I brought my computer with me on our Negev trip partly so
that I would be able to blog day by day, but unfortunately there has yet to be
enough wifi for such a thing. I have a
lot to share, though, so this might be a rather large post. But, we’ll find out.
I’m going to start by talking about last Shabbat. On Friday, on the way to Yerushaliam, we
stopped at a place called Neot Kedumim- a Biblical nature reserve. A Biblical
nature reserve is a place where every tree was mentioned in the Torah. It was established in the late 1960’s, and
it’s truly a beautiful place. To do the
activities that were planned for us, we all split up into three groups. My group started by walking up a path through
various trees and shrubbery, and when we got to the top our tour guide man was
standing there. Looking out, we could
see Modi’in, as well as stunning greenery.
He told us about how the famous battle of Chanukah between the
Chashmonaem (Maccabees) and the Mityavnim (assimilated Jews) actually took
place where we were standing. After his historical introduction we walked about
ten feet to this big rock. He told us to
find strong rocks which we could hold in our hands, and he busted out some
olives. He put them on top of the big
rock and showed us how to crush them with the smaller rocks. Then, for the people who were interested in
coloring their hands a shade of deep brown, he offered to teach us how to get
the juice from the olives which could turn into oil after a process of
distillation. I didn’t participate in the
juicing activity, because I instead picked olives with my friend Tal. Afterwards, we all walked down a path so that
we could watch a donkey pull a huge wheel which crushed olives. This was to demonstrate the method of
olive-pressing from back in the day, but also to show the amount of force which
is needed to effectively press olives.
Then we walked further down the path and went inside of a tent. We were each given clay, and most people
molded it into a little jug/bowl for oil to sit in and burn. When we all finished with that, we walked
back to our bus which took us to the front part of Neot Kedumim and we went
inside of a pen to heard sheep. That’s
right- shepherding!
After Neot Kedumim, we loaded the buses and made our way
towards the Old City! I was
unfortunately super nauseated on the bus, so I tried my best to sleep. We went a Shabbaton to the Sephardic Heritage
Center in the Old City of Yerushalaim. I
had been there before on my 8th grade trip, but they actually made
quite a few remodels since then.
Coincidentally, I actually slept in the room across from the room I
slept in in 8th grade! It was such a great way to spend
Shabbat. Everyone spent the little time
we had before Shabbat getting ready, and we had candle-lighting on the bottom floor. After, we said Mincha together and had a
wonderful welcome to Shabbat by the girls’ Av Bayit- Moshe Mernick. Then, we all walked together to the Kotel. All of the girls had a big Kabbalat Shabbat
(prayer for Friday night) together, where we sang and danced all together. It was a little cold, but we had a lot of fun
together. And, I saw Sarah Varon there
on her way to dinner. When we all
finished praying we met up with the guys in the plaza, and walked together back
to the Sephardic Center. We had a really
good dinner together, with, Thank G-d, lots of Sephardic foods. The soup we had was nice and spicy, and one
of our Rabbis was walking around saying that, “the true test of Sephardihood
was within the soup.” I loved it! I
don’t always like spicy things necessarily, but there’s a certain type of heat
that my mouth loves and that soup had it.
After dinner we had a shiur (class) from Rabbi Mottyberger of Aish
Ha’Torah. He’s apparently a super
world-renowned, sought-after speaker, and we were lucky enough to hear him
speak. I appreciated what he had to say,
so I stuck around to listen to other people’s questions afterwards. Since I hung out there for a long time I missed
our program’s Oneg, but it was totally fine because I enjoyed listening to him. Afterwards, at (I think, but am really not
sure) about 11:00, a bunch of people headed down to the Kotel. Some people said tehillim, some people
learned, some sang, and some prayed… It was cool to be there with such few
people and total quiet. It was really
cold, and after sitting there for a while I had to get up and do some
toe-raises to warm up. We hung out there
for a while, and when I got back I went to sleep.
I woke up on Shabbat morning and went to the Kotel for
Shacharit and Musaf. There I saw my
friends Sydney and Jesse, which was super nice!
After tefilah, I headed back up the Sephardic Center and we had
Kiddush. Then we had a program with the
prize of free Burgers Bar (a really good but relatively expensive restaurant
chain here) for the winning team, and I am pleased to announce that my Ashrei
team kicked butt and we will be eating Burgers Bar with Rabbi Bryks at some
point! Then we had a really great lunch all together. Afterwards I went to a class from one of my
madrichot, and then spent the remainder of the afternoon, until Mincha, with
Sarah Varon and Adina Polack. Mincha,
Seudah, and Arvit were all good, then we had havdalah together. We had a lot of dancing and singing, which
was fun, and then lit a menorah together and had more singing and dancing- this
time more geared towards Chanukah. We
headed home, and I slept through the bus ride which was perfect, and when we
got home we actually lit chanukiahs. I
got to sleep relatively early because I knew that we had an early day on
Sunday.
Sunday, we were up and out by 8:00! Prepared for a hike, I geared up like a true
Owen reppin’ REI hiking boots/socks, a backpack, and a lightweight jacket.
We drove for a couple hours to a place called Ein Ovdat, and
we did an easy, hour-long hike. It was
totally beautiful though, because we started in what seemed like total desert
and continued into this canyon thing with a small stream in it. We rounded a corner and the dry land turned
into beautiful yellow-leaved trees with wet ground. It was really interesting to see how it
changed so quickly because of the higher concentration of water.
When everyone was done with the hike we loaded up our buses
and rolled out towards the middle of nowhere.
Why would we want to drive towards the middle of nowhere? Bedouin tents. When we got there, we all rode camels. It was definitely much different than the
donkeys we rode in eighth grade, but it was undeniably uncomfortable so I
didn’t love it. Good times,
though. I was in the first group of
camel-riders, so once we were done we went into the Bedouin tent complex and
put our stuff down in the sleeping tents.
I decided to explore a little bit, and found the bathrooms and
whatnot. For any of you who have not
been to a Bedouin tent, I’m going to try to explain what it’s like because it’s
exactly the opposite- in a good way- of anything I ever imagined it to be. Here’s the picture:
Imagine being in what seems like the very middle of the
desert. You look to your left, you see
sand and mountains; you look to your right, you see sand and valleys; you turn
around, you see sand and rolling mountains; and when you look straight ahead,
you see basically a brown, tall, modified tent-city with a fifteen-foot opening
to the compound in front of you. You
walk towards and through the opening, and you see a big open space in a sort-of
circle with many tent openings around it.
(By tent I don’t mean the kind of tent that is pitched at a campground,
but rather the kind of tent that has one full side of burlap’ish material which
folds up.) You walk straight through the open circle
area, and directly ahead there is a wall with a fire pit area about ten feet in
front of it. As you get closer, you realize
that on the other side of the wall there were many camels and other
animals. Your directions were to turn
right at the fire pit, so you do, and there you see a super long and deep, and
about ten-foot tall, tent with tens of mattresses on the floor. It is surprisingly nice. You decide that
after you put your stuff down on a mattress you want to go explore a little bit. Next to the big circle area, on your left
after walking out of the tent, there is a huge teepee, with a fire about five
feet into it, and a couple of Bedouins hanging out inside. After the teepee there is a building with
bathrooms, and when you turn left from that building you again see the big open
circle space. But, before it, you see a
lovely shack with two boiling urns and a variety of fruit next to it.
That’s my attempt at giving an understanding for the Bedouin
tent area. When I saw the shack with hot
drinks and fruit, I went over immediately to see if there was tea- because
Bedouin tea is quite talked about, and, being a new tea-drinker, I wanted to
try it. As I walked over there, I saw my
friend Jason, who helped me get into tea, standing next to the urns. He said that one was coffee and one was tea,
so we both took a cup of steaming hot tea and enjoyed it. Then, everyone was told to go to the teepee
for a welcome to the Bedouin tents. A
sweet-looking Bedouin man brought us in, and we all sat on the floor in a
semi-circle around the fire. One of my
friends, Dorin, translated for him as he spoke to us about information on and
the history of Bedouins. He told us that
if a Bedouin comes to your tent, and you don’t want him there, you should fill
up his cup of coffee to the top- as opposed to about 80% full. That made me wish that we could implement
that into American society. Can you
imagine if every time you didn’t like or want to talk to someone you could fill
up his or her coffee cup to the top and the person would just get up and leave?
We had a nice introduction, some free time, then met
together outside the eating tent to say Arvit.
Afterwards we lit Chanukah candles then ate dinner. Dinner was awesome! I sat with a beautiful group of fellow
Sephardim, for the most part, and we enjoyed the incredible spread
together. We started with random salatim
and pitas, and were quickly brought a humungous lafa platter with mountains of
rice, lentils, corn, stuffed peppers, and more on top of it. Rabbi Menaged, our resident Sephardic Rabbi,
made it quite clear that the only proper way to eat from it was to rip the lafa
then scoop up food inside of it. I must
say that every part of the lafa platter was absolutely delicious, but I most
enjoyed the stuffed peppers. The next
course was chicken on skewers and- wait for it- cinnamon stick kabobs. Let me explain what that means. . . Take a
cinnamon stick, clump ground beef around it, spice it, and cook it. I think it was one of the most innovative
methods of flavor-infusing that I have ever seen, and boy-oh-boy was it
delicioso! I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a fun and unique
new recipe, because it both looks good and tastes good. Dessert was a plate of various baklava, cups
of jello, and little satsumas. After
dinner we had free time for a while, then a fire pit. We had marshmallows to roast, and skewers to
do so with, and Rav Ari busted his guitar out.
We all ended up standing around the fire pit in circles and singing and
dancing around, and we had such a fun time doing it. It was really incredible to look up and see
the vast sky perched above us. After the
fire pit, I went on a star-gazing adventure with the coolest woman ever named
Mrs. Seigal and a bunch of my other friends.
We exited the Bedouin compound from the opposite side that we came in
on, and decided to just walk until the light was no longer clouding our vision
of the sky. For the record, I was wearing
flip flops because I only had those or hiking boots and didn’t feel like lacing
up the boots. It turned out to be a
mistake, because I got a huge cut underneath one of my toenails which bled a
lot and caused me far too much pain during the hikes thereafter. Anyways, though, I so beyond enjoyed the
star-gazing, because although we have some serious star action in and around
Seattle it is far less amazing than the desert starry night. We found a random spot, and most of us laid
down on the ground to enjoy. Seeing such
a completely full sky of stars makes it really easy to get “lost” in the
sky. I saw a shooting star, which was
great. We spent a solid thirty or forty
minutes out there, and when we came back I tended to my wounded toe.
When I had finally cleaned it up, with help from one of my
madrichim Samuel of Australia, I sat at the camp fire to listen to the end of a
shiur that Rav Ari was giving. When he
finished I decided to eradicate the very strong smoke smell from my hair and
body, and took a shower. Thank G-d for
the Bedouins and their hottest shower water I’ve experienced in forever! What a great feeling cleanliness is. I went to bed pretty soon after my shower,
because wake-up was 4:20 A.M. for a sunrise hike up Masada. When I got into our tent it was steaming hot,
and I really didn’t need anything other than pajamas to sleep with. However, not to my prior knowledge, the plan
was to turn the heat off in the middle of the night. Why? No one knows. So, when I woke up about an hour and a half
later shivering violently I was, to say the least, surprised. I did my best to warm up by scrunching up
into a ball, but it didn’t really work so well and I woke up again about twenty
minutes later. I put on a jacket and
went back to sleep, but of course woke up again. Then I decided to get into the sleeping bag
that the Bedouins provided me with, which could be considered yucky but is also
considered warm. And since I was
experiencing the coldest body temperature of my entire life, it was worth it to
me to put the yuckyness on hold. I still
woke up again, but this time at 3:01 A.M, and when I saw that I got
legitimately angry at the fact that the alarm wouldn’t go off for another hour
and twenty minutes. I was so cold that I
tried to do jumping jacks inside of my sleeping bag, but it didn’t really
work. Somehow I managed to close my eyes
and survive the duration of the allotted sleeping time, and when I heard the
alarm go off I was the most excited I’ve ever been to wake up. Just saying, my modeh ani was
ridiculously energetic for a prayer that occurs upon getting up in the
morning.
I want to pause and throw out a shout-out to my first cousin
Aiden Gindin, whose Bar Mitzvah it was this past weekend! I wanted and tried to
Skype in to the party, but the Bedouins don’t exactly have such an appreciation
for wifi or cell phone service. It was
super lame that I had to miss out on that opportunity, but I heard that he read
Torah and spoke amazingly and that the party was awesome! So, although I am
really sad that I missed out- both physically and technologically- I am really
happy that all went well, and SO proud of him!
And here we have the second day of our Negev trip. When I stood up to go brush my teeth and
whatnot in the bathroom, I did about twenty jumping jacks which didn’t even
warm me up. Walking to a bathroom in
complete darkness, if I may say so myself, makes a person feel like it is night
time even if it isn’t because it’s only a little bit past 4:00 A.M. Just a thought. After I got dressed, continued to feel like a
popsicle, and grabbed my stuff, I headed out of our tent with my stuff and was
treated to a wonderfully hot cup of tea as well as a couple of crackers for the
road. I loaded my stuff on the bus, took
a seat, and tried my best to mentally heat my body up. It was weirdly successful, and by the time we
got to Masada I was semi-content.
Despite it being a little bit after 5:30, and still freezing cold, I
rolled out for the hike with shorts and a light jacket. We went up the Roman path, which is basically
a walk in the park, and I made it to the top with maybe a drop of sweat on my
forehead, and in what felt like fifteen minutes. The sun was nowhere near rising, and we all
headed to the southwest side of Masada to a little deck area where we would be
saying Shacharit.
We spent a couple of minutes marveling at the view and
getting ready for Shacharit, and then we started. It was a truly incredible experience to pray
Shacharit at the top of Masada, looking over the Dead Sea, as the sun gradually
appeared on the horizon. It was timed
precisely so that the sun rose during the Amidah, which could not have been
cooler.
After Shacharit, we split up into two groups and got little
tours of Masada. It was truly lame that
we couldn’t have spent more time up there, because it has an awesome history
and we were already there. We saw the
synagogue, which was cool, as well as another room and some awesome views. I hiked down the snake path with two of my
friends, Noam and Jason, and when we all got down we ate breakfast at this
place at the bottom of the mountain.
Most of it looked like really good food, but I could barely eat because
of my non-dairy diet. It was a nice
breakfast, though. On the way out, we
grabbed pre-made schnitzel (yay, meat!!!) sandwiches for lunch for the
day. From there, we split up into two
groups. One would have an afternoon
centered around the Dead Sea, and the second (better) group would go on an
awesome, three-hour hike above the Ein Gedi springs. Obviously I, and every other cool person on
the program, picked the hike, because who wouldn’t! Just kidding, there were
plenty of people who picked more time at the Dead Sea.
When we got to the starting point for the hike, we were at a
beautiful lookout point over the Dead Sea.
Little did we know that the view would only get bigger and better,
because we were going to climb upwards.
The first thirty’ish minutes of the hike was all total up, and it was
awesome. I loved feeling like we were
literally climbing a mountain-side, because we were, and being able to notice
the progress by the quality of the view.
At what we thought was the highest point of the hike, we had to climb up
about ten feet of rock to really get to the highest point. It was a scary kind of awesome to know that
with one wrong step I would be falling off of the mountain. Thank G-d, no such wrong step was made and
all went according to plan. At the front
of our group of hikers, we had about five people consistently—The Wolf
Pack.
We hiked up, down, and around for about three hours until we
got to the Ein Gedi springs. What a
perfect feeling it was to cool down by sticking my head and body underneath a
waterfall. .. Just saying, it was awesome.
When everyone finished the hike, we loaded our bus and drove
for about half an hour to the Dead Sea.
We spent about forty minutes there, but since I was freezing cold from
going in the waterfall I didn’t go in the Dead Sea. In addition to my low body temperature,
because of the cut on my toe from the night before I was quite fearful of the
screaming pain I would have been in if I went into the very salty water that is
the Dead Sea. So, instead, I watched
some of my friends go in, and hung out with the other cold/cut up girls. Afterwards we met the other bus at this pier
place, said Mincha, and we were on our marry way to our destination for the
night.
We got to the place we were staying at in Yerucham (a.k.a.
the actual middle of nowhere) and jumped on the shower opportunities that were
awaiting us. Great feeling to be clean
after that day. We all lit Chanukah
candles together in the lobby, and had dinner afterwards. Because of the super busy day of hiking that
about half of us did, we consumed a lot of food. For real though, I kept comments from people
at my table about how they could eat all night long. I love when I feel like the eating I’m doing
is completely to fuel my body from the energy that I expended… Definitely had
that. At 9:00 we had a Texas Hold ‘em
poker tournament, which I for some reason decided to take part in, and we had a
really good time. There were about five
or six tables, of seven players, and the top two from each table would go to
the Final Table. A friend of mine, Maya,
and I somehow both won our table (whattup!), but we also both decided that bed
was much more important than the Final Table.
Hahaha. So, no one from our table
went to the Final Table, which obviously made it much easier for my friend
Jason to end up winning the whole thing—including a free steak dinner.
The next day we planned to leave at 7:30ish, so we had an
okay breakfast at 7. We loaded up the
buses, drove for less than half an hour through desert, desert, and more
desert, and stopped in what seemed like a different middle of the desert than
the Bedouin tents. After about a minute
of exploration when we got off the bus, I realized that there was in fact a
trail-head.
I’ve never done a hike that was anything similar to this
one. It really felt like we were just
wandering through the desert. In fact,
if we didn’t have two tour guides and trail-markers, I would call what we were
doing wandering. It was so cool, though,
to look around, in each direction, and see nothing but dirt mountains and
valleys. One of the tour guides, Yossi, showed
us this awesome plant! If you take a
branch or two, hold it, and rub it between your hands until it cracks open, it
completely purifies your hands! It’s like nature’s Purell.
And, he said, when combined with a different plant, which we
did not come across, it turns into Shampoo!
About half way into the hike we went through a waterless
river-bed, and we were going further and further down. Obviously this meant that we would eventually
have to climb way, way up, but we didn’t really know when or how. All of the sudden, the trail-marker pointed
90 degrees upwards. You’d think the rock
with the trail-marker had just been knocked over, or something, but really that
is exactly what it was supposed to look like!
We climbed up the side of a mountain, literally, for five to ten
minutes. Since I was basically in the
front of the group, I got such a cool picture of everyone else hiking up the
mountain way below us:
We hung out at the top for a couple of minutes to take a
break, then began our decent. It took
about fifteen minutes for us to get down, and the first bus-full of people to
finish loaded up and headed over to gas station that was not even 1/4th
of a mile away from the trail-end. After
we had all been there and had a sufficient amount of time to go to the bathroom
or buy snacks, we got back on the bus and drove for about thirty seconds. There, we split into two groups. One to go Jeeping first, the second to go repelling
first. My group went repelling first
It was fun, in principle, but since we were all exhausted
from the hike and it wasn’t the most exciting repelling wall, there wasn’t so
much energy going on. It was a good
experience, and I’m glad I went. Then we
switched and went jeeping… Not sure I feel the same way about jeeping. When we went with the Early Start group it was
an awesome experience, but this time it was like a drive with some bumps
sometimes. Honestly, I slept for the
entire first half of the ride. I felt
badly because the driver asked what was wrong with me—I think I offended him
and his lack of jeep-driving skills. It
was a nice and necessary nap nonetheless.
When we all finished both activities, we got on the buses
and headed back to Yerucham. I thought I
appreciated the shower the night before, but I loved it so much more after the
hike that was actually through the dirt of the desert. I guess I could just be thankful for all of
my showers all the time, but whatever.
We had a charity auction for the night program, which was surprisingly
awesome and successful. People auctioned
off different talents or classes or services, and people in the crowd bid on
them. Originally, I thought that the
bidding would go up to maybe twenty shekel a piece. People ended up bidding hundreds of shekel
for most of the items, which was really cool.
We raised a lot of money, had a great time, and people got some good
stuff out of it. Great program! I hung
out with Noam and Jason for a while after and had some tea, then it was bed
time.
In the morning, we loaded up the buses after breakfast, and
most people went right to sleep. The
destination for the day was Eilat, which was a couple hour drive away from
Yerucham. Instead of sleeping, I talked
on the phone for a while then talked with people around me. I think I fell asleep for about twenty
minutes. When we got to the most
beautiful city of Eilat, we had about two hours of free time on the
Boardwalk. I spent it with Adina
(Polack). First, we walked around for a
little bit, then parked it on some rocks on the beach and just soaked up the
sun as we talked. Good stuff, if I may
say so myself.
We all met up a little before 1:00 to go on a glass-bottom
cruise. Obviously that sounds cool, but
you don’t understand how cool until you’ve been on it. First of all, the lunch they served us was
delicious. Secondly, the view was
stunning because the water is so clear and blue from the top of the
boat—yum. Thirdly, when we got to the
mid-way point in the boat ride and we slowed down and were welcomed to the
bottom of the boat, the glass-bottom view was unreal! It’s crazy how crystal clear the water
is. I really felt like I was swimming
with the beautiful fishies that were around us.
The expansiveness and depth to the ocean made me want to go snorkeling
or scuba diving so badly! We saw all different sizes of fish, eels, the reefs,
and much more. I totally loved it.
After the glass-bottom boat ride, the bus headed back
home. After four or five hours we made
it back, and I hung out for a little bit and lit candles before going to
bed. I rested, did laundry, and did some
work on Thursday then hung out with Ilana Greenberg and Sarah Varon for the
night.
The three of us went to a beautiful Yishuv (specific kind of
community) called Kochav Ha’shachar for Shabbat. How did we get there? Ilana and Sarah met this really nice family
in a schwarma restaurant a couple weeks ago, and after talking for a while the
family invited them for a Shabbat. Obviously
they took them up on their offer, and I tagged along. What a beautiful place to live. Overlooking Jordan and the Jordan valley,
they have about 350 families who live together on this hilltop. The scenery is obviously stunning, and the
whole community was soooo nice and peaceful.
What a great way to spend Shabbat!
Tomorrow I have Ulpan and Magen David Adom on the schedule…
I’m going to find out how I did on my test- crazy!
Shavua Tov to all!
