Day 4 - Wednesday, December 19th
Hello!!! My
name is Evan Adelsberg and I will be leading you on the adventure that was our
2nd full day in Israel but 3rd day in Israel but 4th
day of the trip. I am not quite sure and neither is anybody else. We have lost
track of our days already because we are actually having a lot of fun and don’t
seem to care what day it is.
So we
started with a 7:00am call time for breakfast and were startled when they were
serving pasta with mushrooms in the morning. Yay 7:00am! We then departed to
change the dynamics of our family (yeah, we call ourselves that…kinda our
thing).
We got 6 soldiers to join us on our birthright trip, three males and three
females, all from different parts of the IDF. Some of them speak English better
than others, but they want to learn and were very excited to meet us. On
Tuesday night (I guess I am starting to remember), the group got their names
and what they do in the IDF. We had to draw what we think they looked like and
ask them a few questions. After they got on the bus, we interviewed them and
then showed them their drawings. The only accurate drawing was the turkey hand
(remember when we did those in kindergarten) with the semi-automatic gun.
We then started
heading to Tzavat. Tzavat is one of the holiest cities in Israel. It was
definitely something a lot of us haven’t seen before. There were orthodox Jews
everywhere. The streets and alleyways were narrow and kind of reminded me of
Venice, Italy, just with more Jew curls. We were fortunate to be able to visit
the Art Gallery of David Friedman, a Chaballah artist. He showed us his art and
talked about the connection of science and religion. It was actually interesting
and a lot of us had our minds blown.
From here we went to an orthodox synagogue where the men had
to wear kippahs and the women had to have their knees covered. One of the walls
of this synagogue (the southern wall because that is the direction facing
Jerusalem) was 500 years old. There were several people praying. We also saw
the areas where the women would have to sit and pray. Weird to still see
separation of gender still existing in the world. You always hear about it but
never really experience it. We then went to another orthodox synagogue and had
a very similar experience.
After this we headed to a Kabutz. A Kabutz is basically a
subdivision but with people actually working together. There are about 1000 residents of this Kabutz
we went to. There was a daycare, a school, a really nice brand new pool, a
museum, a dining hall, a performance house, a grocery store, etc. There was
also the biggest dairy farm in all of Israel. We got to see horses, goats, cows
(being milked as well). It was interesting to see how the dynamics were
different than what we have in America. Most people these days don’t have a
strong sense of community and keep to themselves. This was completely
different. It reminds me kind of how Japanese schooling works, where you stay
with the same class for your entire education.
After the Kabutz we went to NAT Program. This is a program
set up to help teach young teenagers how to work with computers. Work with them
as in build them and fixing them. They even developed a smartphone app to help
people fix their computers. It was cool seeing these teenagers learning these
skills at a young age. It is stuff that we in America spend thousands of
dollars to learn in college.
We then got back to our Kabutz/hotel and ate dinner. We are
getting close as a group and we all hang out. Even though we are all incredibly
tired and can pass out at any moment, we still stay up late talking to each
other. Tonight we actually did some pretty cool stuff with photography. I set
up a camera with a long shutter speed (so it collects a lot of light) and we
drew pictures around ourselves using a flash light. So for example, person A
would stand in the photo while person B drew butterfly wings (or other stuff)
around us. They all came out extremely well and you will see them on Facebook,
I am sure.
One of the things I like about this group/trip is that we don’t
have cliques. Everybody is talking to everybody and we are all open with each
other. It really is an incredible thing to see and we truly are becoming a
family…and it’s only the 2nd…or 3rd…or 4th day,
but with a group like this, we don’t want to think about how much time we have
left, we only want to think about the time we have together.
Thanks! Evan
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