Akko!

We've finally moved into our house in Akko! It's pretty small (it's meant for one family), but somehow we managed to fit 18 of us in this one house. 

This is what the house looks like when you first walk in. Through the door to the left you have the kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and one bedroom. To the right you have the entryway to the living room (which we call our moadon), and through the living room you can get to another bathroom and 2 more bedrooms.

This is our kitchen! We finally have a real stove, and a nice, fully functioning refrigerator. We also have a pantry full of dozens of spices, pasta, different spreads, and an array of fruits/vegetables!

Here's our living room/moadon! This is where we do most of our asephot/peulot.

This is my bedroom! I share a room with 4 other people. Sam from Miriam, Jess from Galil, Jacob from Miriam, and Chief from Gesher. I have top bunk, and it's very cramped in our room, but it's got a warm, homey type of charm to it that I like.

If you walk up these stairs, you'll get to the 2nd floor, with 2 more bedrooms and 1 more bathroom. 

This is the central part of upstairs. Here is where we keep the dryer to dry our clothes (the washing machine is downstairs, don't ask why, because I really don't know why they're separated).

Through this window you can see our balcony! And the beautiful sunsets!

The best part of the house is definitely our wrap-around balcony! As you can see, everyone else is very excited about it too! We get the best views of the sunset, and we live right next to the train tracks that separate us from the main city of Akko. So we live super close to everything, which is awesome! 

What's nice about living in Akko is that we can walk to just about everything we need in the city. It's a lot warmer here than it was in Ein Dor, which makes walking a lot more pleasant. A few days ago we split up into groups and did a short scavenger hunt. We saw the shuk that so many people have told us about. It's full of so many fruits and vegetables! There's also a super cheap grocery store nearby that's cheaper than the kolbo that was on kibbutz. 

Today we went out for lunch as a kvutza. We went to this hummus and pita place and all sat down on a super long table. They kept on giving us so many different kinds of hummus like hummus with chick peas, hummus with beans, hummus with tahini, and regular hummus. It was so good, and we all left feeling super satisfied. 

After lunch, we still had 2 hours to kill before our next peula began. 7 out of the 9 of us girls decided to walk to the beach! It was amazing being able to go to the beach in the middle of December! I could even see Haifa across the bay! 

 

Another part of kaveret, and probably the most exciting and important, is messima. Messima is the work we will do in schools with Israeli Jews, Arabs, or both. It was a super long process of deciding the tzvatim and choosing where we want to work (there were 4 options), but after a night and a morning of discussing, we finally figured it out.  

I'm working in Haifa at a school with mostly Jews. In the afternoon, my tzevet, (which is Sara Banai, Ari Egar, Chief, and myself), will be working in the ken at Beit 

HaTzeirim. I still don't know the specifics of the messima, but I'm still super excited. Haifa is my favorite city in Israel, and I can't wait to finally be a madricha.

Soon it'll be chofesh for workshoppers, which means that we have a week or so off from programming. 

Last Few Days of Boneh

It's already Friday, which means we move to Akko on Sunday! It's very bittersweet. While I'm excited to be living in an actual house in Akko with just my kvutza, I will also miss the other kvutza a lot. It'll be weird not seeing and talking to them everyday. I think it'll be good though-- I think my kvutza's dynamics will definitely change, but I think for the better. It'll be good to just be living with each other. Either way, it'll be a pretty big change. Small, isolated kibbutz to a house in a city! 

In the meantime we have been cleaning a lot. This weekend is a closed weekend, which means we have to stay on kibbutz and clean everything. I'm just about packed, but we still have to squeegee the moadon, the bathrooms, and the kitchen. 

We all moved our mattresses into the moadon to sleep because it's the only place in our house that is heated. Everywhere else is absolutely freezing. The insulation in our house sucks and whenever I leave the moadon I have to bundle up with hat, gloves, and jacket. It's also incredibly rainy outside too. Mud has been making its way into our house no matter how hard we try to clean it up. But that's winter in Israel-- lots and lots of rain.

Yesterday we had a Boneh Sikkum tekes, in which many people on workshop gave speeches, sang songs, and spoke about their experience on Boneh. Ariyeh, the 92 year old man who lives on Ein Dor and has been a guest speaker for us before was present, along with Chava, the woman who coordinated with Habonim Dror to allow us to live on this kibbutz. 

Last night after the tekes our kvutza watched The Incredibles and had popcorn, and we each got bowls of ice cream, warm homemade brownies, and half a bar of chocolate! Thanks to Aliyah and Micah for making it for us! 

The next time I'll blog will be from a

Akko, so look forward to a new post in the next few days!

Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Birthday, and Habo History Hagshama Seminar

Thursday, November 28th might have been Thanksgiving in America, but Workshop 63 decided to celebrate it the following day, Friday the 29th. And even though we might have a strict food budget, we still had plenty of delicious food to go around. Two nights before, Aliyah, Sara Banai, Hannah Blass-Martens, and I all made the dessert for Thanksgiving! We made snickerdoodle cookies, pumpkin pie, and peach pie. Aliyah made the pie crust from scratch, while Sara made the fillings. Hannah helped make the cookies, and I just sort of helped out with all 3 jobs when they needed help. On Friday morning, a few of the Miriam workshoppers woke up super early to cook the turkeys, make the sweet potato latkes, stuffing, and mashed potatoes.

We all dressed up into nice outfits that night since it was Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, AND Shabbat! After writing what we were thankful for, reciting the blessings over the candles, the kiddush, and the blessings for Hanukkah, we began eating! We all left dinner feeling very satisfied and full. It was so nice being able to spend Thanksgiving with workshop, however, I'm sure many of us missed spending it back at home with our families.

Hanukkah didn't just fall on the one day of Thanksgiving though, we celebrated it all 8 days! Every night we all met in the Stones kvutza moadon, lit the candles, and all sang together.

My birthday also fell on the 7th night of Hanukkah! When it turned 12:00 AM, we were in the middle of an asepha (meeting) and my friend Aliyah ran across the circle and tackled me to the ground saying "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" After the asepha, everyone in my kvutza sang "Jump down, turn around" and then lifted me up on a chair 19 times. I then went to bed since it had been a very, very exhausting and long day. At night my kvutza surprised me with a chocolate peanut butter cake. And when I say surprise I really mean surprise. I was in the bathroom and when I came out, everyone in my kvutza was yelling at each other. I thought it was just a joke, but then one member of my kvutza got really mad and demanded that we all meet into the moadon to have another asepha on respect. Both of our gizabarim (the people that handle our kupa money) came in and told us that someone had taken 400 shkalim out of their wallets and that whoever did needed to confess. When no one said anything, Aliyah shut off the lights, and brought in the cake with candles in it! It was an awesome birthday, and I'm so happy I was able to spend it with my kvutza.

This past week we had HHH Seminar (Habo History Hagshama). Everyday we left kibbutz and traveled somewhere new. Most of these trips were to kibbutzim around the north of Israel to listen to guest speakers and learn about their take on the decline of the kibbutz movement, along with just learning about their respective kibbutzim. On Sunday, December 1st, we traveled to Hatzer Kinneret, along with the cemetary where some famous Zionist thinkers were buried. We went to these 2 spots on MBI, but it was still interesting seeing and learning about them for a second time. The next day, we went to Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi, a kibbutz founded by Habo UK. We heard a guest speaker, Ariyeh, and then traveled to 2 more kibbutzim, Amiad and Yisrael. Fun fact: Amiad was founded by our our madrich's (Nir's) grandparents. Also, Yisrael was founded by Habo South Africans, Australians, and New Zealanders. On Tuesday, we went to Jerusalem (Specifically Mt. Herzl) and listened to a representative from the World Zionist Organization talk to us about Hanukkah. Not going to lie, I was incredibly bored. It was pretty redundant, and most people couldn't stay focused. We then went to Kibbutz Mishol, an urban kibbutz in Nazareth Illit. We listened to Anton, a former member of Habo UK, speak with us about the kibbutz and his view on the kibbutz movement. On Wednesday, we went to kibbutz Eshbal, a kibbutz founded by HaNoar HaOved V'HaLomed. Thursday was one of my favorite days though, because we got to go to Haifa, one of my favorite cities. We first went to an HDNA panel, and listened to Ruth Stevens, Gil Browdy, and Tamar Levi speak to us about their involvement in the movement. We then split into 2 groups and went to either the 56 bayit, or Tamar's house to hear Amit and Crook's kvutza speak to us. I was in the group who went to the 56 house, which was unbelievably nice. A few representatives from their kvutza spoke to us about the Garin Aliyah process. We then had a hummus and pita lunch along with some fresh vegetables. Afterwards, both groups all met back together and we had a short peulah with our kvutzot to end the seminar. It was an incredibly long and tiring week, filled with a lot of guest speakers and not enough sleep. However, it was such an interesting seminar and I do feel that I learned a lot about the kibbutz movement and more about Habonim Dror's involvement in it.

This week we are on Boneh Sikkum Seminar, which means we get to cook our own dinner! I made dinner on Monday night with Hannah W, Sarah K, Aliyah, Jess, Chief, Micah, and Michael. We made brinner (breakfast for dinner), which consisted of chocolate chip and banana pancakes, broccoli and cheese frittata, and fruit salad! We also made a giant pancake for just those who helped make dinner. It was so good, and I basically filled up on the pancake before people even got there. 

Soon we will move to Akko, but before we do, we have to clean EVERYTHING. That is, our moadonot, kitot, and yard space. 

November on Workshop

Last Thursday we had a siyur in Haifa, where we learned about the history of the city. We visited a lookout point where we could see across the sea to Akko! We also learned about the different neighborhoods in the city.  Wadi Nisnas, an Arab neighborhood, is situated right next to Hadar HaCarmel, a Jewish neighborhood. We got to walk around Wadi Nisnas for a bit, so a few of us walked to a nearby bakery where we bought cookies! Hadar HaCarmel (more widely known as just Hadar), is a lot bigger and is located on higher land elevation. It's home to the Technion, which used to be the Israel Institute of Technology, but is now a museum of technology, science, and space. We ended the day downtown right next to an old Turkish shuk.

 After the siyur, Jess, Toviah, and I met up with one of our madrichim, Anna, who just recently made Aliyah to Israel. We went out for falafel and then went to a German section of the city where we had froyo/ ice cream!

It was really nice seeing Anna and talking to her about workshop and her new life in Israel. 

Another interesting part of workshop was  the module that we just finished. For the past two weeks we have learned about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict through peulot, discussions, guest speakers, and day trips. It was definitely a different kind of topic than the rest of the modules we've had. I think that it's a lot more relevant in our lives right now, not only because we are living in Israel, but also because we are 18 and 19 year olds living in an ever changing global society. This is a conflict that obviously includes the Israelis, Palestinians, and Arabs, however our home countries like the United States and Canada are also very involved in the issue as well. On Tuesday night, we listened to a guest speaker from Breaking the Silence, an organization against the occupation of the territories. Having grown up in the West Bank himself, the speaker posed many interesting viewpoints on the topic. He showed us a video of a border checkpoint where IDF soldiers were treating some of the Palestinians unfairly by threatening and physically assaulting them. 

Since Boneh is coming to a close, we finished many of our last courses this past week. My power course, masculinity, ended with a very interesting discussion on gender stereotypes and norms. Judaism course and Israeli society also ended. Workshop 63 is the first workshop to have experienced a course dedicated solely to Judaism and learning about our Jewish identities. While at times it was boring and very dry, I think that it sparked several discussions and questions that are very important to our growth as young Jewish individuals. I don't think I have ever thought that deeply about my Judaism as much as I did in this course, so it was very eye opening to be a part of it. For the last Israeli society, all of workshop joined together to watch Waltz with Bashir, an animated film on the first Lebanon war. The main character has a terrible vision from the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, so he seeks help from his friends, a psychologist, and other soldiers who served in the war to try to recall his involvement in it.  He eventually realizes that he helped shoot flares into the sky to aid the Christian Phalange militia commit the massacre inside the camps.The movie ends with real footage from the aftermath of the massacre.  Coming from someone who usually falls asleep when watching movies, I was definitely the opposite of falling asleep. It was incredibly interesting, and just goes to show the  psychological consequences that war can have on people, along with the extreme destruction that it can have on the villages and towns where people live.  We also had an incredibly deep and involved discussion about it afterwards. I loved hearing everyone's thoughts about the movie. An important question that we asked ourselves was "What is our responsibility towards the Arab-Israeli conflict? Both as Jews and individuals living in a complex society. What can we do to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again?

Our avodah also ended this past week. Micah and I said goodbye to Hovav, Ariel, and Baruch, and they wished us a good luck for the rest of our year.

Matan's birthday was this past Tuesday, the same day that we watched Waltz with Bashir.  It's definitely not the kind if movie you'd want to watch on your birthday. However, our kvutza had cake later that night, and then we joined with the other kvutza to have a silent rave. For those who don't know what a silent rave is, it's when you bring your ipod/ other music playing device and listen to your own music while dancing. It might sound weird, but it's actually hilarious. It's just a bunch of individuals dancing in a room to different music. Eventually, we played music in the speakers and all had a dance party. 

A major addition to workshop culture (specifically my kvutza) has been... knitting!! Personally, knitting helps me concentrate during peulot, so that's part of the reason why I knit, but it also is fun! I've already made 2 scarves and I'm beginning to make hats now too! There's a knitting store in Afula, so I've made a few trips to stock up on yarn.

On Thursday, November 18th, we had a siyur in the Golan Heights. We stayed in Israel for the entire duration of it, but we could see Jordan and Syria at many points.

Funny story: I uploaded a picture to Facebook from my phone. When you are on a mobile device and have your Location services turned on, Facebook will put the location of where you are with whatever you uploaded. Since I was literally on the Israel-Syrian border, Facebook said I was in Merom Golan, Syria!

It was so cool learning about the conflict over the land throughout the years. But let's be real, I think it was even cooler being so close to Syria and seeing tanks and soldiers alongside the road. What's sort of scary, but also in a way pretty neat, is the fact that there are still land mines in the ground from the wars. Luckily, the IDF has located the mines, and has put clear warnings and barbed wired fences to block off the areas of land where the mines are located. We also talked about how the Golan Heights was such an important/controversial area because of 3 things: the land, water, and military advantage. The land is important because it's near the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret), where water is much easier to obtain than in other parts of Israel. Geographically, it's situated on higher land than other parts of Israel so those who own the land have a clear military advantage. 

Jasper, the one member of workshop who is from Habonim Dror BeHolland, talked with some UN officers in Dutch since they were also from Holland! These officers were filming each other for a tv show explaining what they do at the Syrian-Israeli border.

Micah hanging out on one of the turrets.

The other kvutza all lined up for some artsy photos!

Hannah and Micah, two workshoppers from the Washington DC area in front of sign with many cities and their distances from where we were!

Aliyah looking out over the Kinneret.

Liat exploring some of the underground tunnels!

Chief taking some pictures.

Amit educating us on the history of the Golan.

Although yesterday was Thanksgiving, Workshop 63 is celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday, November 29th. Aliyah, Sara Banai, Hannah Blass-Martens, and I all helped make the dessert for our Thanksgiving/Shabbat dinner, while Jacob Henderson, Sam, Rachel Fishman, Asher, and a few others helped make the actual dinner. Stay tuned for a post soon with more information about our Workshop Thanksgiving!

Speaking of holidays, it's also Chanukkah! We are celebrating this holiday by meeting in the Stones moadon and lighting the candles and reciting the blessings every night with one another.  On Thursday night after our siyur to the Golan Heights, many of us went to the Chadar Ochel on kibbutz for a Chanukkah tekes (ceremony). This kibbutz-wide event included many songs, a few speeches, and some dancing. At the end we all got sufganiot (jelly-filled doughnuts!).

More about food. Lately workshoppers have taken on the role of master chefs. 

Dan and Micah both made homemade potato chips!

We also had French toast sticks for breakfast one morning!

Last Saturday, November 23rd, Toviah, Sara Banai, Aliyah, and I decided to go on a hike! We woke up pretty early and then walked to a nearby kibbutz where we were able to access some of the national trails of Israel. Toviah brought a frying pan, some eggs to make scrambled eggs, and oil. Aliyah brought a jar of peanut butter, cheese, bread, and pretzels. I brought fruit and vegetables! After walking for a few miles, we all sat down, built ourselves a fire and made scrambled eggs!

Toviah also brought his speakers and iPod, and decided to play funny music to go along with adventuring in the "wilderness." We ended up walking downhill a lot, which we hardly noticed until we had to walk all the way back up at the end. We walked past signs that said "wadi" the Arabic word for river. We thought there would be a river so we looked out for the sound of running water. Much to our surprise (but actually not really), the once called river was dried up. Along our hike, we climbed this pretty  steep hill. It was very tiny so it didn't take long to climb at all.

After walking for a few more miles, we decided to have lunch. With the oil, bread, cheese, frying pan, and another fire, Toviah made grilled cheeses for all of us! After lunch we had to start heading back. We thought we would be back around 4, but we didn't end up getting back until 5:30, and by that time it was already super dark. We walked through many orchards and hilly dirt fields to get back to kibbutz. We also saw some wild donkeys on the way back! 

Once we finally got back I could hardly feel my legs! We ended up hiking about 12-15 miles that day!

There have also been many members of workshop who have begun filming music videos. Matan Reshef decided to create a video to Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball, which stars many members of workshop lip syncing and doing other silly things.

You can  check out his video here!

Next week we will be doing a seminar on hagshama and the history of Habonim Dror. Each day we will be leaving kibbutz and travelling to a new location to learn. I've heard it's a very long and tiring week, but I'm very excited to get off kibbutz everyday.