A Quick Shalom

      A quick hello to those who aren't sure why I won't be able to talk to for quite some time, and a quick goodbye to those who do.

     Two thirty a.m. Jerusalem time, EIE will wake up in order to depart David Ben Gurion Airport at the right time. We will make it to Poland later in the morning, and from here we will go straight to Warsaw. Spending the night in a hostel, we will wake up and take a a nice long drive to Tikochin and explore its community and shtettle. We will also go to Lepochova, and learn a bit more. Day two ends in Lublin. 

     Day three, on April 2nd, We'll visit Lubin and Majdanek and then sleep in Krakow. The following day, we will go to the Jewish Quarter of Kazmiericz and see Schindler's Factory. We end this night back in Krakow and celebrate Shabbat here. In the morning, we will have services which I volunteered to take part in, and then we will walk around and see a museum. 

    Sunday, on April 5th, marks our 6th day in Poland, and we will in turn visit Birkenau and Auschwitz. Destined to be a sad day, hopefully we will learn a lot. Our final full day in Poland, we will take a ghetto tour as well as go back to the Warsaw Ghetto in which we began our Poland trip in, and here we will help clean it up. 

      As this is just the itinerary for what we will have done, I hope to have more to say when I find a computer. Emotions, thoughts, ideas, future plans, and hopefully a course of action will be included in my future blogs and with that, I have to go. Finished packing, my computer is the last to go to storage. This will prove to be an interesting experience.. 

Calamity

     Last night, a friend's dad came to talk to us about the Holocaust (or in Hebrew the Shoah, which translates to calamity). It was a really moving story about his trials growing up in Greece and hiding during all the years based on chance and luck. His mom's Italian nationality played huge role in his and his family's quest for safety, providing them protection. It was a major reason he and his family were spared German concentration camps. All in all, it was a very different Holocaust story then the ones I am used to hearing. It wasn't about camps, or about watching everyone you love perish, but instead it was one about living in constant fear and hiding around Europe in hopes they could survive. Having a mostly happy ending, with there entire nuclear family remaining in tact and united, it showed me a very different aspect of the Shoah, and the luck, chance, and bribery that played in survival.

     Today, we went to Yad V'shem, which literally means Hand and Name. This is the major Holocaust museum/memorial site in Israel. It was very moving and out of all the museums and memorials, this was by far my favorite. Of course this is an ironic statement, seeing as it is to commemorate the slaughter of 11 million people (which they said they recounted and the number is actually  something approaching 13 million), but the way they did it made a big impact and captured a real light to the people who were killed. This place gave them names and faces and families and jobs and homes and it gave them a sense of humanity which the Shoah stripped them of before their untimely deaths.

     Two things at Yad V'Shem really captured my attention. First, the child's memorial, which has widely claimed fame for being Yad V'Shem's most interesting and powerful display. Walking in to this pitch black room, all there was were candles to commemorate the one and a half million children lost. People remark on the mirrors, which appear to be holding millions of these candles, but I saw something slightly different and askew. Entering this memorial, I witnessed the blackness of the room. Not the colour or the cold, but definitely something that overcame me... a numbness. Unlike most other people, I slowly lifted my eyes to see only six candles, surrounded by a world of stars behind an eerie vail. 

      I suppose the vail was merely the glass, and the stars merely reflections of candle light, and the names echoing from wall to wall merely a broken record destined to play all the names of the children, recorded for 17 hours, and then over and over again. It might have just merely been a memorial, but I'm almost positive there were stars and an echoing memory in that room. Despite the rational behind what I saw and heard and most of all felt I just know it was stars and memories that I had witnessed.

     Something else that reached out to me was a photograph near the end of the 'tunnel'. Yad V'Shem built to represent a tunnel, we were approaching the liberation and came across this section that almost reached the closing of the war. Instead of hope, I saw this picture that took up a big portion of the wall all the way off to the right. It was blurry and black and white, but more vivd than anything I have witnessed. I just read the picture, and not the caption, and the simple words that came to me were that of  love and hate. It might be important to describe what the picture was of, but, again, all it showed was love and hate. Maybe it had a mother holding her daughter close to her. In her arms, hugging her tight, the child burying her face into the mother, while all the mother could seemingly do is whisper to her child... mouth pressed aside the child's ear. The image of never letting go, even when the child's feet were dangling in the air, not inches above from a grave most likely to be claimed as their own. Love is for the family who wouldn't let go. What appeared to be six feet away, the a soldier held up a rifle, eye-piece on his face and the barrel in his hand, cocked and ready to fire a deer hundreds of feet away, yet this prey was close enough to touch. Only six feet away, soon to be a shallow six feet under. In the position to fire, and in the mindset to kill, hate is for the people who try and abolish love. Hate is for the man who has blood on his hands.

     Maybe, I could be wrong, and it was not in fact a picture of all of this. Maybe, it wasn't a German soldier, maybe it wasn't a mother, maybe it wasn't a child, or a ditch by their side. It might have not been a shotgun, and maybe I was all wrong, for after all it was a picture as blurry in quality, as it was in the tears looked through by sad eyes. But what I remember vividly and clearer than its poor quality, was the great pain it caused me to feel, and the heartache that rattled my ribs, and most importantly the love and hate instilled in me with one single shot.

     If the Shoah was the world's Holocaust, then this picture is my personal calamity.

1,000 Days

 Today marks the 1,000h day that Gilat Shalit was captured on the Israeli/Syrian border in 2006.

     Well, I haven't written a blog in forever! It has been quite some time (12 days in fact), and it is probably due to a whole SLEW of things thats been going on. Of what I can remember (which isn't much), we have been on a few tiyuls, one of which was a Christian and Islam Tiyul. We visited a church and a mosque. We talked about the history of the religions and some of the religious aspects of their daily lives. I found the other religion tiyuls very important to understand anti-semitism and the major conflicts of war.

     What else has been new since then? I have been talking to home and camp friends more than usual, and it reminds me how much I love Israel.. but also, how much I miss both my family and friends back in America. This leads into the point that, during the Parents' Pilgrimage this week, I have felt slightly more alone than before. 

     My Aunt and Uncle came which was REALLY exciting. I was very happy to see them, you know... just a familiar face. I am so happy they came but, with that, also quite sad because the week has came and gone, and they will be leaving tomorrow! The only thing I have to look forward to is the normalcy that has been absent with the parents here (especially because of the jumbled schedules).

      Shabbat, is another thing on my list of good-times in the last two weeks. This shabbas a woman came from America... and she was notorious at my camp as being the crazy-lady. She lead a short jam-session, and we all had a blast. But what I can't get over is... well, the URJ camps are all similar in ways, but our traditions are very distinct. There is this small funny-feud going on between OSRUI and Eisner, because we both have a lot of our fellow-alumni attending EIE this spring. A major conflicts in traditions is while Eisner gets up and jumps, and dances, and makes a wild-crazy-fun time out of song sessions, OSRUI kids sit down during them and do hand motions and sing with ruach.. but nothing compared to the spirit of a dozen Eisnerites jumping in unison. But, with our small feud (in jest of course) we tend to split up during our EIE song sessions. This one, however, was just.. very, very.... it made me smile to no end. It started off with us all sitting down, and then the Eisnerites jumped to their feet to dance to our familiar songs... but those familiar to the OSURI kids, they sang just as loud as us and did their hand motions. But, something happened during the song session. We were yelling at each other to sit (if you were form OSRUI) or stand (if you were from Eisner) and then I just started to kid around and broke out into Bob Marley "Stand up for your rights" and when the other Eisner kids joined in, the OSRUI kids got up! We all then proceeded to celebrate and united we danced to these songs. Soon enough, it came to a song we didn't know, but the OSRUI kids did! We all sat down, and once again, united, did the hand motions the OSRUI kids taught us. This is when I believe the Eisner/OSURI feud ended... with the blending and compromise on our traditions that most of us have been taking part in since grade school. I finally felt like we were are apart of EIE, and we left behind our old affiliations to some major extent. Finally, it was a real EIE song session.

      The last two weeks, have been filled with a lot of things like birthdays and trips and adventures. I regret not taking time out of my busy day to write it down, but I came across a realization while walking to my room last night. Some one asked how I was and I looked up to the starry blue sky to realize I couldn't be any better. 

Last Night Candle Light

      Ill make this as brief as possible, but I wanted to get this one moment in time, before I let it fade into the past.

     In order to get ready for Poland, we had a bonding time with our group, Gadid. We all lit candles, and did this thing were we tapped a person if they made a impact on our lives, (The Counselors announced like "made you smile" or "want to know better"). We then got a 2 and a King, in order to symbolize our best and worst moments in our lives. We shared them with the group, and I felt the entire group just get closer by sharing personal moments with people we hardly knew a few weeks before. It was incredible...

     At the closing of this bonding time, in the dark, on the basketball court, in the chilly weather, we took our 2's symbolizing out worst memories and burned them in the candles we originally lit. It was a liberating moment, from our past, and bonded us for our future embarkments. 

Purim Festives

     Last night started Purim!!! We held a short service were we read Magillah Ester. I read a small part of it, too! Although I'm pretty sure I messed up a whole bunch... and there's a good chance no one was even paying attention, I'm proud I didn't completely back out. I nearly cried when I got up there though. I practiced for an hour (seeing as I got it during lunch) but I felt like I didn't know any of it! I was just SO happy to get it over with. During the service, there was a dance showing the king trying to pick out the girl he wanted to replace Queen Vashti. It was HYSTERICAL! The boys dressed in skirts and bikini tops with scarves and dresses were worn too. They were belly dancing and it was just indescribably funny! When the dance was over and the service finished up, we had a dance party. It was a nice attempt, but the music was pretty bad. I had fun looking at the costumes and the sparkling/shiny accessories of the people who did decide the music was dance-able to, though. I found a lot of the costumes funny and very cool. I was dressed as a pink Faeri... tutu, wings, and all! 

     Today, we got to wake up at 9! We also went to a Purim parade! It was soo much fun! We had to get into groups of four, but mine was six. We just scaled the entire section of the street we were on. There were colourful floats and little kids dancing in the streets. It was a really nice parade. We were only at the parade for an hour and a half, but we then voted to go to Tel Aviv 15 minutes away (or at least it felt like it.. I could have fallen asleep on the bus). Here we ran through the festival in the streets with booths and stalls set up to sell various things. I saw I guy setting up, and in a few minutes my entire group and I were front row for a cool street performer. He did a bunch of fire tricks and dancing with the fire. It was a cool performance. 

     We got back to the kibbutz, but we met with the madrachim at 7:30. They brought us into the woods and we had a nice camp fire. We sang songs (some Hebrew ones were thrown in) and made smores! This was really a nice close to our Purim. Today over all was a pretty awesome day. 

Weekend Break

Rachel and I once again went out for the weekend to Noa's house. Already making ourselves at home with her parents and younger sister, I love going to see them all. They are by far the most awesome people to spend our very few weekends with. This weekend started out with EIE going to Tel Aviv to the mall. There I met one of my friend's friends. She was very cool. We spent a nice time in the mall, were me and Martine broke off quite a bit and walked around sporadically checked out stores. All of us then got back to the Kibbutz were I crashed! 

     The next morning was out Tikun Olam Project. This time we went to Asbestos Valley by the Monster in Jerusalem. It was were the border of Jordan and Israel once was, making it a buffer ground for so many years. The Jerusalem Council decided to make it a park and clean it up, so that's were our group came in. We helped (like many groups before us) to clean this valley. It was hard work trying to mulch even a small terrace, after cleaning out all the trash from it. After our hard work we set up a fire and made pita! It was soo tasty, by far my favorite thing to eat and make. It reminded me of K'far Teva (nature village) from Eisner. 

     At the end of the pita making/eating, we got picked up and made our way to Noa's house. Once we got there, we hung out for a bit, made a cake and went to her friend's house for her birthday! We met up with all the kids Rachel and I met last time, and had a really fun time hanging out and dressing up! It's Purim tomorrow, and she had all these costumes which all the boys decided to try on. It was a really funny night. Today we woke up pretty late and made pancakes. We also started cutting boxes while watching Grey's Anatomy with her parents. We were cutting the boxes to put treats in them so she could give her friends for Purim. We also made Hummantashins ... or however you spell it. All I can say was this weekend was very relaxing, and I had a fun time!