Northern Exposure

Shabbat Shalom from Israel! We’ve uploaded some pictures onto our blog at http://goucherhillel.blogspot.com/. There are some great ones up there – check it out!

The past 2 days have been amazing, as we’ve explored the northern region of Israel. On Thursday, we drove to the Golan heights. Our first stop was the Golan heights winery. Our students cracked up at the film introduction, which showed a Hebrew-speaking genie badly dubbed over in English telling us about the process of fermentation The students loved tasting 3 different delicious Israeli wines. Despite the early hour which made some wine taste like toothpaste, Bus 830 refined their palates and learned that this is not your grandfather’s Manischewitz! They carefully picked out souvenir wines to bring home.

The wine smoothed over our bouncy ride up Mt. Bental to the peak of the Golan heights.

It was very windy but we had fun bouncing around in jeeps as we listened to Israeli music and heard the history of Israel’s conquest of the land from Syria in the 1967 six-day war. Our students read poems in what had been a Syrian bunker, and listened to the incredible story of out tour educator Chen’s father, who had a near-death experience face-to-face with a Syrian soldier while serving in the Israeli army on that mountain. The personal touches have made this trip much more powerful than a mere history lesson.

We said goodbye to our Mifgash soldiers, while drinking ‘shoko b’sakit’ (Chocolate milk in a plastic bag) for the first time. Everyone shared something they had learned from the encounter, we shared our contact info and promised to keep in touch. As we hugged goodbye, there were more than a few tears.

That night we shopped in Tiberias and practiced our haggling skills (essential in Israel). We watched an Israeli film called ‘Noodle’ about a Chinese boy, the son of a deported illegal foreign worker, who is taken in by an Israeli family. The film showed us the complex multicultural aspects of Israel today. This theme continued this morning as the group awoke to munch on chocolate rugelach and choose from three options for the day:

An Arab-Israeli encounter, a nature hike, or a tour of the Crusader fort-city of Acre (Akko).

A number of students went to a moshav (cooperative settlement) called Shorashim where Arabs and Jews live together. They heard historical background and context around the history of Israeli Jews, Arabs, and Palestinians, and got a chance to dialogue one-on-one with Israeli Arabs. One of our students called it “the highlight of my trip.”

Others chose the hike in Nahal Jilaboun, which was enervating and beautiful. The third group enjoyed clambering over moats and bridges and seeing the walls of the crusader city at Acre on the Mediterranean. They saw the prison and had a chance to shop before Shabbat.

Tonight, our bus celebrated 10 members taking on Hebrew names. 12 are having a bar or bat mitzvah ceremony tomorrow on the shores of the Galilee. We’ll celebrate Saturday night with a cruise and dance on the Galilee – slightly smaller than the Chesapeake Bay, but perhaps more picturesque. That’s all for now – the final update will come on Sunday evening.