Workshop 63: Rabin Rally

After a long, yet fulfilling weekend of picking olives and hanging out on Kibbutz Gezer, the 17 of us Workshoppers who went met up with the rest of the Workshop participants on Saturday, October 12th for the annual Rabin Rally in Tel Aviv. When we got off the van that brought us to Tel Aviv, we were all very tired, but excited to be able to experience such an event. While we were walking to try to meet up with the other Workshop participants, we saw many people wearing chultzot tnua (movement shirts). There were people from HaNoar HaOved (our sister movement in Israel), HaShomer HaTzair, and of course, Habonim Dror. We saw our new Australian, South African, and New Zealand friends from Yam l' Yam just a few weeks prior. We even saw some people walking with Habo Uruguay on the back of their shirts! It was amazing just walking the streets of Tel Aviv before the rally and seeing all the different movement shirts. It's sort of funny because when I'm in Philadelphia or any other public place in the United States, the first thing I look for when trying to find someone who belongs to Habonim Dror is the blue movement shirts that we wear. In Israel, not so much. It was very confusing having so many people walking around with chultzot tnua. However, that didn't stop us from seeing some familiar faces. While us olive pickers were walking to meet up with the rest of the Workshoppers (holding all of our sleeping bags, backpacks, and a microwave that we found [trust me on this one, it'll come in handy at some point on Workshop]), we saw Oded, Galil's most recent shaliach who just moved back to Israel after working at machaneh and in the eizor the past 2 years. While at the Rally, we met up with 3 members of Galil's 58 kvutza (Anna, Elissa, and Eve) who just made Aliyah last week! We also saw Pele, who is studying abroad this semester in Haifa, Hadar, one of the shlichim who worked at Galil this past summer, and a bunch of other familiar faces of those Habos who had made Aliyah over the past few years. We also saw Segev, who is here in Israel as part of Kivunim (another gap year program)!

The Rally was all in Hebrew, so many people had to translate for us. It was fascinating hearing the different speakers even though I don't speak Hebrew. One of the speakers was Yitzhak Rabin's grandson, Yonaton Ben Artzi, who talked about the importance of working towards peace with Palestinians. It was really interesting actually being at the Rabin Rally. I have heard about the rally from past workshoppers, but actually experiencing it was something special. I even got to hold one of the signs for some time, but I passed it off to someone else after about 40 minutes of holding it. I kept accidentally knocking people on the shoulders with it since I'm so short. Plus, holding up a giant sign requires immense arm muscle and that's just something I don't have. What was really interesting was that the rally had more of a positive outlook towards this event in Israeli history instead of the sadder feel that I get from going to the Rabin memorial service every year back at home in Philadelphia There's something really inspiring about going to a rally in the heart of Tel Aviv and participating in an event with 35,000 other people that commemorates the life and legacy of one of the most famous people in Israeli's history.

But honestly though, the rally was very overwhelming. It was a lot of fun and super interesting, but never having been to anything like that before was tiring and sort of nerve-racking. There were so many people and finding my friends amongst the crowd was like finding a needle in a haystack. At the end of the rally, we all boarded the bus to bring us back to kibbutz. I slept the entire way back, and awoke the next morning feeling extremely tired, yet so thankful that I was able to participate in such an exciting event.

It's now about 1:10 in the afternoon on a Thursday. I'm back at our house on Ein Dor while the rest of the workshoppers minus a few are hiking Har Tavor. I wasn't feeling well so I ended up coming back early and resting/writing this blog post before they return and the weekend commences.

Sarah Kravinsky and I at the rally right before it was about to begin.