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!

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!

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!

Zeminar Part 1

For the next week we are on a Zionist Seminar to learn about the history of Israel by traveling all over the country to see different museums and hear different speakers.  We started off with an introduction about the underground movements before the State of Israel was declared and their leaders.  Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a name you see in the streets all around Israel, was the one who started the underground movement.  He was the head of Revisionist Zionism.  David Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister of Israel but before that he was the head of Labor/ Socialist Zionism.  There were three main underground movements: Haganah (Palmach), Etzel, and Lechi.  The Haganah was mainly a defense movement and they were very passive.  The Etzel, Haganah's "enemy" was also defensive but much more active because they weren't afraid to use weapons.  The Lechi was the bloodiest of the three and if they felt the need to, the would kill British soldiers, Arabs, and anyone else threatening them.
That night we went to visit the Achdut Yisrael Shul.  One of the members spoke to us about how the underground movements used the shul to store weapons.  On the wall were all the names of soldiers who died fighting so that we could have a state.  There were 12 specific leaders who had a special place on the wall.  They were caught by the British and hanged.  Two of these leaders were captured in Egypt.  The Jewish community in Egypt wanted to do something special for them so they wrote a Torah on deer skin.  The deer skin Torah is now in this shul.
The next day, we went to the Palmach museum.  The whole museum was an immersion experience, meaning it was like a virtual tour where we felt like we were in the underground movement too.  We took this virtual journey along with a group of soldiers through forests, hiking Masada, sitting around the campfire, sitting at a cafe when the State of Israel was announced, and on a boat with Holocaust survivors making aliyah to Israel.  After lunch, we went to Machon Ayalon, a kibbutz with a huge secret.  Before the State of Israel was established, this kibbutz had a bullet making factory hidden 24 feet underground.  It was hidden under a lundry room and a bakery to hide the noise and the smell.  Every day, 45 men and women would go down underground and work for ten hours making bullets.  They made each bullet individually by hand.  In all the years that the factory was in operation, there was only one accident where a man accidentally cut off his thumb.  In a very short amount of time, they made over two million bullets.  In 1948, they no longer had to hide from the British so they took the machines out of hiding and brought them to Tel-Aviv.
We arrived in Tel- Aviv/ Yafo at around 10:30 and it was a beautiful morning outside.  For just a few minutes we sat on top of a wall near the beach and soaked up some sunshine in the fresh air by the sea. We walked around for a bit and saw some really interesting things.  There was a clock tower with four clocks and bars with pictures of boats and compasses on the windows to represent its history of being a port city.  Tel- Aviv became a city more than 2000 years ago because of the ability to get food, travel, defend itself, and of course the water.  King David was the first to conquer it.  After the Jewish empire fell came Romans, Byzantines, Muslims, Crusaders, Ottomans, British, and it finally came back to us again.  In the early 1900's Tel- Aviv was started by almost 50 families from Europe who had a dream of building up Israel.  Next we went to Independence Hall.  It was originally the home of Meir Dizengoff, the first leader of Tel- Aviv.  Towards the end of his life he opened it up as an art museum with some famous artists such as Marc Chagall.  This was also the place that they chose to officially declare the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.  Last, we went to the Etzel Museum where we watched a movie about the underground movement and saw some really cool artifacts and models that they had.
The day ended back in Jerusalem where I accompanied my friend Steph to the ER.  During the day, she tripped and fell and couldn't walk.  Turned out that she was okay and it was just a sprain that would go away in a few days if she didn't walk on it.  More adventures to come! Shalom V'lehitraot!

MTA's First Shabbat!

Last week, the new MTA arrived in Israel.  The way the South African and Australian school year works is that it starts in February and ends in December because their summer is during our winter. They got to the school and unpacked on Monday, had orientation on Tuesday and they started their first day on Wednesday.  It was really exciting for the Northerners to meet the new MTAs and we were really friendly and welcoming.  Everyone was asking everyone their names and at all the meals we would all sit together instead of separately.
On Friday night we usually go to the Kotel but since it was pretty cold and rainy they decided that we should stay in.  This week they had a really cute seating arrangement.  One every plate was a different flag so each person had to sit by the flag that represented where they came from so every table had a mix of people from different places.  They had some interesting ice breaker questions such as "what were you life in your awkward stage" or "how many goldfish have you killed?"
After dinner everyone sat together singing and sharing pieces of advice.  A bunch of Northerners got up to speak about different firsts that they had.  I spoke about my first Shabbat in Israel which you might remember I spoke about in my blog all the way in the beginning.  http://sarasisraelexperience.blogspot.com/2011/09/first-shabbat-in-midrasha.html  Some people spoke about their first day and how confusing and overwhelming it was and some people spoke about an interesting experience that made them realize something about themselves or about Midreshet Harova.  I think the MTA really got a lot out of this because towards the end of Shabbat, the MTA were asked to say a little something about how they feel.  Most of them said that they feel really welcomed here and they are happy that they chose Harova because the people here are just amazing.
Over the past few days I've gotten to know the names of most of the MTA (there are two more Sara/ Sarah's to add on to the five that were already here and a Zara.) One of them, Ruthy, lives on my floor and we always say hi when we pass each other in the halls.  I'm really excited to become better friends with the new MTA and I think they're also really excited to meet all of us.  It's a new beginning for them and a new beginning for us and I hope that all beginnings are as pleasant as this one has been.  Shalom V'lehitraot!

Mount Hermon!

Mount Hermon is the highest mountain in Israel.  It is all the way in the North by the Golan.  In the winter, there is snow there.  It's amazing how in one part of Israel you could be skiing or playing in the snow and at the opposite end, you could be swimming in the beaches of Eilat, all in a country smaller than the size of New Jersey! From Jerusalem it's about a four and a half hour drive to get there. I slept for about three of those hours... both ways, which is six extra hours of sleep.  It wasn't very comfortable sleep and my shoulders ended up being achy, but it did give me an extra energy boost.  About an hour before we got to the Hermon, when I was awake, I began to see really pretty changes in the scenery outside.  The landscape went from they dry desert to lush, green meadows to snow-capped mountains.  I never saw that much greenery in Israel ever before.  It was really beautiful.
When we got to the mountain, there was snow on the ground and everyone was so excited.  My friends from South Africa and Australia and even friends from Florida had never seen snow before.  There were people skiing and snowboarding. Some people who had never seen snow before were just having snowball fights.  There was a ski/snowboard lift and there was a lift for people who just wanted to go up the mountain.  The school got us tickets to go up the mountain.  Being on the lift without skis was a really strange experience.  I went on the lift with my friends Meira, and we just sat there looking at the scenery.  At the top it was very foggy and hard to see, but we still had a good time throwing snowballs and chillin out.  It was my friend Miriam's first time in the snow so she decided to rent a sled.  There was a small hill that we could go down so we would sled down the hill and then run back up to do it all over again.  The last time we went down, we raced against two of our other friends.  I don't know who won, but I don't think it was us.  Going back down the lift was even colder than going up because the wind was blowing right in our faces.  When we got back down to the bottom, we ate lunch and then got back on the bus to go back to Jerusalem.  It was a fun and really chilled out day and it was a great experience.  Shalom V'lehitraot!

Yad Vashem Museum

Today we visited the famous Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem.  Before we went into the actual museum, we got headsets and like a walkie- talkie thing which was just for listening so that we would be able to hear our tour guide talk about the exhibits without yelling over the other people that were there.  It was surprisingly very crowded for a random Monday morning, but it was a big museum so we weren't particularly disturbed by any other group.  The first thing our group went to was the main museum.  The museum was actually built into the side of a mountain, so it had this triangular shape which had a really interesting feel to it on the inside.
The museum was set up chronologically, so first we saw exhibits about Germany in the early 1930's and Nazi propaganda.  Then we come come to the late 1930's and our tour guide talked about Jews in the ghettos.  We saw remnants of things that people left behind or things that were taken from them, from very expensive things like silver to seemingly meaningless things like dolls.  Then we saw exhibits about the actual war and then we saw a little bit about what happened right after.
Once we went through the main museum, we stopped off at the learning center before lunch.  Every couple of people shared a computer and you were able to click on controversial questions and hear different types of people answering them.  Some interesting questions were, could the Holocaust have happened without Hitler, or how will the memory of the Holocaust survive after all the survivors are gone?  We ate lunch that we packed before we left and then we had some free time to look around in the book store.
After lunch we heard the amazing story of a Holocaust survivor who was Anne Frank's best friend.  She talked about living with Anne Frank in Amsterdam and she spoke about her time with her in the concentration camp.  After we heard her story, we went into a classroom to speak about leaders and how they had to deal with ethical problems.  Some issues that came up were giving people over to the Nazis and whether or not they should create an uprising.  We had a short break and then we went outside to the forest of non-jewish heroes who saved kids from dying in the Holocaust.  Our last stop was the children's room.  This is a room full of mirrors on all sorts of angles with five candles in the middle causing the light to be reflected all over the room.  Music is played in the background while the names, ages, and countries of children who died are read aloud.
Our trip to Yad Vashem was very emotionally draining yet very touching and informative.  I recommend it to anyone looking for things to do in Jerusalem.  Shalom V'lehitraot!