This trip has been awesome!!!!
Saturday night- After ending Shabbat with Havdallah we left the Negev and headed towards the holy city of Jerusalem to celebrate the new week! Bus 151 spent some time on Ben Yahuda street, the absolute place to be on a Saturday night. Unlike in the States where Friday is a common night for people to go out, here in Israel, especially in Jerusalem where the majority of people observe Shabbat, Saturday night is a people flooded the streets and danced to Orthodox Techno music, ate delicious food and coffee, and in a very short time became a part of wonderful atmosphere which in Israel is a weekly occurrence. People gathered on Ben Yahuda from all around the world, we met people from Argentina all the way to New York. We ended our night with a thought provoking discussion leading up to our visit to Yad Vashem, Israeli’s national holocaust memorial museum. Our bus was split up into smaller groups, asking each person to provide one word, only one, that describes their feelings on the Holocaust. The next morning we took a sharp turn in our experience.
Sunday- Yad Vashem, a sharp transition. Yad Vashem is Israeli’s national Holocaust museum which was recently remodeled. As we walked into Yad Vashem there were revolving displays portraying short stories, facts, quotes and pictures. We were able to look at the displays as our tour guide Moshe gave out head sets so we would be able to hear him as he guided us through Yad Vashem. The extent of depth throughout this museam was indescribable. From the personal stories, graphic images, video streams, to the candels for the children who perished, this experience affected all of us as Jewish teens. As the actual museam portion of the tour ended we headed to two more areas of the Yad Vashem Campus. The first was the place of the Eternal Flame, representing that the Jewish people will never forget the atrocity of the Holocaust and the horrific actions taken upon the Jews as well as millions of others. We quickly realized that we are the eternal flame. Together we are still standing depite our struggles are in Israel, continuing to remember and continuing the duties that millions before us were not able to. People have tried ferociously to extinguish this flame, as we personally witnessed they have not succeeded.. The second exibit was to represent the children. Walking into a dark room there were a million and a half candles, or what seemed to be candels, staked from ceiling to floor. In the backround was a voice that read off the names of children who fell victim to the Holocaust. We later found that the million and a half candels were only five, but with the addition of the mirrors instilled the refelction of one million and a half images. Each candle represent the loss of a child, unbelievable. That night we headed up north to the Galelli, we stayed at Kibutz Affik.We were asked to answer various questions about Judaism by “Strongly Agreeing, Agreeing, Strongly Disagreeing, or Disagreeing. The conversation was extremely thought provokin and seemed that many of the students were able to find out something new about themselves and even their beliefs. The rooms at the Kibbutz looked liked mini neighborhoods with individual lawns! The weather was a little colder then it was in the Negev, but the views were breathtaking. We have been to a desert, city, and woodland all in a matter of three days. This is a beautiful country.
Monday- We woke up in the Kibbutz and Lior informed us that we were going on a hike, lovely. The scenes were unbelievable. We crossed many water paths and climbed up and down more rocks then any of us could count. But the air was fresh, the weather was beautiful, and most importantly we were doing it together. After a quick lunch (obviously we ARE on Lior’s watch) we headed to Har Bental. From this point we were able to stand in Israel and see the Syria and Lebanon. We learned about some of the military struggles Israel endured and that they still endure. Walking through the bunkers allowed us to see the reality Israeli soldiers, people who became our peers and more importantly our friends, have to live with everyday. That night as we looked at the view of the Kineret, Sea of Galilee, Lior explained to us the water crisis Israel is suffering and how they work together as a nation to fix it.
Tuesday- Safat is considered one the holiest cities in Israel, holding the roots of important and historical synagogues we walked the blue streets of the city and were able to explore mystical Judaism, Kaballah. Even though we weren’t able to meet the main face of Kabbalh, Madonna obviously, we met a different character, Robert from Detroit, I mean Abraham. He was so AWWWESOOOMMMEEE. Enough said. (I think everyone from Bus 151 will be looking up the mystical meaning of their names because we just don’t understand how AWEEEEEEESSOOOMMEE it really is) AWESSSSOOOMMEEEE. After shopping and hiking up a mile of stairs to eat we hopped BACK on the bus to Tel-Aviv. That night we walked around and saw the first neighborhood in Tel-Aviv and walked the boardwalk and saw the Mediterranean. Most importantly we got to experience the night life of Tel-Aviv with some crazy Israelis. Great time!
Wednesday- Little did we know this day was probably the best way to see what honor and pride Israelis have for their country and each one of us on Bus 151 walked away from this day with pride and honor for our Jewish State. We began the morning at Independence Hall where Ben Gurion Announced independence of Israel as a Jewish State. This experience is extremely unique, where else in the world was a country occupied, announced independence and invaded all in a span of three days??? The guide who spoke to us did an amazing job in putting such strong emotions and such deep history into words. In the same room where Ben Gurion spoke is the same room in which we sat to hear his speech and sang along with the original orchestra who attended the ceremony, the Israeli National Anthem. A commonality between all Israelis is the want and need for peace and nothing else. The only disagreement seems to be the price that the nation is willing to pay for it and the uncertainty of the payoff for it. Continuing with the theme of Shorashim, or Roots, we headed to a very important site in Israeli history. (side note- weather was freezing and terenchal down pours, some of us took a long shower that night knowing some water was put back into the system. Also there was a man in an ice block trying to break the world record of 65 hours) After some singing and dancing with a musician in Rabin Square we went back to the November day which changed the history of this nation. We stood at the exact site where the Prime Minister of Israel was assainated, and it was not by a person from another culture or religious belief, the Prime Minister of Israel was killed by a Jew. A Jew who so much so disagreed with Rabin’s political thoughts that took matters into his own hands and took a life of a national leader. Continuing to the Haganba Museam we saw what the Israeli military was like before the IDF came to be. Looking at the past few days the meaning of IDF became more clear. Israeli DEFENSE force, its purpose is to defend, and every Israeli involved will do it and will do it with pride and honor, without defending itself there would not be and Israel standing today.
