Panoramic View of the "Disco-Bombshelter"

Descent into the Shelter

The Entrance to one of Netivaleh's Many Bombshelters

Anything Look Different?

Sunday night speaker

I know I am skipping what happend on Saturday night, but I feel that what happend this Sunday is more important. Don't worry, I have notes and will probably get around to posting [Saturday's events] tomorrow.

One of the really cool components of the Boneh program is that on every sunday night, our madrichim (counselors) bring in external speakers for us. Tonight's session was incredibly intense.

We had two speakers, an Israeli and a Palestinian, from a group called The Parents' Circle come and talk to us about a cooperative Israeli and Palistinian path to peace. In a nutshell, they try to bring both sides together to show both sides that the other side are human beings too, and are suffering from the violence. Check out the link to find out more about them. If you have any questions, or anything is unclear, please post a comment and I will respond. The evening started out with Aaron, the Israeli, telling us his story.

Aaron was born many many years ago in Argentina. He made aliya when "[he] was a youngster, like [the Habonim group]." He married his wife and had three kids, one daughter then two sons. They were an incredibly liberal family, going to rallys, protests, and the like. His oldest, his daughter, completed her compulsory army service without any problem.

His second child, his son Alon, wanted to become a pilot but did not pass one of the final pilots' tests. He decided to join what is considered to be one of the most dangerous branches of the Tzahal (the Israeli Army -- short for "Tzava Hagana L'Yisrael", which means "Israeli Defensive Army"), the EOD. The EOD is the Explosive Ordinances Division, and their role is to study and disarm hostile explosive devices. His platoon worked in Lebanon.

Noam, the youngest child, wanted become a pilot, but ended up joining his brother's platoon. Noam still had time left in the army after his brother had left. Noam's official time in the Army ended on year at Passover, but he felt that it was his duty to volunteer for an additional month to support his platoon-mates. Before he left home to return to Lebanon, his mother gave him a little amulet that read in Hebrew, "We Must Leave Lebanon." His commanding officers at the base were very much against Noam wearing the amulet on his uniform, but he told them that he was volunteering and if they made him take it off, he would leave. About a week into his volunteer service, Noam was killed by a Hamas remotely detonated bomb.


After Aaron spoke, Sheeri, the Palestinian, told us her story:

Sheeri has had three tragedies in her family.

Her civillian uncle was an innocent bystander killed during a Tzahal mission in Beirut.

Her grandmother used to live in an Arabic village in Israel. After a series of piguot (terrorist attacks) in Israel, the Tzahal decided to increase the security surronding and inside of her grandmother's village. The additional security included a total lockdown of residents, preventing anyone from going into or leaving from the village. One day, a canister of tear-gas was launched near to the grandmother's house. The grandmother became so freightened that she had a heart-attack. Sheeri's aunt called an ambulance for the grandmother, but it was in vain. The Tzahal officer refused to allow the grandmother and aunt to leave and go to a hospital. Worse, the officer also denied the paramedics either option of caring for the grandmother inside of the city or taking her to a hospital. As Sheeri put it, her Grandmother was killed by the decision of that officer.

After a similar time of increased tension due to piguot (but not increased security) Sheeri's brother and his friend were walking to their Grandfather's land to help him with the work around the family's small farm. A hitchiking Israeli officer saw them, and without reason or cause, shot the boys in the throat and killed the two boys instantly.


Both Sheeri and Aaron continued to tell different stories about their work together and the work of The Parents Circle. (Post a comment if you want to me to write one of the stories).

The take home message of their program is that both people, not necessarily the governments, are sick and tired of the needless bloodshed. People on both sides have realized that iron fist policies will only result in the other side retaliating leading to the original side retaliating... ad infinitum. Only working together towards peace can break the otherwise unending circle of violence.

Thursday

Israeli weekends (AKA: Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday) are my lazy time. That is, I make notes of what to post, but I probably won't post it. So here's what happened on thursday:

I unfortunatly have trained myself to wake at either the slightest alarm sound or the first light; so, even though we had a sleep-in, I woke up and went to breakfast. Everyone thought that we would be able to sleep through Zman Nikayon (lit.- cleaning time), so I went back to bed, expecting to be able sleep in to 11. Around 9am, our madrichim sent as all a text message to meet Tomer in front of the chadar ochel at 9:20am. So much for a sleep-in.

It was kind of frustrating since all that happened was him telling us that we need to clean our rooms. After cleaning, we had a bit of free time and then lunch.

On Thursdays, after lunch, our schedules have a several hour block of time reserved for something called "Educational Processing." It turned out to be us recieving our kibbutz-long assignment of taking everything that we have learned and applying to the topic of "My Community and Me." Afterwards, we played a quick little game (I'll post more about it later... maybe :D). We used the remaining time to check-in with each other about our first week of the Boneh program and what we thought was good, could be better, etc.. Someone made a comment that I now look like the villian from The Incredibles; ergo, I must now watch the movie. Not a bad assignment, eh?

More free time after our "Educational Processing",

9-21 Morning update

I neglected to post a few things for Wednesday 9-21... oops!

Everything that I described in the other post was what we did starting from noon onwards, but we did have classes before that. Wednesday morning began with the first hebrew class. I was very happy to find out that I was in the highest class for Hebrew, Kvutza Daled (lit.- group four), which happened to meet inside one of the Kibbutz's many bombshelters!

Being early to class, I descened into the dark depths of the Miklat (Hebrew for bombshelter) with Iris. We stumbled a bit as we neared the pitch-black bottom of the shelter since the lights were not on. Once we fixed that, moving around was much easier. It turns out that some of the Kibbutznikim (lit.- people whom live on the kibbutz) had turned this miklat into a makeshift club replete with a disco-ball, several colored lights, decorations on the walls, and a weird "cloud-esque" ceiling. I promise to get a picture up soon!

The class was pretty fun, but not super-instructional -- hopefully that will change once we settle down into a normal schedule. We started by telling the group of our favorite scar and the story behind it (entirely in Hebrew). I told of how my sister (Sarah) and I both gained our love for fencing: by play-fighting each other and BY ACCIDENT sending me to the E.R. with a very deep laceration on my knuckle. Technically, it was my right proximal interphalangeal joint. Enough of that.

We then went around and sang a Hebrew song about the months and used that to learn several words; it was a good idea, except that the words are not what we call ivrit shimusheet, that is, useful hebrew. We then acted out several different situations completely in Hebrew. The funniest was when Idon played the role of an Israeli trying to meet some woman (Liat) on the beach. He played the role of a creepy Israeli better than most Israelis would be able to do it!

We then paired off into groups of two and made pretty, pretty pictures (cynicism intended) depicting the Hebrew months. Hopefully our Ivrit (Hebrew) class will get better.

9-21 Details

So all of the Workshoppers and Shnaties (the Habonim Dror UK year-long program) split up into two groups today with one going to Tel Aviv and the other to Jerusalem.

The group that went to Tel Aviv went to the Diaspora Museum. The group that went to Jerusalem did a few things. First, we went to the Israeli Supreme Court which is actually more of an appeals court than anything since Israel lacks a constitution. We then went to look at, but not enter, the Knesset. Afterwards, we went to the Time Elevator in Jerusalem which is basically a 30 minute movie on the history of Israel with seats that move synchronized to the video. In essence, it was a video ride through Israeli history. After that, we had 20 free minutes near Ben Yehuda street.

Oops! I Forgot about Tuesday!

Such is life-- you procrastinate writing a blog entry for a little bit, and then later realize that you completely forget to write it!

Here's what we did on Tuesday

We started off with a Jewish History course in the classroom of the Moadon. The teacher, Dina Pina, covered her basic rules and expectations, and then asked everyone about their family history and origins. The diversity of histories in the room was quite interesting: everything from first generation American Jews to American Jews from the early 1610's! We then covered a little piece from pirkei avot (a Jewish text, the title translates to The Teachings of our Fathers) in chevruta style.

Note: Chevruta style is when two people try to go through and figure out\ argue about the meaing of the text. It is preferally done in the text's original language since a lot of possible meanings are lost in translation, as all translations require interpretations and therfore have bias.

As we were studying the English translation, I decided to put my many years of Jew-School education to work and actually translate the Hebrew for myself. I had a lot more fun doing it that way, and I feel as if I learned more and was able to interpret it more by using the original Hebrew.

After that, we went to our next class, Cultural Judaism, in the other bomb-shelter across from the Army base that's here on Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed Hey. It was quite amusing that the only people who were on time (actually, early) were three of us from Camp Tavor (myself, Etta, and K'Tanaw). Everyone else came a little late, but it was O.K. since they had brought food! The instructor was fairly peeved that we were late and that we brought food (he didn't allow eating in his class). Most of the class was discussion about how Habonim Dror approaches Judaism. Meh.... not my favorite.

Afterwards, we had Lunch, and then our entire Kvutza got a very nice text message: Our next class, Israeli Society, was canceled due to a slight technical difficulty: The teacher was nowhere to be found. Needless to say, we were all quite happy to have a free-block. I used the time to sleep and do some more computer work... yay!

Alas, our free-block ended, and we were forced to resume studies with our Israeli History class. The class had promise, but the instructor tended to just talk at us about the different aaliyot (pilgramiges to Israel) instead of talk with us. Hopefuly the next classes will be more interesting.

The day ended up with dinner and more free time... not a bad day at all.

Note: The classes are likely nowhere near as bad as I make them out to be -- it's just that the bad is much easier to remember than the good! I really am enjoying myself here and learning quite a bit.

What follows Sunday? Monday!

A new day, a new set of classes. The day started off with all of the Workshopers and Shnat-ers (Habonim Dror UK) meeting on the Basketball courts at 8:30 where we met the people who would be leading our Ulpan (intensive Hebrew courses). From there, we split up by kvutza (Kvutzat Poreh went to the moadon) to take the tests.

Personally, I found the Hebrew tests to be fairly easy, and at the risk of sounding more geeky, kind of fun. We got to match pictures with words, free associate in Hebrew, and even read a story from Rechov SumSum (the Hebrew version of Sesame Street). Since I got done fairly quickly, I had free time for about an hour and half which I used to take a very luxurious nap.

After the nap, Yom Kvutzah (Kvutzah day) began. We did a quick news-summary where people got into groups of 2-3, got a newspaper, and selected a few articles to comment on. My group deciding that standard newspaper wouldn't do; we went online and found two good articles: one about an elephant treadmill installation at the Anchorage Zoo, and one about face transplants for persons with severly disfigured faces.

After that we had a 30 minute break, and then another peulah (activity) where our madrichot (counselors), Noga and Caren Minkoff, forced us (sweatshop-style) to cut up vegetables. This led into a discussion about personal identies and our roles in society... don't ask me how, though.

After dinner, we had a peulah kef (fun activity) in which we played the game Mafia but with a twist: each of us came in a certain, random character style, but were assigned a secondary, secret character. After the townspeople woke up, each of us had to write a task for someone else in the group to do. IE: My secret character was the singer, so I wrote tasks such as: "Person A must serenade person B about how they brush their teeth."

After that, I was tired and went to bed.

What happened to Sunday?

Sunday was the first official day of the Boneh program. My kvutzah (Kvutzat Poreh) started off the day with Socialist Zionism at 8:30am in the Moadon (Literally: club-house\hang-out place). It was fairly interesting (even if it did feel like they were trying to brainwash us). The material that we read had several spelling mistakes in it... I feel like Socialist Zionism may be my least favorite class.

Our next class was Hadracha with Brando, one of our madrichim for Boneh. Side Note: Brando is from Australia, and tends to shorten the names of most things -- hence "Brando" from Brandon. The English language does not have a direct translation for the word "Hadracha"; according to our Israeli madricha, Noga, Hadracha implies a mix of guidance, counseling, and education. We covered leadership, what makes someone a good leader, goals and how to achieve them.

Afterwards, we had a hafsacha (lit.- break) and then lunch. After lunch, we gathered in the parking lot with water, sunscreen, hats, closed toe-shoes, and long pants since it was Kvutzat Poreh's once-a-week work time. We were driven about a mile and a half a way and instructed how to pick the peppers used to make paprika. We all got stuck in thorns, covered in dirt and dust, and very sweaty during our four hour work detail. Each of us picked about 3 burlap-sack- fulls of the peppers.

Afterwards, Theo, Myself, Bram, Lonny, and Jeremy all went to the calbo (kibbutz store) and got a bunch of food for the entire kvutza. A new tradition was created: after work, we all pig out on the snacks that we never would normally get on kibbutz. Thankfully, it only happens once a week!

After dinner, we had a speaker who tlaked to us about what it means to be Jewish and how Judaisim collectively is Zionist and maintains Israel as its center focus. I was tired and afterwards went to bed (9:20pm).

Saturday and Partial Sunday Updates

Saturday was quite a good day. We got to sleep in, a few people from our kvutzah brought some tuna sandwiches for breakfast, and have a fairly relaxing day. I got to do a lot of reading of my mathematics proof and logic book. It's called "How to Proove It: A Structured Approach" by Daniel J. Velleman. It's quite useful; as much of a math geek that I am, I have never had a formal logic course, so I believe that this will be both interesting and useful.

After dinner, all of the kibbutz was invited to the Chag Meshek celebration. In the kibbutzim, the chag Meshek is the kibbutz's birthday celebration. The Bar-Mitzvah age kids performed a hatzagah (a play) for everyone that was quite funny, as long as you could understand the Hebrew.

The Hatzagah was in the style of "The Godfather" just set on the kibbutz. In it they made fun of just about everyone on the kibbutz, including us Habonim Dror folks. There are sixty of them coming... there are 90 of them coming... maybe sixty... maybe 90 -- Who Knows? The best part was when all the kids made fun of the fundamental, right-wing Jewish settelers.

Squidget (Sarah) and Yael at night on the beach at the youth hostel (Karei Deshek) in the Golan.

A sign that we saw in Tzfat (safed). It's funny because on MB we went to a zionist settler's museum where an ancient woman sang a song with these exact words.

A view of Tzfat (Safed). It is believed that the Mashiach will come from a small tiny alley directly to the right of the photo.

Waterfall from the Banias river in the Golan. We did a waterhike above it, and swam in the freezing pool below it.

Part of the non-waterhike river in the Golan.

A little bit of rapids from a small river in the Golan. This was not the waterhike day.

A bunch of people hanging out at Kibbutz Afikim.

This one should be obvious. A photo of the dome of the rock and of the Kotel. Taken on our first Friday in Israel.

The Sabbath Approaches

It's been another hot, long day here at Kibbutz Netiv Ha Lamed Hey. Its just a few short days until the main content of Boneh starts. Soon we will be studying:

• Israeli Society
• Israeli History
• Jewish History
• Socialist Zionism
• Cultural Judaisim
• Hebrew
• Hadracha

We don't know exactly what the courses will cover, but once I know, I will be sure to post the details. Personally, I am looking forward to Hebrew as I really like learning languages, but I am sure that they all will end up being quite fun.

Today the children on the Kibbutz invited us to participate in kabbalat shabbat with them. We went to their moadon (literally: club house) where we said the blessings over the wine and challah, ate some of sweetest challah I have ever had, and then played soccer with them. At first, they wanted to play strictly against us, but we refused since they are so young (kindergarden through 6th grade). We played with them for about 30 minutes, and then went to have lunch.

Since then, I have been in our moadon answering some email, working on this blog, fixing my laptop, fixing the other computers, copying music from kara, and hepling other people with their photos. All in all, a good day.

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