Yad Vashem and Shabbat in Shorashim

We started the day at Yad Vashem, it is a musuem dedicated to the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The musuem is so large that it is impossible to see everything in one day.  The tour consisted of the outdoor musuem with memorials dedicated to the Holocaust. When I walked through the musuem I got a chill that ran throughout my body, it was hard for me to cope with the realty of what took place to the Jewish people in the Holocaust, when I thought of it I was wondering what our country would look like with 6 million more people inside of it.  As part of the tour we split up into 4 groups, we were supposed to choose from a list of words that described our feelings as it relates to the Holocasut.  Words like pride, hate, pain, confusion, happiness, dissapointment, empathy and guilt.  We had to choose an emotion that related to our feelings.  One of the most emotional moments was when Alyssa told the group about a conversation she had with Eden,  she told us that during one of the hjikes she told Eden that her country is pretty and Eden told her its not only her country but Alyssa's as well.  Alyssa also us told about her grandparents survival of the Holocaust and how important Israel is to her and her family. We saw a cattle car that was used to transport Jews to the extermination camps.  After I saw the cattle car I realized that the world witnessed the Holocaust and did nothing to stop it.

We went to the shuk Mahane Yehuda and the counselors explained that we were going to play a game called mysertious moses.  It is a game that consists of buying a gift for a another member of the group in secret.  We explored the market and it was incredible to see the market on Friday afternoon before shabbat.  We bought food for shabbat and our secret gifts.  We then traveled south to the desert to spend shabbat at Kibbutz Mashabay Sadeh.  Everyone puts on their nicest clothes and gets excited for shabbat on Shorashim.  The first shabbat the boys gave the girls flowers and this shabbat was the other way around. Every shabbat is surrounded by an amazing atmosphere and ambiance, After shabbat services which included discussions about the nature of prayer we had a delicious shabbat dinner.   

After dinner we joined together in the activity room and gave each other our mysterious moses gifts which everyone loved.  After the activity came the long awaited free time and late wake up. On shabbat morning we had a fascinating discussion on Jewish identity and how it relates to the State of Israel.  We spent the rest of day at the pool and at other activites.  Following a song filled havdallah we left the kibbutz to go on a star gazing hike at Nachal Havarim.  On the hike we had the opportunity to share our feelings about each other and it brought us vcloser together.

This entry was written by Itzik Natanov Cohen an Israeli participant from Kiryat Gat.