Day 7

Happy Star Wars Day everyone and may the fourth be with you! Also, yippee-kayee it’s another day in the Promised Land, as we rush onto the bus with our luggage and go on our way to the next hotel. But before leaving the holy city of Jerusalem, we had our usual morning tefillah, today lead by Yaakov, Yoni, and Ben. We then left for Yad Lkashish, a place where the retired learn a certain craft in order to make money.

Only after shopping for a bit in Yad Lkashish’s gift shop did we head onto the bus, away from the city of Jerusalem, and drive north.  On the way we stopped for lunch, where we split into groups depending on what we wanted to eat.

When we got back on the bus we went off to see our pen pals that we wrote letters to a few months ago.  There we learned how the Jews managed to defend themselves when they couldn’t have guns under the British Mandate. We talked about how important it is that we can defend ourselves now.  After that visit, we went off to the Emuna center, where we learned a bit about the center, made t-shirts for Yom Hatzmaut, with the kids at the center and played sports with the kids there. We did tug o’war and we won. We told Shlomo, the director, that our win makes up for all the losses we have had in soccer when we have gone there in the past.

The class then went to Falafel Golani for dinner where we were thoroughly impressed by the server’s falafel scooping skills. We then went to where we will be staying for the next few days, Degania Bet.  After watching the members of the kibbutz preform their very powerful ceremony for Yom Hazikaron, we went back to our rooms for a few minutes before our very inspiring ceremony that left many in the class in tears.  We then all went back to our rooms to process what had happened during the last hours and to get ready for bed.