Friday.
We continued our trend of waking up early in order to again
do more things in one day than most do in many.
We started with Shacharit, then headed to a beautiful hotel, overlooking
the South-Western part of the Kineret, for quite the breakfast spread. After a hearty meal we re-loaded the bus and
drove for about twenty minutes to the Eastern side of the Kineret to Kibbutz Ein
Gev. There, we had banana-boating,
inner-tubing, and Stand Up Paddle-boarding available to us. Completely unexpectedly, our Israeli-looking
helper/employee man hailed from the lovely state of Oregon. To which Nick Alkan and I immediately
responded, “West Coooooast!” He gave us a head-nod and a slight smile, then
continued with his shpiel (no clue how to spell that). When he was done we all headed down to the
beautiful, clear water of the Kineret, and half of us went on the banana boat while
the rest just hung around on the beach.
For those of you who don’t know what banana-boating is, it is basically
a banana-shaped inner tube for up to eight people—crazy!! While the other group went I took the liberty
of wading/swimming in the indescribably pure water, along with my madricha
Shev, one of the Rabbis named Rabbi Menaged, and a couple of my friends. I then attempted my lifelong dream of Stand
Up Paddle-boarding, and though it took a couple of seconds to gain the
confidence to go from my knees to my feet, I used the alignment skills I learned
from boxing and made my way to a standing position! It was totally awesome, if I may say so
myself. I didn’t have so much time to rock it though, because the first group
came back from banana-boating and it was our turn to go. Let me just say: it took a very small number
of minutes for all eight of us to totally flip off and land in the water. It was totally fun, though! When we got back
to shore we had the option to go inner-tubing, but I opted out for the sake of
being dry on the bus. Opting out also
meant a wonderful opportunity to soak up the beautiful sun, and G-d knows I
rarely pass up an opportunity of that nature. So I sat and enjoyed. When everyone was done with the water sports
we boarded the bus to head to our next destination.
About ten minutes later we arrived in a parking lot with
three jeeps in it. We hustled out and
shuffled into the jeeps, with no time at all to prepare- a real shame because I
completely forgot my camera. Our extremely
Israeli jeep driver introduced himself as Jimmy, which my friend Aimee and I
decided had no chance of being his real name.
She guessed that his name was Yitzchak, but after some seriously
incomprehensible Hebrew we discovered that his real name was Avraham- close
enough to be considered a score for Aimee, due to the fact that Avraham was
Yitzchak’s father. Haha. Anyways, we
continued our totally insane jeep ride through what is a river in the winter
and we enjoyed the task of understanding Jimmy’s Hebrew-only tour. Among many really cool things that we drove
by, we saw all seven of Israel’s Shiva
Minim- Seven Species on our drive.
Really awesome. We also got close
up to an olive tree, and one of my friends and I pulled a carpe diem and stuck them into our mouths. For the record, I don’t like normal,
out-of-a-can olives so I’m not totally sure why I decided to do that, but I
guess I thought the original would be better than the processed. Unfortunately, I was SO wrong. Both of us immediately spat them out due to
the tangy, sharp, chalky taste of the off-the-tree green olive. Nasty. But I’m totally happy that I tried it.
About an hour and a half into our drive we stopped at one of the most
incredible viewpoints I have ever seen with my own eyes. Standing on a very high mountain in the
Golan, looking over Israel’s entire fresh-water source, recognizing that not so
long ago I would have been standing in Syria itself, was totally awesome- in
the true meaning of the word. We got a
fifteen-minute history lesson about all that we could see from one of the jeep
drivers, which was definitely positive and informational. We finished the jeep ride and met our bus to
go back to Tiveria.
We got back to Tiveria and landed at the Maimonides Heritage
Center, where we ate lunch and learned a little bit about the Rambam from Rabbi
Schachter. After talking to him because
he mentioned that the Heritage Center was a product of Rabbi Yamin Levy’s, we
figured out that he went to Yeshiva with my Dad—nuts! Though when I first said “Owen,” he asked if I
had an older brother- only later to discover that the Owen he knows is my dad. Even more nuts, by the way, he remembered my
mom’s name! I was completely and totally
shocked, but it was cool hearing that he knew my parents. When we all finished looking around at the
Rambam museum we walked outside and down the hill to pray at the Rambam’s
grave. More praying at graves. I wasn’t totally feeling it, but there were
so many less people there so I was totally able to do my own thing. Hurray!
After Mincha, we walked up for about ten minutes until we reached Bug
City. We had a solid hour and forty-five
minutes to prepare for Shabbat, which was really nice. I remembered a little late in the game that I
was scheduled to say a D’var Torah, so I quickly pulled something together and
scribbled it onto the back of one of the Shabbaton schedules with just enough
time before the start of Shabbat.
We had candle-lighting, Kabbalat Shabbat, and Arvit, then
made our way across the room to our meal area.
With three tables and three Shabbat meals, the deal was that all
students had to sit at a new table for each meal so that we could meet each
family, who remained at their own tables throughout Shabbat. We had an amazing dinner! Matbucha- my all-time
favorite, tons of other salatim, fish, meat borekas, chicken, soy ice cream for
dessert. . . I can’t even remember what else there was, but it was all super
delicious. After dinner we had an Oneg
with boundless junk food, which I unfortunately partook in the enjoyment of,
and singing and such. Less than five
minutes into the Oneg, an Israeli man came over to our table and started
speaking to our head of programming, Meir.
Meir translated to us, saying that this man was looking for a couple of
people to do a really great Mitzvah and to come over to where their meal was
(in the next room over) because they were having Sheva Berachot and needed new
guests. The reason being that there is a
Halacha (law) that at each of the post-marriage Sheva Berachot celebrations
there must be at least one person who has not yet celebrated with the bride and
groom. We all jumped up and ran to the
next room over, singing Siman Tov U’Mazal
Tov and dancing around. We sang and
danced for the Chatan and Kala (Groom and Bride) for quite a while before they
sat us down so that they could say Birkat Ha’mazon and the Sheva Berachot. There are a number of things that I would
like to say about this amazing experience:
1 1)
The couple was Sephardic, so although their
tunes were nowhere near identical to either the Rhodesli or Turkish customs of
Seattle there were enough similarities that my brain considered it a familiar
melody.
2 2) Partaking in the mitzvah of Simchat Chatan V’Kala
(making a groom and bride happy) for a couple who none of us knew was rather
uplifting. I am having a difficult time
formulating well what the feelings were, but what I can say is that I’ll never
forget the smiles of complete and total joy on the Chatan and Kala’s faces when
we ran into the room.
3 3)
I totally need to make more friends who are
getting married sometime soon because as good of a time as I had without
knowing the couple, I’m sure it would be that much greater if I was close to the
couple.
After they completed the Sheva Berachot, we sang and danced
for another couple of minutes then headed back to our room to enjoy our
Oneg. We hung out for an hour or so then
headed to bed. I must say that not being
able to see whether or not there were bugs surrounding or on top of my bed made
it surprisingly easier to fall asleep. I
again slept on top of the sheet, with no covers, but I got a decent night’s
sleep.
Shabbat.
This morning we were woken up at about 8:00-not too bad- for
Shacharit, Torah-reading, a light Kiddush, and Musaf. I’m not going to elaborate much on those
activities, because they are pretty standard to most Shabbat experiences around
the world. The only thing that I will
say is that during Torah one of the three fellow Sephardic brethren on the
Early Start program read an aliyah, which was a wonderful deviation from the
standard Ashkenazic non-tune tune. Though
his Spanish/Portugese style was hardly similar to what I’m used to, it was
still clearly Sephardic- which I enjoyed.
I later found out, by the way, that the siddur that his synagogue uses
is the siddur that Ezra Bessaroth used before Chazzan Azose made the Zechut
Yosef. Crazy unexpected, but cool to see
that someone actually uses that utterly confusing siddur.
We had another beautiful meal, during which I said over my
short D’var Torah. After lunch, despite the
fact that I was totally consumed in tiredness I chose to carpe diem and join the optional walking tour of Tiveria. We saw Rav Kook’s Beit K’nesset Ha’Gedolah,
places where three Jordanian rockets landed, and a stunning view of the
Kineret. Our tour guide sat us down in
the shade to tell us the story of the viewpoint, and I really unfortunately
missed a good chunk of it when I dozed off standing up behind my bright green
sunglasses. I was really excited when he
said that we were heading back to Bug City, and as soon as we got back I took a
large drink of water and passed out on top of my bed. I had planned to wake up after an hour so I wouldn’t
miss the discussion they had set up for us, but I was totally unconscious and
had no chance of waking up. I guess that’s
what happens when you don’t stop moving for five days. I woke up just in time for Mincha, though,
and when that was done we had an awesome Seudah. Afterwards we did the classic NCSY
sit-in-a-circle-and-sing thing for a long while, said Arvit, and then
Havdalah. When Shabbat was over we had
about thirty minutes to pack up our stuff with the least number of bugs as
possible, and get to the bus which was across the street. My two roommates and I accomplished the goal,
and even had enough time to walk down the street to get a perfect post-Shabbat
popsicle. With us and all of our stuff on
the bus, we departed from Tiveria and began our journey back to Ramat Ef’al.
Now it is bed time.
Tomorrow? Erev Rosh Hashanah, so it’s time to go to the Jacobsons!!!
Shavua Tov, everyone :)
P.S. Below are pictures which correlate to my post from Thursday, but the horrible internet connection in Bug City didn't allow me to upload them. They are of the Meshushim Spring and me and my roommate!
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