This is a long post because of the Shabbat and rules pertaining to electricity/iPad use on holidays. It starts on Wednesday with our bus trip and packing drama with everyone having to pack up their things from their rooms and put it in storage in preparation for the holiday in Migdal Oz. In the late morning on our way to the kibbutz we stopped on Ben Yehuda St. for us to get gifts for our host families in Efrat, who had Lehava participants over for dinner for Rosh Hashanah. After buying a bottle of wine for my host family, the group and I continued the journey to the kibbutz for Rosh Hashanah. When we arrived to the kibbutz we saw our accommodations and instantly my Dad's "Mexico City" at his kibbutz, a little bit better but still a little sketchy, I really enjoyed being on an agricultural kibbutz as I'd never been before, it was a great place to be to bring in the new year. The food on the kibbutz was consistent daily, challah rolls, chicken soup and milk lunches/breakfasts. On Thursday night we went to Efrat to dinner with a host family that are part of Bnei Akiva, we went for Rosh Hashanah and partaked in all of the symbolic foods that are associated with the Jewish new year celebration. The family that me and my roommate went to, were from New Jersey and made aliyah about 24 years ago, three daughters and two sons, a bigger family than I'm used to seeing. The next day after a delicious dinner at the host family, Friday, preparation for Shabbat began on the kibbutz, on top of the Rosh Hashanah celebration, Shabbat came in with davening as usual and many songs and games. During Rosh Hashanah, my madrich and I talked about why Rosh Hashanah is special and meaningful. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that the symbols of honey and pomegranates are most important to me and here's why:
- Honey is what symbolizes a sweet new year, but I think that it might go a little deeper just in reference to the lives of modern population. Honey is made by bees in a hive, and they work tirelessly to make the sweet golden honey that we eat every year at Rosh Hashanah. I thought about the bees work and how that correlates to us, and it does. The work the bees does makes life literally sweeter while humans work hard to have vacations to make our lives sweeter as well.
- Pomegranates are important because of their numerical significance in Judaism, a pomegranate has the same number of seeds as there are mitzvot. I look at a pomegranate and see a round fruit with a crown; what do crowns symbolize? Royalty? Importance? The king of something? So looking at a pomegranate I see a crown on top of mitzvot, which I translate as mitzvot being the king or most important part of Jewish life.
I thought about those being important in Rosh Hashanah and having a sweet new year. Besides our new year celebrations we had a couple of birthdays to celebrate during this weekend, including one of our madrichot, who turned 19, you know my age. Anyways, we went to her family's house for Havdallah and birthday cake, also this was when I delivered her the huge card I made and got the whole group to sign with birthday messages. It was another beautiful Shabbat in Israel. After the birthday party and evening davening we headed back to Migdal Oz so that we could pack and then head back to Beit Yehudah to our beautiful rooms, that we longed for during our stay in Migdal Oz. Once arrived chaos began with bags taken out of storage, our room with five people always have quite the space issues when unpacking our things, we went out that night to Ben Yehuda St. in the party/club scene of Jerusalem, the details of this night are not at my liberty to share but I can tell you this, it was nothing short of an episode from a reality show.
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