Hi everyone!
I hope you all had a good time during the previous month’s worth of holidays, including Homecoming weekend for those of you at Western.
One of the things I really like about being in Israel is that when the holidays are approaching you really feel it – mainly because you are forced to. The buses shut down and all the stores closes down so you have to figure out where you’re going to camp out for the 2 days of the holidays when public transit shuts down and also be sure there is food available because you can’t go shopping. Sukkot this year was a lot of fun not only because it was spent in Israel where everyone celebrates and really feels the spirit of the holiday, but also because I spent it on my kibbutz. The atmosphere was very festive, probably in part due to the fact that there were millions of kids running around for the past week because they had a week and a half off from school for Sukkot. Erev chag was spent at my roomate’s kibbutz family’s house for dinner, along with my kibbutz family and another 30 kibbutznik guests. The food was amazing and it was so much fun that by the end of the night my entire garin of 20 people was there in addition to all the invited guests.
Over the past weeks since my last update, we had the opportunity to go visit a high school in one of the many neighbouring Arab villages – Abu Snan. We played a few ice breakers just to get to know the students there a bit and then went on a quick tour of some of the religious sites in the village. Abu Snan has a population of a little more than 10 000 people, of them around 50% Muslim, 30% Druze, and 20% Christian. What really struck me is that despite what is portrayed in the media all the time about all the conflicts, you can have this school full of Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, and Druze, all Israeli citizens with the same rights as any other Jewish Israeli and for the most part they get along. What’s even more shocking is that several of the Druze students end up serving in the IDF and they are even supported and respected by the school administration and the rest of the students. At the end of the visit we sat down together with them and ate some delicious locally made Chumus. To top off the day, once we sat down to eat with the Israeli-Arab students, one of the school principles stands up and says the famous saying ‘שבת אחים גם יחד’ or shevet achim gam yachad, which translates to something like ‘brothers dwelling together and in peace’. I am really grateful for having been able to take part in this and I hope that small steps like these can lead to bigger advances to peace in the Middle East, or as Tyler says, PITME.
In other news, last week all the guys in my garin participated in a mock gibbush (=tryout) to simulate the gibbush that is done by anyone who wishes to serve in an elite unit (=sayeret) here in the Israeli army. The day started off with a 4 AM wake up in order to get to the beach near Rosh Hanikra (which is right beside the border with Lebanon) where we would be getting our asses kicked. First on the agenda were sprints to an object maybe 40 meters away and back. The first 4 people back earned the right to carry the stretcher loaded with 70 kg worth of sandbags while 5th and 6th place each settled for a container with 15L of water in it for the next sprint. After about 30-45 minutes of this at which point everyone was tired out we moved on to crawling. This lasted for maybe 30 minutes, which was the hardest part for me. Crawling on all fours with your body sliding along the floor is hard enough without the added difficulty of dragging along all that sand.
Once everyone was even more drained and several people even puked a little, we continued with runs/walks carrying a 15 kg sandbag on our backs. Overall, it was a very difficult day but very rewarding at the end – both from the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction stemming from pushing yourself through the difficulty and also from being able to enjoy the sea at 830 in the morning for about 10 minutes which was divine.
This past week we were also taken to a nearby kibbutz called Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot (Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz). Needless to say it was a nice change from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem which I have been to at least 5 times. It was also very informative in that it concentrated on a different perspective of the Holocaust – that of the ghetto/resistance fighters. The kibbutz was founded in 1949, one year after the establishment of the State of Israel. Because most of its founders were either surviving fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto or former Jewish partisans, preserving the memory of the Holocaust was very important to them. Since its establishment, they began collecting items to this end and eventually created a Holocaust museum there. Another point of interest is that one of the partisans honoured in the museum is Tuvia Bielski, protagonist of the recently released film Defiance, and grandfather to one of the Americans who made Aliyah with Garin Tzabar to serve in the IDF 2 years ago who was living on my kibbutz until recently.
A lot of time has been spent this past week preparing a presentation for our Hachrazat Garin, where we announce the name of group and formally present ourselves to the entire Kibbutz. We put together a presentation complete with photos, videos and skits to show everyone who we are, and also announced the name for our Garin – Garin Ma’ayan. There were 2 reasons for choosing this name:
1. Ma’ayan means spring in English, and water flows from the spring. Water gives life to everything from the smallest bacteria to the greenest plant, to all of us. It allows us to live and flourish and without water, life is not possible. Likewise, our Garin will flourish and positively influence Israel and the society around us.
2. Ma’ayan, in memory of our Kibbutz mom Elaine’s son, who died in a military training accident in 2008.
Although we didn’t know him personally, we wanted to honour his memory in this way.
Finally, yesterday, we went through the process of becoming soldiers. Just like every other soldier in the army who goes through Bakum, the army induction base, we had our opportunity to ‘experience’ it as well. Thankfully, I prepared myself mentally for the long day ahead because the entire process took over 10 hours just to get there, get a couple vaccinations, a picture taken, a quick interview, and take care of some other minor administrative issues. Normally, every soldier is drafted on this day too, and continues on to their army base at the end of the day. However because I am part of Garin Tzabar, we do things a little differently (thank God!). Even though most of us are actually drafted into the army in November, we become soldiers ‘on paper’ at the beginning of October so that 2 or 3 years later when we are released from the army, we get out in time to potentially start the academic year in Israel, which starts mid October. Another advantage to going through this early is that now that we are officially soldiers we can travel on almost all buses and trains for free and can get through security just by flashing our ID cards, also enabling us to bypass the entire line of people waiting to have their bags checked.
This upcoming week is back to normal – me and some others working in the refet (with the cows) while most others are in Ulpan learning Hebrew. We have a couple fun days coming up, including a full day at a water park which is being planned for all of the soldiers in Israel with Garin Tzabar from 2008, 2009, and 2010. It sounds like it will be a lot of fun.
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