the end on my shirt. I freaked out for a few seconds and then I realized that it might sting me so I stopped moving. Yotam ran over and tried to get it off with a stick but it kept crawling up my shirt and then went into my shirt. I almost took my shirt off but then the bee flew away. We continued walking and then we came to another river that everyone just walked through. Aliza was the last one and as we're all walking away we heard a huge splash. Aliza was the next one to fall in the water. She wasn't as lucky as I was and she got a huge bruise on her thigh. Through out the day we took so many bathroom breaks because we were drinking so much water. I think I went to the bathroom at least six times that first day. At one of our bathroom stops, Raquel pulls out the lemons that she was carrying and we all put some in our hair to see if we would get highlights from the sun. It didn't really work out too well.
We stopped for lunch at around 12:30 by a really pretty spot along the river. We took one of the tuna cans someone was carrying and smoked the tuna by putting a piece of paper towel on top of it and lighting it on fire. Unfortunately, we only brought one small container of chocolate spread which wasn't really enough and we brought two huge jars of peanut butter which we wouldn't even come close to finishing. Oz had a tiny little burner where he made tea with some nana leaves that he picked from the side of the road. We started walking again after about an hour break. We walked through such a beautiful part of Israel. Every few minutes somebody else would say, "Wow, this is so beautiful!" We eventually got to this big open space where lots of Bnei Akiva kids were sitting eating their lunch. There was a deep river with rushing water there so we tried to cross on the rocks. Shevi and Hadassa made it across the river first. The rest of us were having trouble so Shevi came back to try to help us. On her way back to help us, she slipped and fell in the water. 3 down 5 to go! As Shevi was getting up, we all look to our right because Eve tried to go a different way and she slipped and fell. 4 down 4 to go! She tried getting up and fell back down again and because the current was so strong, she kind of got carried along for a couple of feet. All of the Bnei Akiva kids were kinda just staring at us as we basically swam through this river with our huge backpacks on our backs. We continued walking until we got to a road. This was the hardest part of the day because we have to walk uphill for about 15 minutes. This might not sound like a lot but with 30 lbs on your back it felt like we were walking for an hour and a half and when we finished muscles in our leg that we didn't even know existed hurt like crazy! After the huge hill we sat under a tree for quite a while resting. Up on a hill nearby, Yotam and Oz found a shopping cart that they brought down to us. Half of us put our bags in the shopping cart and we pushed it down the road. We eventually got to a gas station where we were able to go to the bathroom in a toilet for the first time since the morning. We refilled our water bottles and went on to our campsite.
We camped in a random forest off the side of the road. We wanted to make a bonfire and set up the burner. We put all our stuff down and we began to collect firewood. Hadassa and Adi went to go set up the burner. As we were picking up branches off the floor, we hear a scream. I turned around and I saw the burner blow up. The whole thing was on fire and Yotam came running over to save the day again. He quickly put out the fire and thankfully Hadassa and Adi were okay. We continued collecting firewood as Hadassa and Adi recovered. I was searching for bigger pieces instead of just little branches and I saw a small dead tree a little bit taller than me. I basically just pulled an entire tree out of the ground. We had to break it up into smaller pieces to put on the bonfire. We put onions and potatoes in the fire and we made noodles on Oz's little burner. We also had the deli meat that by this time had defrosted. We also bought marshmallows that we roasted on sticks. We sat around the bonfire for quite a while, massaging each other's backs and playing games and suddenly we feel drops of rain. We quickly run to get our stuff and run under a bunch of trees. Thankfully it stopped raining after a few minutes and we all just went to sleep. It was pretty cold outside and we were sleeping on the floor of a forest so we all didn't get such a good night's sleep.
Day #2
We woke up at 6:45, ate breakfast, packed our stuff up, and got ready to go. Oz was leaving us and we were all sad to go because he was such a cool guy. With Yotam in the lead, we began hiking. Day 2 is the hardest day because we had to go 26 km and it was the day with the roughest terrain. Today we were going to climb and then descend Mount Meron, the second highest mountain in Israel. We started the day off with another one of those steep uphills. We didn't stop until we got to the top of this section when we were all panting and wondering how we were going to get through the rest of the day. We walked mostly uphill for hours. This was the hardest part of the whole trip. Not only did it take a tremendous amount of physical power, it also took so much mental effort to make yourself keep going. Towards the end of the morning, Belle started complaining that her feet were hurting. Now, we had an amazing group of girls who didn't really complain and always supported each other if one was hurt. Belle wouldn't complain unless she was in a huge amount of pain so we knew it was bad. Belle had these really interesting spider shoes that had amazing grips on the bottom for mountain climbing but they had absolutely no support so she was able to feel every single rock that she stepped on.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic ground and we all took off our shoes. Belle took off her shoes and her feet were covered in blisters. We ate the same lunch that we had the day before and then we all rested. Raquel and Shevi also had a lot of blisters so they decided to pop them. They sterilized safety pins with fire and then began to pop their blisters. I was sitting next to Belle as she silently cried while popping her blisters. Thankfully, Yotam had an extra pair of sandals that he said Belle could wear. Right after lunch we were about to climb the last bit of Mount Meron. We all put our shoes back on and our bags back on and got ready to do the climb. As we were walking up the mountain we saw another huge group of kids coming down the mountain. It was really annoying having to pass by all of them because they were standing in the middle of the road but it was a great distraction. At one point they were blocking the entire path so we kinda had to walk on the sideways part of the road and as I'm about to pass someone, I slipped and fell. I was totally fine and got right back up again. We hiked up this mountain for almost an hour straight without a break until we made it to the top. It was a beautiful view at the top and you were able to see Mount Hermon with it's snow- capped summits in the distance. We began our descent and we knew that as soon as we got to the bottom we would reach our campsite. It took a few hours and we were all super exhausted but we finally made it to the campgrounds.
Our campsite was at the very top of a steep hill so for the last time that day we basically ran for five minutes up the hill to our camp site and we all just dropped our stuff and sat down because we were too exhausted to do anything else. We weren't allowed to make a fire on the camp grounds so we just used the burner to make soup with noodles and rice. Yotam's friends Noam, Miriam and Tamar joined us for the night and the next day. We all attempted to get some sleep but it was even colder than the night before. I don't get cold too easily and I was shivering under all of my layers of clothing. Our campgrounds were on the edge of the graves of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son. In the middle of the night Belle and Shevi were so cold that they decided to go inside the building where their memorials were and sleep there. They woke up at 6:30 in the morning surrounded by women praying. As quietly as possible, they picked up their sleeping bags and walked out back to the campsite.
Day #3
I woke up not too long after than, changed my shirt for the first time and ate breakfast. Miriam and Tamar bought us some candy and chocolate milk which made us all so happy. They also drove here so they offered to take anything that we didn't need in their car with them. We were so happy because this made our bags at least ten pounds lighter, plus we had eaten most of the food that we brought with us. This was thankfully the easiest day. We were going 24 km and our bags felt super light after we had been carrying 30 lbs. for the past two days. The first part of the day was walking basically on the side of a mountain following the Amud River. Once again we met up with hundreds of scouts that were walking along the same trail as us. The sentence of the day was," Excuse me, can we pass?" I must've said this sentence in Hebrew a hundred times. Our group got split up as we did a couple of times before but it was always fine because the path was clearly marked. Belle and I were walking with Noam and we thought that we were the last ones. We were walking really fast, about 4 km/hr to catch up with everyone. We spotted them off the road sitting in a cluster of trees, the only shade around. We were happy to find out that we weren't the last ones and we got to rest while waiting for the others. We were in our cluster of trees and we looked to our left and we saw a cow and it's calf staring at us from less than five feet away. They weren't doing anything except standing there. We felt like we were the ones in a cage in the zoo and they were looking at us from the outside. The rest of our group finally arrived. They told us that they had taken a wrong turn and they had to walk on a very dangerous and narrow cliff edge to get back on the path.
We ate lunch there in our little cluster of trees with the cow watching us. We had the same lunch that we had the past two days but we didn't really care because we were just hungry. We wanted to get moving quickly so we could finish before sunset. Just as we started up again, we saw a small group of boys from one of the other yeshivas in Israel who were also hiking yam l' yam. They told us that they didn't think they could make it before sunset and we basically said that they were crazy and we were going to do it. They asked if they could join our group because they didn't really have a guide and were just following a map that they had. There was four of them and they told us that three of their friends had dropped out. They were also really impressed that none of us dropped out. The last bit of walking was hard terrain but we didn't care anymore. We walked for about an hour on a very narrow path with prickly thorns on both sides. Then we walked on a path that crossed back and forth between walking on a normal path and walking on huge boulders. The last hour was great because we had the adrenaline rush to finish and it was basically flat land. The four yeshiva boys left us to go their own way at the end. The last 15 minutes we were able to see the Sea of Galilee and we knew that we were really close. When we finally got there, we dropped our bags and touched the water to say that we made it.
We took a cab to the nearby city Tiberius where we caught a bus back to Jerusalem. We all slept on the bus and when we got off we could barely move. Adi was the worst. She could only take the tiniest steps and it took us a half hour to walk what we would walk in ten minutes. When we got back to our dorms we were all so happy, but anybody in the dorms wasn't. We smelled so bad. We put our bags down in the hallway and you couldn't even go out of your room because it smelled so bad. We all took nice long showers because we did shower in three days. Then at one in the morning we had a blister popping party. It sounds gross and it was pretty gross. We sterilized some needles with alcohol and then began to pop our blisters. I won't go into much detail because it was quite disgusting and painful too.
We all woke up the next day quite achy but alive and well. We were all so happy that we accomplished this crazy hike. We were so happy and thankful to be with the people we were with and to have had Yotam as our amazing guide. Yam L' Yam was an amazing experience even though it was actually crazy and painful at times but we pulled through, helped each other and we were all so happy we did it. Comment and tell me what you think of our crazy adventure if you actually got to the bottom of reading all of this! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Thursday night and Friday we spent packing for the trip. We had huge bags in which we packed sleeping bags, some extra clothes, toiletries, three bottles of water and some other personal things. We also each had to leave room for food and other supplies that we had to take with us that everybody would use. The kitchen at school was really nice and they really helped us out by giving us a lot of food that we needed that they were getting rid of anyway because of Pesach. We took fruits and vegetables, bread and spreads to go on it, a pot and a burner and quite a few other things. I carried the onions and potatoes that would be for dinner, plastic bowls and plates, and a loaf of bread. Our bags weighed about 30 pounds! The first time we picked tried to pick up our bags, we had such a hard time getting them on our backs and then moving our feet but we eventually got the hang of it and eventually we didn't even think about it. We all made sure our shoulder straps were well adjusted but it was still hard to carry. I then figured out how to use the waist strap which takes a good percentage of the weight off your shoulder and back and transfers it to your hips.
Raquel and I spent Shabbat in Herzliya at my Israeli Chavruta's house. She had a gorgeous house and they fed us so much food. It was really great to have a nice relaxing Shabbat before our hike started. They also helped us out quite a bit. They let us put our deli meat in their freezer until we left and they gave us goodie bags filled with candy. It was a bit awkward when we asked them if we could use their nail clippers to cut our toenails but they let us do that too.
Day #1
We woke up the next morning at 5:00. We got dressed and ate breakfast and called a cab to take us to the train station. We got on a 6:15 train to Nahariya where we would be meeting the rest of the crew. Our train arrived at 8:00 and we met everybody else including our guide Yotam and his friend Oz who was coming along with us for the day. We started our hike at 9:00 and we were supposed to go 24 km on the first day. We started out following the green trail which goes along the Kziv River. About 15 minutes into the hike we come to a river that we have to cross. Yotam and Oz hop across the river on some rocks. Next, Aliza goes and as she was going she slipped a little bit and one of her shoes got soaking wet. Next, I went and as I was stepping on the rocks to get across, I lost my balance just a little bit because I wasn't used to having an extra 30 lbs on my back, and I completely fell into the river. I stood up soaking wet but unhurt because my huge bag broke my fall. Everyone else, also not wanting to fall in, took off their shoes and socks and walked across in the water. After they crossed, they looked up and saw another river just a few feet away. They hopped along bare foot and walked through the next river. We spent a few minutes after that drying off and then continued walking. A few minutes later we came to another river. At this point, nobody really cares and we all just walked through the river with our shoes and socks on. About an hour into the hike, we stopped for a water break. As we were standing around cooling off, I noticed that there was a massive bee with a huge stinger on the end on my shirt. I freaked out for a few seconds and then I realized that it might sting me so I stopped moving. Yotam ran over and tried to get it off with a stick but it kept crawling up my shirt and then went into my shirt. I almost took my shirt off but then the bee flew away. We continued walking and then we came to another river that everyone just walked through. Aliza was the last one and as we're all walking away we heard a huge splash. Aliza was the next one to fall in the water. She wasn't as lucky as I was and she got a huge bruise on her thigh. Through out the day we took so many bathroom breaks because we were drinking so much water. I think I went to the bathroom at least six times that first day. At one of our bathroom stops, Raquel pulls out the lemons that she was carrying and we all put some in our hair to see if we would get highlights from the sun. It didn't really work out too well.
We stopped for lunch at around 12:30 by a really pretty spot along the river. We took one of the tuna cans someone was carrying and smoked the tuna by putting a piece of paper towel on top of it and lighting it on fire. Unfortunately, we only brought one small container of chocolate spread which wasn't really enough and we brought two huge jars of peanut butter which we wouldn't even come close to finishing. Oz had a tiny little burner where he made tea with some nana leaves that he picked from the side of the road. We started walking again after about an hour break. We walked through such a beautiful part of Israel. Every few minutes somebody else would say, "Wow, this is so beautiful!" We eventually got to this big open space where lots of Bnei Akiva kids were sitting eating their lunch. There was a deep river with rushing water there so we tried to cross on the rocks. Shevi and Hadassa made it across the river first. The rest of us were having trouble so Shevi came back to try to help us. On her way back to help us, she slipped and fell in the water. 3 down 5 to go! As Shevi was getting up, we all look to our right because Eve tried to go a different way and she slipped and fell. 4 down 4 to go! She tried getting up and fell back down again and because the current was so strong, she kind of got carried along for a couple of feet. All of the Bnei Akiva kids were kinda just staring at us as we basically swam through this river with our huge backpacks on our backs. We continued walking until we got to a road. This was the hardest part of the day because we have to walk uphill for about 15 minutes. This might not sound like a lot but with 30 lbs on your back it felt like we were walking for an hour and a half and when we finished muscles in our leg that we didn't even know existed hurt like crazy! After the huge hill we sat under a tree for quite a while resting. Up on a hill nearby, Yotam and Oz found a shopping cart that they brought down to us. Half of us put our bags in the shopping cart and we pushed it down the road. We eventually got to a gas station where we were able to go to the bathroom in a toilet for the first time since the morning. We refilled our water bottles and went on to our campsite.
We camped in a random forest off the side of the road. We wanted to make a bonfire and set up the burner. We put all our stuff down and we began to collect firewood. Hadassa and Adi went to go set up the burner. As we were picking up branches off the floor, we hear a scream. I turned around and I saw the burner blow up. The whole thing was on fire and Yotam came running over to save the day again. He quickly put out the fire and thankfully Hadassa and Adi were okay. We continued collecting firewood as Hadassa and Adi recovered. I was searching for bigger pieces instead of just little branches and I saw a small dead tree a little bit taller than me. I basically just pulled an entire tree out of the ground. We had to break it up into smaller pieces to put on the bonfire. We put onions and potatoes in the fire and we made noodles on Oz's little burner. We also had the deli meat that by this time had defrosted. We also bought marshmallows that we roasted on sticks. We sat around the bonfire for quite a while, massaging each other's backs and playing games and suddenly we feel drops of rain. We quickly run to get our stuff and run under a bunch of trees. Thankfully it stopped raining after a few minutes and we all just went to sleep. It was pretty cold outside and we were sleeping on the floor of a forest so we all didn't get such a good night's sleep.
Day #2
We woke up at 6:45, ate breakfast, packed our stuff up, and got ready to go. Oz was leaving us and we were all sad to go because he was such a cool guy. With Yotam in the lead, we began hiking. Day 2 is the hardest day because we had to go 26 km and it was the day with the roughest terrain. Today we were going to climb and then descend Mount Meron, the second highest mountain in Israel. We started the day off with another one of those steep uphills. We didn't stop until we got to the top of this section when we were all panting and wondering how we were going to get through the rest of the day. We walked mostly uphill for hours. This was the hardest part of the whole trip. Not only did it take a tremendous amount of physical power, it also took so much mental effort to make yourself keep going. Towards the end of the morning, Belle started complaining that her feet were hurting. Now, we had an amazing group of girls who didn't really complain and always supported each other if one was hurt. Belle wouldn't complain unless she was in a huge amount of pain so we knew it was bad. Belle had these really interesting spider shoes that had amazing grips on the bottom for mountain climbing but they had absolutely no support so she was able to feel every single rock that she stepped on.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic ground and we all took off our shoes. Belle took off her shoes and her feet were covered in blisters. We ate the same lunch that we had the day before and then we all rested. Raquel and Shevi also had a lot of blisters so they decided to pop them. They sterilized safety pins with fire and then began to pop their blisters. I was sitting next to Belle as she silently cried while popping her blisters. Thankfully, Yotam had an extra pair of sandals that he said Belle could wear. Right after lunch we were about to climb the last bit of Mount Meron. We all put our shoes back on and our bags back on and got ready to do the climb. As we were walking up the mountain we saw another huge group of kids coming down the mountain. It was really annoying having to pass by all of them because they were standing in the middle of the road but it was a great distraction. At one point they were blocking the entire path so we kinda had to walk on the sideways part of the road and as I'm about to pass someone, I slipped and fell. I was totally fine and got right back up again. We hiked up this mountain for almost an hour straight without a break until we made it to the top. It was a beautiful view at the top and you were able to see Mount Hermon with it's snow- capped summits in the distance. We began our descent and we knew that as soon as we got to the bottom we would reach our campsite. It took a few hours and we were all super exhausted but we finally made it to the campgrounds.
Our campsite was at the very top of a steep hill so for the last time that day we basically ran for five minutes up the hill to our camp site and we all just dropped our stuff and sat down because we were too exhausted to do anything else. We weren't allowed to make a fire on the camp grounds so we just used the burner to make soup with noodles and rice. Yotam's friends Noam, Miriam and Tamar joined us for the night and the next day. We all attempted to get some sleep but it was even colder than the night before. I don't get cold too easily and I was shivering under all of my layers of clothing. Our campgrounds were on the edge of the graves of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son. In the middle of the night Belle and Shevi were so cold that they decided to go inside the building where their memorials were and sleep there. They woke up at 6:30 in the morning surrounded by women praying. As quietly as possible, they picked up their sleeping bags and walked out back to the campsite.
Day #3
I woke up not too long after than, changed my shirt for the first time and ate breakfast. Miriam and Tamar bought us some candy and chocolate milk which made us all so happy. They also drove here so they offered to take anything that we didn't need in their car with them. We were so happy because this made our bags at least ten pounds lighter, plus we had eaten most of the food that we brought with us. This was thankfully the easiest day. We were going 24 km and our bags felt super light after we had been carrying 30 lbs. for the past two days. The first part of the day was walking basically on the side of a mountain following the Amud River. Once again we met up with hundreds of scouts that were walking along the same trail as us. The sentence of the day was," Excuse me, can we pass?" I must've said this sentence in Hebrew a hundred times. Our group got split up as we did a couple of times before but it was always fine because the path was clearly marked. Belle and I were walking with Noam and we thought that we were the last ones. We were walking really fast, about 4 km/hr to catch up with everyone. We spotted them off the road sitting in a cluster of trees, the only shade around. We were happy to find out that we weren't the last ones and we got to rest while waiting for the others. We were in our cluster of trees and we looked to our left and we saw a cow and it's calf staring at us from less than five feet away. They weren't doing anything except standing there. We felt like we were the ones in a cage in the zoo and they were looking at us from the outside. The rest of our group finally arrived. They told us that they had taken a wrong turn and they had to walk on a very dangerous and narrow cliff edge to get back on the path.
We ate lunch there in our little cluster of trees with the cow watching us. We had the same lunch that we had the past two days but we didn't really care because we were just hungry. We wanted to get moving quickly so we could finish before sunset. Just as we started up again, we saw a small group of boys from one of the other yeshivas in Israel who were also hiking yam l' yam. They told us that they didn't think they could make it before sunset and we basically said that they were crazy and we were going to do it. They asked if they could join our group because they didn't really have a guide and were just following a map that they had. There was four of them and they told us that three of their friends had dropped out. They were also really impressed that none of us dropped out. The last bit of walking was hard terrain but we didn't care anymore. We walked for about an hour on a very narrow path with prickly thorns on both sides. Then we walked on a path that crossed back and forth between walking on a normal path and walking on huge boulders. The last hour was great because we had the adrenaline rush to finish and it was basically flat land. The four yeshiva boys left us to go their own way at the end. The last 15 minutes we were able to see the Sea of Galilee and we knew that we were really close. When we finally got there, we dropped our bags and touched the water to say that we made it.
We took a cab to the nearby city Tiberius where we caught a bus back to Jerusalem. We all slept on the bus and when we got off we could barely move. Adi was the worst. She could only take the tiniest steps and it took us a half hour to walk what we would walk in ten minutes. When we got back to our dorms we were all so happy, but anybody in the dorms wasn't. We smelled so bad. We put our bags down in the hallway and you couldn't even go out of your room because it smelled so bad. We all took nice long showers because we did shower in three days. Then at one in the morning we had a blister popping party. It sounds gross and it was pretty gross. We sterilized some needles with alcohol and then began to pop our blisters. I won't go into much detail because it was quite disgusting and painful too.
We all woke up the next day quite achy but alive and well. We were all so happy that we accomplished this crazy hike. We were so happy and thankful to be with the people we were with and to have had Yotam as our amazing guide. Yam L' Yam was an amazing experience even though it was actually crazy and painful at times but we pulled through, helped each other and we were all so happy we did it. Comment and tell me what you think of our crazy adventure if you actually got to the bottom of reading all of this! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Shabbat in Katamon!
For quite a few months Marilyn and Joe have been trying to get in contact with me so I could come to their house for a Shabbat. Who are these people, you might ask. Well to be precise, Marilyn is my step- grandmother's first cousin once removed and Joe is her husband. My friend Shana and I went to their house in Katamon not really knowing what to expect. We walk into a really nice looking, very American house. Marilyn and Joe introduce themselves and then and then they began to show us pictures of all their grandchildren which they call g-children or kids once removed. Basically, they're just a really funny and entertaining elderly couple with thick New York accents. On Friday night we went to a really interesting shul where there was lots of singing but the coolest part was that it was filled with people only a few years older than us. For dinner, Marilyn and Joe had lots of guests over. They had an elderly couple, a couple who moved to Israel from England, and another couple- she was Israeli and he was Hungarian, and their son who just went into the army. The food was really good and really American. We found out that Marilyn and Joe don't actually live in this house full time. They actually only live there about half the time and the other half they live in Teaneck, New Jersey. They fly back and forth about five times a year. The next day we woke up early to go to this very American shul. The most American thing about it was how late we ended. Afterwards, we had a quiet lunch of left-overs from the night before and some really good cake. Shana and I went back to our room where we read for a little bit and then fell asleep. About four hours later, Marilyn woke us up telling us that Shabbat was almost over.
The bus ride home was really quick and it dropped us off really close to where we lived. I didn't do much tonight, I just had a chilled out night with my roommates. They decided that they wanted to buy a little stove top cooker thing so they could make food whenever they wanted. I decided to take control of the frying pan and I made all the food. We roasted apples and made caramelized bananas. Then I fried up some peppers and onions. It was lots of fun especially since I miss cooking at home. Hear that mom! I'll cook for you when I get home! 'Till then... Shalom V'lehitarot!
The bus ride home was really quick and it dropped us off really close to where we lived. I didn't do much tonight, I just had a chilled out night with my roommates. They decided that they wanted to buy a little stove top cooker thing so they could make food whenever they wanted. I decided to take control of the frying pan and I made all the food. We roasted apples and made caramelized bananas. Then I fried up some peppers and onions. It was lots of fun especially since I miss cooking at home. Hear that mom! I'll cook for you when I get home! 'Till then... Shalom V'lehitarot!
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
New Classes and New Chavrutas!
The semesters in school are divided up quite interestingly because you could divide them up in many ways. You can divide them up in thirds based on our two major vacations during the holidays of Succot and Pesach. You can divide them up into quarters of the whole year based on the "old" MTA being here (in relation to us), the MTA not being here, the "new" MTA, and the MTA have a period of time without us. You could also divide up the time in halves by first semester and second semester, similar to the periods of time relating to the MTA. First semester starts when we get there and second semester starts when the "new" MTA arrive. At the start of second semester, you meet new people, get closer to other people that you didn't speak to so much before and you can switch around some classes.
The first thing I switched was on Sunday, last class, I switched out of the laws of Shabbat. Instead, I now take the laws of Shabbat during my first afternoon class on Thursday, but now I take it in Hebrew and with Rav Shames instead of Rav Berg. It's more challenging in Hebrew and even though Rav Berg is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, his class is one of the slowest. Rav Shames's class is much more interesting and it goes more into detail. The second switch that I made on Sunday was that originally on Sunday night I would have a chavruta with Avigayil and then a class with Rav Horn about Topics in the Mishneh Torah. Instead, I first take Rav Horn's Topics in Jewish Philosophy Class and then I have my chavruta with Avigayil.
I also switched a couple of classes on Monday. After lunch we have this really cool class called Siyurim. In this class Rav Shames and Rav Sussman take us on tours all over Jerusalem. We visit all sorts of museums and we learn so many things about the place where we live. Rav Shames and Rav Sussman are also two really funny people especially when they're together. The constantly make fun of eachother and they often do a comedy act for us while explaining the story of some boring artifact from thousands of years ago. The next class I would usually take was Ta'amei Hamikra, but that class was a one semester class. I now take Strive for Truth with Rav Milston. This is a book by Rav Dessler that talks about living your life in the truest way possible. Rav Milston is a bit radical so we all know to be careful of some of the things he says, but he does often say many things that are really interesting. He also tells lots of stories, funny ones and serious ones that really help us learn a lot.
I still have some of my old chavrutas, some I switched, and I have a couple of new ones too. Old and new chavrutas are all awesome!http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/12/cookies-and-best-chavrutas-ever.html
Rav Yonatan: Sunday 2:00- 3:00
Most girls have a chavruta with one of the teachers. I'm in Rav Yonatan Chumash BeIyun and Confronting Modernity classes which are both awesome classes. We're learning the books of Ezra and Nechemia from the bible but sometimes we don't learn and we just talk about whatever. Rav Yonatan is an amazing person to talk to and he really knows so much about the bible and other things about religion.
Rachelle and Ilana: Sundays and Wednesdays Machshava
I had left the group of four and joined these two because I was trying out a different learning style that I thought would work better for me. The three of us work really well together and I really enjoy learning with them. The three girls that I left soon disbanded. Giselle and Julia left and Arney joined together with another one of my friends, Shana.
Annie: TBD
Joelle left our Gemara Bekiut class so I now have a new chavruta. We don't really have an official time to go over what we learned but when we get the chance to do it it works really well. Also, sometimes when Annie isn't around, my friend Alona and I work together.
Nofar- Wednesday 8:15-9:00
The Overseas Program sometimes teams up with the Israeli program at Harova. Twice a week most of us have a chavruta with an Israeli. A couple of the Israelis speak perfect English, some speak a little English, some only understand English, and some know no English at all. My chavruta understand a little bit of English and she can't really speak it so we talk in Hebrew the whole time. I love Nofar because she is so nice and we became really good friends. I also love how we only talk Hebrew because it really helps me practice the language. At the beginning of every chavruta we usually talk for a little bit about how our weeks were and we tell eachother stories before we start learning. We learn about the life of Rav Tzvi Yehuda Hakohen Kook, son of the first chief Rabbi of Israel. He was a fascinating person and we love reading stories about things that he did.
Sarah- Thursday 8:00-8:30
We haven't technically started yet but we have unofficially learned together a couple of times. Sarah is awesome and super cool to talk to. When we learn together it works out really well because we are both interested in learning about similar things so we both get a lot out of it.
All my classes and chavrutas are super duper awesome! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Purim!
Wednesday was Ta'anit Esther, the fast that commemorates the fast that the Jews fasted in Shushan during the story of Purim. Since we were fasting, we didn't have a regular day of learning. In the morning we had a few elective classes and then we had the afternoon off. I spent some time in the Bet Midrash hanging out with my friends Sarah, Chani, and Sharona. We learned some stuff about the Megillah and then we learned about different blessings on food. After that I took a nap for a couple of hours until the fast was over. Over the course of a few days we had a sort of secret santa game. Each person had their person that they were supposed to give mishloach manot to on Purim. Before Purim we were supposed to give them a hint to who we were and a little gift with it. I had Yael and since she likes coffee, I bought her coffee to break the fast and I wrote a little note with some hints to who I was. The person who had me was Gabrielle and her note was really creative and it took me a little while but in the end I figured out that it was her.
In most parts of the world and Israel, Purim starts the night after Ta'anit Esther and continues the next day but in Jerusalem, it is a day later. Wednesday night wasn't Purim for us in Jerusalem but it was in most of the rest of the country. That night, half the girls went to Rav Shames's house and half of us went to Rav Milston. I went to Rav Milston and we just hung out and sang songs. It's nice to go meet teachers in their home towns because you really get to know them a little bit better.
Thursday wasn't Purim for us but most of us dressed up anyway. I dressed up like a clown which was easy enough for me since I do medical clowning every Tuesday. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/11/kedma-medical-clowns.html We all went to different volunteering places. I went to a children's home called Aleh . Aleh is a home for very low functioning children ages 3 months- 30 years old. These kids are all in wheel chairs, they don't speak, and only some of them respond to speech or touch. It was similar to medical clowning but much harder. First we had a dance party where they put on music and we would take their hands and dance with them or move their wheel chairs to the beat of the music. Then we did an art project with them. We would put stickers on their fingers and then move their hand so they would put the sticker on the paper. It was hard work but really worth it when we got one of them to smile or give some kind of response.
After we finished volunteering, we ate lunch, and then I began to make my main Purim costume. Basically, in Jerusalem they just built a light rail train. We use it a lot because it's quite convenient for us but it isn't very helpful for most people. Anyway, the place that people from Harova go the most is the Central Bust Station which is five stops away from our stop. At each stop, there is an automatic announcer that announces the stop in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. Most Harova girls know these six stops in all three languages in the voice of the announcer. The funniest one is the stop Ha- davidka because it's the same in all three languages so it just says the same thing three times. Anyway, so I was the Ha-davidka train stop. I had to go through a lot of explanation to explain that, but everyone in Jerusalem who saw me thought it was very funny and I got lots of funny comments from random people on the street.
That night we had megillah reading and then the event everyone had been preparing for, the wedding. Let me explain about the wedding. On Monday, they announced to us that Purim night we will be having a mock wedding where every girl will be playing a different character. They gave out invitations to each person that said what they were playing. There was the bride and groom and their parents and siblings and grandparents and aunts and uncles. People were waiters, bridesmaids, wedding crashers, and a bunch of other fun stuff. I was the groom and the bride was my friend Gila. Everyone dressed up for their part on Purim night and after megillah reading we had the wedding. We actually played out the whole wedding. It was really funny seeing everyone dressed up to go to the wedding. The wedding ended pretty late and I was exhausted afterwards, after all I had just gotten married.
The next morning I put on my Ha- Davidka costume and went to megillah reading. Afterwards, I gave mishloach manot to Yael and then took lots of pictures with everyone in their costumes. Since it was only like 9:30 in the morning we had breakfast, but it was an amazing breakfast. They gave us pancakes, french toast, bagels, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Then we watched a really funny video that my friend Jane made and by then it was almost time for Shabbat. I went to my Rabbi, Rav Yonatan for Shabbat. He has five kids- four boys and a girl, and he has a foster child, a 3 year old girl. They are such a nice family and I had a really good time. After Shabbat, I met up with one of my rabbis from high school. It was really nice to see a familiar face from Brooklyn, especially, one of my high school teachers. It's been one really crazy week. Shalom V'lehitraot!
In most parts of the world and Israel, Purim starts the night after Ta'anit Esther and continues the next day but in Jerusalem, it is a day later. Wednesday night wasn't Purim for us in Jerusalem but it was in most of the rest of the country. That night, half the girls went to Rav Shames's house and half of us went to Rav Milston. I went to Rav Milston and we just hung out and sang songs. It's nice to go meet teachers in their home towns because you really get to know them a little bit better.
Thursday wasn't Purim for us but most of us dressed up anyway. I dressed up like a clown which was easy enough for me since I do medical clowning every Tuesday. http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/11/kedma-medical-clowns.html We all went to different volunteering places. I went to a children's home called Aleh . Aleh is a home for very low functioning children ages 3 months- 30 years old. These kids are all in wheel chairs, they don't speak, and only some of them respond to speech or touch. It was similar to medical clowning but much harder. First we had a dance party where they put on music and we would take their hands and dance with them or move their wheel chairs to the beat of the music. Then we did an art project with them. We would put stickers on their fingers and then move their hand so they would put the sticker on the paper. It was hard work but really worth it when we got one of them to smile or give some kind of response.
After we finished volunteering, we ate lunch, and then I began to make my main Purim costume. Basically, in Jerusalem they just built a light rail train. We use it a lot because it's quite convenient for us but it isn't very helpful for most people. Anyway, the place that people from Harova go the most is the Central Bust Station which is five stops away from our stop. At each stop, there is an automatic announcer that announces the stop in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. Most Harova girls know these six stops in all three languages in the voice of the announcer. The funniest one is the stop Ha- davidka because it's the same in all three languages so it just says the same thing three times. Anyway, so I was the Ha-davidka train stop. I had to go through a lot of explanation to explain that, but everyone in Jerusalem who saw me thought it was very funny and I got lots of funny comments from random people on the street.
That night we had megillah reading and then the event everyone had been preparing for, the wedding. Let me explain about the wedding. On Monday, they announced to us that Purim night we will be having a mock wedding where every girl will be playing a different character. They gave out invitations to each person that said what they were playing. There was the bride and groom and their parents and siblings and grandparents and aunts and uncles. People were waiters, bridesmaids, wedding crashers, and a bunch of other fun stuff. I was the groom and the bride was my friend Gila. Everyone dressed up for their part on Purim night and after megillah reading we had the wedding. We actually played out the whole wedding. It was really funny seeing everyone dressed up to go to the wedding. The wedding ended pretty late and I was exhausted afterwards, after all I had just gotten married.
The next morning I put on my Ha- Davidka costume and went to megillah reading. Afterwards, I gave mishloach manot to Yael and then took lots of pictures with everyone in their costumes. Since it was only like 9:30 in the morning we had breakfast, but it was an amazing breakfast. They gave us pancakes, french toast, bagels, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Then we watched a really funny video that my friend Jane made and by then it was almost time for Shabbat. I went to my Rabbi, Rav Yonatan for Shabbat. He has five kids- four boys and a girl, and he has a foster child, a 3 year old girl. They are such a nice family and I had a really good time. After Shabbat, I met up with one of my rabbis from high school. It was really nice to see a familiar face from Brooklyn, especially, one of my high school teachers. It's been one really crazy week. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Zeminar Part 4
The Gush Etzion Bloc
Our first stop was at the Kfar Etzion Sound and Light Show. It was basically a movie telling us about the history of the Etzion Bloc. Afterwards we took a stroll on path of our forefathers. We walked on the path that Abraham and Isaac walked, the path that David walked, and the path that many other Jews walked to get to the temple. We saw the hills where different ancient battles took place. Battles of the Maccabees (not to be confused with Maccabeats) and battles against Herod's Roman armies. On the path we saw an ancient mikveh that people used to spiritually cleanse themselves before going to the holy temple. We walked from Kfar Etzion to Ne've Daniel. In Ne've Daniel there is a famous bakery where everyone bought some pastries to munch on. Once we were in Ne've Daniel, we went to a shul called the box shul, because it looked like a box, and there we had someone speak to us about the history of Ne've Daniel. He told us about all the wars that took place there and how people would defend it until they died.
The last thing that we did is we went to Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem. There we learned about the six day war in 1967 and the capture of Jerusalem. Before 1967, only half of Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jews, and one of the parts that was not in their hands was the Old City where I live today. We saw how the Jews conquered the territory from the Jordanians and the land that they conquered continued growing. Ammunition Hill was a specifically harsh battle because the soldiers fighting there were unfamiliar with the area and there were many places for the Jordanians to hide. After losing many men, they finally won the battle. That night was our night off so I went out for dinner with my friend from camp, Michal. We haven't seen each other for a couple of months so it was really good to just catch up.
Politics
The Israeli government is different then all other governments because what happens in Israel influences Jews all around the world. If the government tells someone to do something against religion and it isn't in a life or death situation, they don't have to obey. If it is any other kind of order, they are obligated to do what they are told. The Knesst is the Israeli parliament. There is only one house and there are 120 members. There are many differnt parties and each year there are a different number of parties in the Knesset.
The biggest issue that people vote on is security. The left wing parties are willing to do anything for peace while the right wing parties still want peace but they have a firmer, stricter stand.
Meretz- the most left wing party (3 seats)
Labor Party- left wing founded by David Ben Gurion (8 seats)
Independance- a deviation from the labor party (5 seats)
Kadima- this middle party is the biggest party today (28 seats)
Likud- a right wing party led by Binyamin Netanyahu (27 seats)
National Untion- the most right wing party (4 seats)
Some parties have their focus mainly on religion because it's a major concern in regards to a Jewish state.
United Torah Judaism- ultraorthodox Ashkenazi (5 seats)
SHAS- ultra orthodox Sefardi led by Rav Ovadia Yosef (11 seats)
Jewish Home- modern orthodox (3 seats)
There are also always a couple of random parties that apply only to specific groups of people.
Arab Parties- Arabs make up more than 20% of the population (11 seats)
Yisrael Beitenu- represents Russian Jews (15 seats)
(The Green Leaf Party who is trying to legalize marijuana tried to join with the Holocaust Survivors party so they could get seats in the Knesset but they didn't get enough votes)
Mount Herzl
The last part of the Zionist Seminar was visiting the famous military cemetery. Graves of all the members of the army who fell in battle are here. Also here are the graves of prime ministers, presidents, and speakers of the knesset. There are also many memorials for people who aren't buried here but deserve to be remembered. There is the memorial for soldiers who fought in battles before the IDF was established. There is the memorial for soldiers who fought in the old city, the youngest one being only ten years old. There is also a memorial for all victims of terror attacks. One of the biggest memorials was for the soldiers whose grave sites are unknown. Tomorrow they are holding a ceremony for these soldiers. The significance of this date is that it is the date the Moses passed away and just like these soldiers, we do not know where her was buried.
We closed Zeminar with seeing all of these memorials of things that we have learned about over the past week or so. I learned so much on the Zeminar and it really helped me greater appreciate the country that we Jews have to live in. I hope you too have learned a lot from all I have told you. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Our first stop was at the Kfar Etzion Sound and Light Show. It was basically a movie telling us about the history of the Etzion Bloc. Afterwards we took a stroll on path of our forefathers. We walked on the path that Abraham and Isaac walked, the path that David walked, and the path that many other Jews walked to get to the temple. We saw the hills where different ancient battles took place. Battles of the Maccabees (not to be confused with Maccabeats) and battles against Herod's Roman armies. On the path we saw an ancient mikveh that people used to spiritually cleanse themselves before going to the holy temple. We walked from Kfar Etzion to Ne've Daniel. In Ne've Daniel there is a famous bakery where everyone bought some pastries to munch on. Once we were in Ne've Daniel, we went to a shul called the box shul, because it looked like a box, and there we had someone speak to us about the history of Ne've Daniel. He told us about all the wars that took place there and how people would defend it until they died.
The last thing that we did is we went to Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem. There we learned about the six day war in 1967 and the capture of Jerusalem. Before 1967, only half of Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jews, and one of the parts that was not in their hands was the Old City where I live today. We saw how the Jews conquered the territory from the Jordanians and the land that they conquered continued growing. Ammunition Hill was a specifically harsh battle because the soldiers fighting there were unfamiliar with the area and there were many places for the Jordanians to hide. After losing many men, they finally won the battle. That night was our night off so I went out for dinner with my friend from camp, Michal. We haven't seen each other for a couple of months so it was really good to just catch up.
Politics
The Israeli government is different then all other governments because what happens in Israel influences Jews all around the world. If the government tells someone to do something against religion and it isn't in a life or death situation, they don't have to obey. If it is any other kind of order, they are obligated to do what they are told. The Knesst is the Israeli parliament. There is only one house and there are 120 members. There are many differnt parties and each year there are a different number of parties in the Knesset.
The biggest issue that people vote on is security. The left wing parties are willing to do anything for peace while the right wing parties still want peace but they have a firmer, stricter stand.
Meretz- the most left wing party (3 seats)
Labor Party- left wing founded by David Ben Gurion (8 seats)
Independance- a deviation from the labor party (5 seats)
Kadima- this middle party is the biggest party today (28 seats)
Likud- a right wing party led by Binyamin Netanyahu (27 seats)
National Untion- the most right wing party (4 seats)
Some parties have their focus mainly on religion because it's a major concern in regards to a Jewish state.
United Torah Judaism- ultraorthodox Ashkenazi (5 seats)
SHAS- ultra orthodox Sefardi led by Rav Ovadia Yosef (11 seats)
Jewish Home- modern orthodox (3 seats)
There are also always a couple of random parties that apply only to specific groups of people.
Arab Parties- Arabs make up more than 20% of the population (11 seats)
Yisrael Beitenu- represents Russian Jews (15 seats)
(The Green Leaf Party who is trying to legalize marijuana tried to join with the Holocaust Survivors party so they could get seats in the Knesset but they didn't get enough votes)
Mount Herzl
The last part of the Zionist Seminar was visiting the famous military cemetery. Graves of all the members of the army who fell in battle are here. Also here are the graves of prime ministers, presidents, and speakers of the knesset. There are also many memorials for people who aren't buried here but deserve to be remembered. There is the memorial for soldiers who fought in battles before the IDF was established. There is the memorial for soldiers who fought in the old city, the youngest one being only ten years old. There is also a memorial for all victims of terror attacks. One of the biggest memorials was for the soldiers whose grave sites are unknown. Tomorrow they are holding a ceremony for these soldiers. The significance of this date is that it is the date the Moses passed away and just like these soldiers, we do not know where her was buried.
We closed Zeminar with seeing all of these memorials of things that we have learned about over the past week or so. I learned so much on the Zeminar and it really helped me greater appreciate the country that we Jews have to live in. I hope you too have learned a lot from all I have told you. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Zeminar Part 3
Shabbat in Elazar
Elazar is one of the settlements in the Gush area of Israel. One of our Rabbis, Rav Yonatan organized most of the Shabbat. We got to Elazar pretty late on Friday afternoon where Rav Yonatan met us at the place where we would be eating. We helped set up the dining room and then he told us where we would be staying. I was staying in a house with two of my South African friends, Tali and Tamar, and Steph who is from Australia. We got to our host's house and got settled in. About 15 minutes before Shabbat started, we all sat down on the couch to relax and eat some cake.
We all went to shul and then went to eat dinner. Dinner wasn't so great because it was just food from our school but it was real nice to be sitting all together and getting to know Rav Yonatan's family. After dinner we played some games and sang some songs and by then we were all exhausted so we went to sleep.
We woke up a little bit late in the morning and lunch is usually really early. Lunch was amazing because our hostess is a caterer so she made a great lunch with yummy desserts. Our host was the one who mostly spoke to us during the meal. He spoke to us about his views on certain issues in Judaism and about Israel which were quite radical. They were very interesting to listen to and to try to question, but at the end of the day they didn't all make sense. After lunch, we just chilled out in our room for a couple of hours talking about our different cultures and backgrounds and views on life.
Towards the middle of the afternoon, we met up with Rav Yonatan for a tour of Elazar. He took us to the top of the highest hill and we had a really cool view. We were able to see all of the different settlements all around us like Ne've Daniel, Migdal Oz, Alon Shvut, and Efrat. I was supposed to help set up for the next meal, but by the time I got there they were already finished. We then went to shul where it was really nice to see all the kids from the local youth movement gathered there and joining in the praying. Our last meal was a light meal where I said a dvar torah, we sang a little bit, and before we knew it, Shabbat was over. I had a really great time in Elazar and I recommend it as a great place to visit.
Aliyah Day
Did you know that moving to Israel is a commandment from the Torah?
Did you know that there is no greater sign of the coming of the times of Messiah than people gathering from all over the world to live in Israel?
Did you know that our religion started with god promising our forefathers that their children will receive the land of Israel to live in?
Our first speaker was from Nefesh B'Nefesh, an organization that helps Jews from North America and England move to Israel. He spoke about his own personal aliyah story and then he told us about how the organization got started. Our next speaker spoke about the history of aliyah and how people in Israel react to it. The Law of Return states that every Jew has a right to immigrate to Israel. We looked at the Israeli Declaration of Independence where it talks about our right to be here in the land of Israel. Then we saw some clips from a movie called Salach Shabati which is a satire about people who moved to Israel in the early years of the country. People in Israel love aliyah, but they always question people who make aliyah because they feel that they need to prove that they are tough enough to live in the State of Israel. Next, we had a panel of a few of our teachers talking about why they made aliyah.
During the second half of the day we learned about Soviet Jewry and their mass emigration to Israel. Before the Russian Revolution, Tzars ruled the country and they did whatever they wanted. After the revolution, there was Marxism which said that everybody had the same laws. They tried to get rid of all religion and they killed many people, mostly Jews, but Christians too. Many Jews, called Refusnicks, tried to get out of Russia but the government refused to give them visas. Finally, in 1990, the Iron Curtain fell and everyone was free to move wherever they wanted. A woman from Denver, Colorado came to speak to us about how it affected Jews in America. She said that she was part of a volunteer organization that would do as much as they could to get the Jews out of Russia, and if they couldn't get them out then at least improve their conditions in Russia or influence the American government to do something about the injustice. In 1990, they eventually saw the results of their hard work when all of the Jews were released. Lastly, we heard the story of Rav Yosef Mendelevich. When he lived in Russia, he wasn't allowed to learn Hebrew or anything about Judaism. He wanted to move to Israel because he knew that was the only place to be to continue the Jewish people. Him and a few friends made a plan to fly on a plane that would go near the Russian border, then hi-jack it and fly it over the border into safer territory. Him and his friends were arrested before they even got on the plane and he was put in solitary confinement because he wouldn't confess to making this plan. He wasn't afraid of the secret police so they thought he was crazy so they put him in a mental institution. He was declared sane and came out of the mental institution where he was threatened with the death penalty. He began to practice the little Judaism that he knew in jail. He had a trial and was sentenced to life in prison. People all over the world heard about this decision and they protested it. In the end, the sentence went down to 12 years in prison. During his time in prison, he heard that some of his family and friends got the opportunity to go to Israel. He was sent to a work camp in Siberia where he continued to try to stay religious. After 11 years, they took him out of prison because he was so fanatical about his Judaism that they just couldn't deal with him anymore.
Mom, Dad, I'm making aliyah and moving to Israel! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Elazar is one of the settlements in the Gush area of Israel. One of our Rabbis, Rav Yonatan organized most of the Shabbat. We got to Elazar pretty late on Friday afternoon where Rav Yonatan met us at the place where we would be eating. We helped set up the dining room and then he told us where we would be staying. I was staying in a house with two of my South African friends, Tali and Tamar, and Steph who is from Australia. We got to our host's house and got settled in. About 15 minutes before Shabbat started, we all sat down on the couch to relax and eat some cake.
We all went to shul and then went to eat dinner. Dinner wasn't so great because it was just food from our school but it was real nice to be sitting all together and getting to know Rav Yonatan's family. After dinner we played some games and sang some songs and by then we were all exhausted so we went to sleep.
We woke up a little bit late in the morning and lunch is usually really early. Lunch was amazing because our hostess is a caterer so she made a great lunch with yummy desserts. Our host was the one who mostly spoke to us during the meal. He spoke to us about his views on certain issues in Judaism and about Israel which were quite radical. They were very interesting to listen to and to try to question, but at the end of the day they didn't all make sense. After lunch, we just chilled out in our room for a couple of hours talking about our different cultures and backgrounds and views on life.
Towards the middle of the afternoon, we met up with Rav Yonatan for a tour of Elazar. He took us to the top of the highest hill and we had a really cool view. We were able to see all of the different settlements all around us like Ne've Daniel, Migdal Oz, Alon Shvut, and Efrat. I was supposed to help set up for the next meal, but by the time I got there they were already finished. We then went to shul where it was really nice to see all the kids from the local youth movement gathered there and joining in the praying. Our last meal was a light meal where I said a dvar torah, we sang a little bit, and before we knew it, Shabbat was over. I had a really great time in Elazar and I recommend it as a great place to visit.
Aliyah Day
Did you know that moving to Israel is a commandment from the Torah?
Did you know that there is no greater sign of the coming of the times of Messiah than people gathering from all over the world to live in Israel?
Did you know that our religion started with god promising our forefathers that their children will receive the land of Israel to live in?
Our first speaker was from Nefesh B'Nefesh, an organization that helps Jews from North America and England move to Israel. He spoke about his own personal aliyah story and then he told us about how the organization got started. Our next speaker spoke about the history of aliyah and how people in Israel react to it. The Law of Return states that every Jew has a right to immigrate to Israel. We looked at the Israeli Declaration of Independence where it talks about our right to be here in the land of Israel. Then we saw some clips from a movie called Salach Shabati which is a satire about people who moved to Israel in the early years of the country. People in Israel love aliyah, but they always question people who make aliyah because they feel that they need to prove that they are tough enough to live in the State of Israel. Next, we had a panel of a few of our teachers talking about why they made aliyah.
During the second half of the day we learned about Soviet Jewry and their mass emigration to Israel. Before the Russian Revolution, Tzars ruled the country and they did whatever they wanted. After the revolution, there was Marxism which said that everybody had the same laws. They tried to get rid of all religion and they killed many people, mostly Jews, but Christians too. Many Jews, called Refusnicks, tried to get out of Russia but the government refused to give them visas. Finally, in 1990, the Iron Curtain fell and everyone was free to move wherever they wanted. A woman from Denver, Colorado came to speak to us about how it affected Jews in America. She said that she was part of a volunteer organization that would do as much as they could to get the Jews out of Russia, and if they couldn't get them out then at least improve their conditions in Russia or influence the American government to do something about the injustice. In 1990, they eventually saw the results of their hard work when all of the Jews were released. Lastly, we heard the story of Rav Yosef Mendelevich. When he lived in Russia, he wasn't allowed to learn Hebrew or anything about Judaism. He wanted to move to Israel because he knew that was the only place to be to continue the Jewish people. Him and a few friends made a plan to fly on a plane that would go near the Russian border, then hi-jack it and fly it over the border into safer territory. Him and his friends were arrested before they even got on the plane and he was put in solitary confinement because he wouldn't confess to making this plan. He wasn't afraid of the secret police so they thought he was crazy so they put him in a mental institution. He was declared sane and came out of the mental institution where he was threatened with the death penalty. He began to practice the little Judaism that he knew in jail. He had a trial and was sentenced to life in prison. People all over the world heard about this decision and they protested it. In the end, the sentence went down to 12 years in prison. During his time in prison, he heard that some of his family and friends got the opportunity to go to Israel. He was sent to a work camp in Siberia where he continued to try to stay religious. After 11 years, they took him out of prison because he was so fanatical about his Judaism that they just couldn't deal with him anymore.
Mom, Dad, I'm making aliyah and moving to Israel! Shalom V'lehitraot!
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Zeminar Part 2
I forgot to mention in Part 1 that me and my friend Shira were heads of the food committee so we got to make the menu. So far we've gotten pancakes for breakfast one morning and french toast for one morning. We tried out a couple of new things, some of which worked, and some didn't, for example the Chinese food night didn't really work out. In this section of the Zeminar we spent some time up north.
Our first stop of the day was Atlit a prison for Jews in Israel. During the British Mandate, the British published the white papers which only let 15,000 Jews come to Israel in a year. Many Jews came illegally and when the British caught them, they were put in prisons. This camp held 3,000 people where men and women were separated but were able to visit each other. Many of the people in these camps were Holocaust survivors and after all the horrors that they just went through, here they were in another camp. This camp wasn't as bad because they got three meals a day and each person had their own bed, but it certainly wasn't what they were expecting when they made the decision to come to Israel, their homeland.
Next we went to the city of Aco. First we went to the Aco Jail for members of the underground movements who were caught. Many escape attempts were made. One of the major ones was that the people in the jail knew that the jail was built on top of a Turkish city so they thought that they could dig down to it and escape that way. They soon found out that under all the rock was sand and they weren't able to dig a tunnel through sand. Another time, a man by the name of Eitan Livni noticed that by the gas room where he worked was the roof of a Turkish bathhouse. He smuggled letters in the food and was able to smuggle in explosives. 41 people were able to escape through one of the windows. They escaped into two trucks but unfortunately, only one of the trucks was able to successfully escape and get to the nearby city of Haifa. In this jail, nine men were executed by hanging. Each of them went to his death singing Hatikva, the Israeli anthem of hope.
Towards the end of the day, we walked through the Arab market in the old city of Aco until we came to the shul of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzato author of "The Way of God" and "Path of the Just." We learned a little bit about his history and the history of the shul and then we went to have dinner. Dinner was in a nearby kibbutz. This dinner was one of the successful ones that we planned. For the first time since we got to Israel we had a BBQ! There was chicken, hot dogs, and hamburgers and it tasted so good.
That night we slept in a pretty nice hotel in Tiberias. We woke up early in the morning to go down to the Sea of Galilee. It was way too cold to even touch the water but it was really nice to watch the waves gently lapping at the shore.
Our first stop of the day was on top of one of the mountains in the Golan Heights. This was one of the spots that Syrians used to shoot at Israelis in the valley below. Eli Cohen was a spy in Syria for the Israelis. He found this spot among many others that Syrians used as hideouts under Eucalyptus trees. He would report back all that he found to the Israelis. In 1965 during one of his transmissions to the Israelis, the Syrians caught him and he was hanged in the public square.
Our next stop was at an Israeli bunker on top of the mountain called Ben Tal. This was one of the first bunkers to see the Syrians advancing at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The stop right after that one was at a movie theater where we saw a video about Tank No. 77 fighting during the Yom Kippur War. Our next stop was at a beautiful memorial for the 72 soldiers killed in the helicopter crash in 1997. The memorial had a pool in the middle with the names of all the soldiers and paths extending from the pool like propellers. There were large rocks set up on plots of grass as a memorial surrounded by beautiful budding red flowers.
The last stop of the day was in Tel Hai. Tel Hai was one of four cities in the Golan Heights that was settled by Jews before the State of Israel was established. This specific city was mainly used for agriculture. After WWI this territory became part of the French Mandate who didn't care as much as the British about keeping the peace. These settlers were constantly attacked by Arab Bedouins. After they'd been having these troubles for quite a while, a man named Joseph Trumpeldor came to help them out. Two months after he came, the battle of Tel Hai broke out. 300 Arabs came to attack this little city of farmers. The farmers fought as best as they could but they knew that they couldn't defend themselves, especially after their leader, Trumpeldor had fallen. They decided to burn down the city and run away. Today, we remember their valiant efforts to fight for what was theirs because these Jews were the first fighters for Israel. This was the city where the Haganah was established.
It was a four hour drive home and I slept most of the way and of course there were bagels waiting for us to eat them for dinner. Shalom V'lehitraot!
Our first stop of the day was Atlit a prison for Jews in Israel. During the British Mandate, the British published the white papers which only let 15,000 Jews come to Israel in a year. Many Jews came illegally and when the British caught them, they were put in prisons. This camp held 3,000 people where men and women were separated but were able to visit each other. Many of the people in these camps were Holocaust survivors and after all the horrors that they just went through, here they were in another camp. This camp wasn't as bad because they got three meals a day and each person had their own bed, but it certainly wasn't what they were expecting when they made the decision to come to Israel, their homeland.
Next we went to the city of Aco. First we went to the Aco Jail for members of the underground movements who were caught. Many escape attempts were made. One of the major ones was that the people in the jail knew that the jail was built on top of a Turkish city so they thought that they could dig down to it and escape that way. They soon found out that under all the rock was sand and they weren't able to dig a tunnel through sand. Another time, a man by the name of Eitan Livni noticed that by the gas room where he worked was the roof of a Turkish bathhouse. He smuggled letters in the food and was able to smuggle in explosives. 41 people were able to escape through one of the windows. They escaped into two trucks but unfortunately, only one of the trucks was able to successfully escape and get to the nearby city of Haifa. In this jail, nine men were executed by hanging. Each of them went to his death singing Hatikva, the Israeli anthem of hope.
Towards the end of the day, we walked through the Arab market in the old city of Aco until we came to the shul of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzato author of "The Way of God" and "Path of the Just." We learned a little bit about his history and the history of the shul and then we went to have dinner. Dinner was in a nearby kibbutz. This dinner was one of the successful ones that we planned. For the first time since we got to Israel we had a BBQ! There was chicken, hot dogs, and hamburgers and it tasted so good.
That night we slept in a pretty nice hotel in Tiberias. We woke up early in the morning to go down to the Sea of Galilee. It was way too cold to even touch the water but it was really nice to watch the waves gently lapping at the shore.
Our first stop of the day was on top of one of the mountains in the Golan Heights. This was one of the spots that Syrians used to shoot at Israelis in the valley below. Eli Cohen was a spy in Syria for the Israelis. He found this spot among many others that Syrians used as hideouts under Eucalyptus trees. He would report back all that he found to the Israelis. In 1965 during one of his transmissions to the Israelis, the Syrians caught him and he was hanged in the public square.
Our next stop was at an Israeli bunker on top of the mountain called Ben Tal. This was one of the first bunkers to see the Syrians advancing at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The stop right after that one was at a movie theater where we saw a video about Tank No. 77 fighting during the Yom Kippur War. Our next stop was at a beautiful memorial for the 72 soldiers killed in the helicopter crash in 1997. The memorial had a pool in the middle with the names of all the soldiers and paths extending from the pool like propellers. There were large rocks set up on plots of grass as a memorial surrounded by beautiful budding red flowers.
The last stop of the day was in Tel Hai. Tel Hai was one of four cities in the Golan Heights that was settled by Jews before the State of Israel was established. This specific city was mainly used for agriculture. After WWI this territory became part of the French Mandate who didn't care as much as the British about keeping the peace. These settlers were constantly attacked by Arab Bedouins. After they'd been having these troubles for quite a while, a man named Joseph Trumpeldor came to help them out. Two months after he came, the battle of Tel Hai broke out. 300 Arabs came to attack this little city of farmers. The farmers fought as best as they could but they knew that they couldn't defend themselves, especially after their leader, Trumpeldor had fallen. They decided to burn down the city and run away. Today, we remember their valiant efforts to fight for what was theirs because these Jews were the first fighters for Israel. This was the city where the Haganah was established.
It was a four hour drive home and I slept most of the way and of course there were bagels waiting for us to eat them for dinner. Shalom V'lehitraot!
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