Saturday, December 31st

On Saturday, we spent the day relaxing on Shabbat. We partcipated in many activities, one of which was lead by Sapora towards the end of the day Saturday, which was about the Holocaust in preparation for Yad Vashem. Many different words on little peices of paper were spread on the ground, such as responsibility, empathy, sorrow, revenge, happiness and confusion. We each picked one word that each of us felt about the Holocaust and then everyone spoke about which word they picked. Some people shared their families' stories from the Holocaust. One of our Israeli friends chose the word revenge, and she shared her story about her relatives that were taken by Nazis and eventually died in a gas chamber at a concentration camp. She told us that her revenge was our Jewish people not only surviving the tragedy of the Holocaust, but thriving the Jewish state of Israel.
We ended Shabbat with a beautiful Havadallah ceremony outside the hotel. We sang the closing prayers as we moved closer in a tight circle while three of us sipped the wine, held the lit candle and passed around herbs. Afterwards we had a short and song-filled bus ride to Jersalem for dinner. We stayed in Jersalem until about 10 pm, packed for the next day, then counted down the new years together in the courtyard of the hotel.