In The News!

Hi Everyone,

A week or two ago, we had the Israeli correspondent for the Detroit Jewish News come and interview Oren, K'tanaw, and myself.  While there are a few errors, it's still cool to be the main article.  Link available here.

--Dov

About a week ago, we finally decided to clean our room. This is the first time since we've arrived that anyone has been able to see the floor in its entirety.

This should give you an idea of the size of our rooms. Note: I am ~6'1".

This is Jez, our teacher for Cultural Judaism class. His class is awesome as he truly forces us to think critically about the things we have taken for granted all our lives. Today was his birthday, so we made him a little present and forced him to wear it the rest of the day.

The retaining wall and part of the excavations at the temple mount.

A view out into West Jerusalem from about the eye-level of where the Beit HaMikdash (great Temple) stood 2000 years ago.

This is a photo from the southern archeological excavations near the Kotel (western\wailing wall) in the old city of Jerusalem. It is perhaps the closest that I will ever get to the temple mount, Arab East Jerusalem, and the Al-Aksa mosque. Note the barbed wire to the upper right of the photo.

Yes, I am a geek. This is a sgi Onyx2 graphics workstation. It powered a 3D virtual tour of the reconstructed model of the Beit HaMikdash (great temple). If you too are ready to jump into geekdom, click here.

A view of the stage.

The first of a few views of the rally to try and give you a feel for how many people were at the rally. Note: these were taken ~1 hour before the rally. The square you see here (and the other two spaces roughly 2X this square's size) were litterally packed with people. There was little, if any, space to move about in.

Another side view.

The last side view.

There were a ton of people from HaNoar HaOved V'Lomed, our sister youth group, at the rally.

Pre-bed update

Hi everyone,

This is just a short post before I go to bed, more details and photos will be added tomorrow or Monday.

Tonight there was a memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin in Tel-Aviv. The rally marked 10 years since Rabin's assasination. All of the Workshoppers and the British Shnatties attended the rally. Former President Bill Clinton gave the keynote speech.

It's in the news at:
BBC News
Google News

--Dov

This past Monday, we participated in a 60+ year old olympics held in Jerusalem. I don't have any photos from during the race as we were getting soaked by a torrential downpour. This is after the race, at a soccer-field in Jerusalem. The, for lack of a better term, old-ladies and two Workshoppers (John and Gabe) are being led in some excercises.

This past weekend (Nov. 4-5) we went up to Kibbutz Ain Dor, near the Kineret (where we did the Yam L' Yam hike), for a seminar about Yitzhak Rabin and the peace-process. Rabin was chosen as the topic since it has been 10 years since his Assasination. (Incidentally, we will be attending a rally tomorrow night in Tel Aviv that commemorates Rabin.) At the seminar we were divided into three types of groups: English speaking, Hebrew speaking, and Spanish\Portuguese speaking. I decided to do the Spanish\Portuguese group since it would be one of the few times where I could practice my Spanish during the Workshop year. They were an incredible group of people and welcomed the four of us non-native Spanish speakers. At first, picking up the Portuguese was incredibly difficult, but as we got used to their accents we were able to understand and communicate witht them. They taught us, and vice-versa, about how Habonim Dror works in their countries. This is a photo of all of us at the end of the seminar.

The "crazy" shot.

If you hadn't heard by now, we have a little bit of a lice infestation. Which, in turn, has become a lice infatuation. The desktops of most of our computers have some lice related background image. Either way, our Madrichim (counselors) decided to implement a folk-remedy for the lice - dousing your head in olive-oil, wrapping it in plastic-wrap, and then waiting at least 4 hours. I would like to point out that the only evidence of this method working is anecdotal and that, according to a Harvard School of Public Health report, there are just as many claims of failure as there are claims of success. (NOTE: This photo is about 1 week old. At the time, we had thought we had fully taken care of the lice problem. It turns out that we haven't; several people were found with lice today!)

On November 2nd, we went to Mt. Scopus - one of many battle sites during the Six Day War (June 5th 1967). This is one of the exhibits inside the bunker\museum.

Kara overlooking Jerusalem from the trenches at Mt. Scopus

After visiting Mt. Scopus, we went to the zoo in Jerusalem. As with all things in Jerusalem, there was a twist - it was a Biblical Zoo. All the animals had to have some sort of biblical reference. This photo is from the lake at the front of the zoo.

Part of the bird exhibit.

The photo didn't come out so well, so I went "artsy" on it to make it look better.

Wusie's (Ilana G.) parents sent us a very tasty cake for Halloween. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

Even Yoko, a kibbutz dog, enjoyed the cake!

Interesting Peulah on Tuesday

I wanted to let evveryone know of an interesting\thought provoking peulah (activity) that my kvutzah (group) did on Tuesday afternoon. We watched a 20 minute documentary called "Pallywood," which addresses the claim of staged riots and violence relating to the Israeli and Palestinain conflict.

The video led us into a conversation about media bias, how one chooses sources and addresses their reliability, and how the Internet has affected media and the way people react to it.

Take a look at the video as it's quite provoking. But, remember that everyone has a bias. I'm curious about what you guys (the readers) think is biased in this video and what does it seem to imply? Post a comment with your thoughts.

--Dov