Blog from Reena:
Although we woke up super early this morning, today was
amazing. We started off driving the steep way up to Tzfat. We saw it yesterday from afar,
from Har Arbel, but it was even better seeing it up close. The Hasidic women, men, and kids
running around everywhere made the trip so much more spiritual. We walked around, following Ariel
(our tour guide) as he explained a lot about Kabballah, and tried to make us understand more
about the way some of the people up there live. The blue doors and railings were so cool to
see, something that is done for Kabballistic reasons. We walked to the synagogue where
Lecha Dodi was written. Lecha Dodi is a beautiful prayer and it was so cool to see where it was
born. The columns, and ark were beautiful. The bimah in the middle was very cool
to see, and I hope to experience some Tfillah in a synagogue like that. We walked down to
the Tzfat candle shop and saw amazing, colorful Havdallah, Shabbat, and Chanuka
candles. We found kippot, hamsas, jewelry and food. Someone was selling iced
coffee, and even though I don't like coffee, I tried it - iced coffee is way
better in Israel than it is in America because it is almost smoothie-like,
rather than coffee with melted ice in it!
Then we drove down the hills a bit and stopped in Banias.
On the way, we stopped on the side of a road to stand for the siren for Yom
Hazikaron; we saw that everyone stops what they are doing, even getting out of their cars in the middle of everything, for a minute of remembrance during the siren. Afterwards we took a nature walk, and walked on wood stairs through different types
of tree, including myrtle and fig. We stopped at bright turquoise water. The
water was flowing so fast it was foaming and looked white. The rush of the water
was so loud it was almost hard to talk over it. We walked back out and ate
lunch and headed off to the dormant volcanoes that Ariel had been pointing out
to us.
We slowly drove up to Bental, a former army base. Ariel
brought us down to a bunker, somewhere that people had to sleep some nights. As I have never been in
war, never experienced that, it was interesting to see how some people had to live for
years, or for a portion of their life. As we stepped out into the bright sunlight, we walked to the side of Bental, and looked out over
the Golan Heights. We talked about a few of the Israeli wars
and tried to understand them. Ariel pointed out the definitive line of the Golan
Heights, something we have been seeing on maps for years; an Israeli flag was marking the border
here, and there was a United Nations checkpoint there. He even pointed out that you could hear muffled sounds from the Syrian civil war far in the distance beyond the border. It was very interesting to see the place, something I
have been hearing about, seeing about, and learning about for years. We were able to talk to
some United Nations' guards, one from Slovenia, and one from Denmark. They were standing watch
over the border.
We then went back to Ashdot Yaakov (the kibbutz where we
are staying) to shower and change for our Yom Haatzmaut celebration/party in
Tiberias. When we got there, there were already a lot of people with more coming, and it was already a mess with silly
string, and live music playing. Dudu Aaron, Yuval Dayan, and many others
including children were singing and dancing. There was silly string, and horns,
and shops, and food, and thousands of people. It was so much fun to dance and
sing with my friends, to window shop, and celebrate Israeli independence.
Tonight I will go to sleep happy.
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