Hiking, Kabbalah, and Tel Aviv

Yesterday we visited the Golan Heights. We were lucky yet again -- the weather was absolutely beautiful. We had a muddy hike of about a mile during which only one person fell into the stream (he got his feet wet, that's about it). At the end of the hike we reached a waterfall. It wasn't a particularly big waterfall, but the view was nevertheless awesome.

Last night the Israelis led a cool group activity. First, they had us participate in "basic training." This entailed exposing us to how they were treated by their commanders. Fortunately for us, the Israelis did not have the heart to actually be mean to us-- our biggest "punishment" was 10 push ups. Following this, we had an intriguing discussion about the moral issues young soldiers could face. For example, given an order to put up a roadblock (and allow NO cars through) due to a suspected terrorist attack, what does one do if a car approaches with a deathly ill passanger who needs to get to a hospital soon. It was crazy to realize that kids our age would have to deal with such a moral dilemma.

Today, we woke up and drove to Tzafat, where we met a Kabbalist. He talked to us about the basic tenets of Kabbalism and discussed his art. He really enjoyed drawing out words: "twooooo thoooousaaaand yeeeears" "aweeeeeesooooommeeeee", which made most of us laugh. However, his ideas were still interesting and he was knowledgable enough to answer all the questions we had about the subject. He couldn't go into too much depth because we only had an hour with him, but he sufficiently piqued my interest that I will probably pick up a book about Kabbalism when I get back home.

We are now on our way to Tel Aviv. Exciting!