Chanukkah week and Pardes Khana weekend

For the last week of Chanukah we had special classes and activities pertaining to Chanukah, for instance shiurim about the importance of the Chanukah story and the significance of the holiday. It was also cool to go on an hike Tuesday that tracked the important places in Israel that were important to the Chanukah story, as well as a visit to Ammunition Hill, a place that shines light on a dark but valorous time for the IDF and showed the bravery of the army back during the 1967 war. The next day we had a scavenger hunt to find different important facts in Israel's history from a specific neighborhood which was quite clever and interesting. The rest of the day was spent hanging out in Jerusalem at shops, cafes and ice cream shops waiting until our volunteering stint at a nursery home for Chanukah which was really sweet to help elders light their chanukiot and sing Chanukah songs to them during the holiday, it was a really big mitzvah. On Thursday morning I woke up late to go to the bus stop in Jerusalem to get the train with my boyfriend to Binyamina to visit my dad's kibbutz friends. When I got to the bus stop in Efrat to find myself getting passed by three buses after an hour and a half of waiting for the bus finally one stopped, so I got to Jerusalem with not as much time as I wanted but I still got my dad's friends a thank-you-for-letting-us-stay gift and catch the train at 5:40pm to get to Binyamina at around 8pm. It always nice to stay with dad's friends, they're very authentic people as well as eccentric and its always great. We had a great shabbat dinner on Friday night and indian food on Thursday night which was nice too. Their son came with his family on Saturday for his birthday and we watched a couple of movies to have a nice relaxing day. A fairly uneventful week and weekend but was still relaxing and nice I really enjoyed it and now I'm enjoying getting back into our normal seminary schedule for this last weeks of midrasha. For the weather: right now there's a storm going on here on the kibbutz, it snowed last night and has been raining nonstop, did I mention its so cold here I'd rather be in Canada.

Chanukkah week

This past week we had a bit of a special schedule: Monday held a special trip to the Kotel with hundreds of other Jews to pray for rain, Israel at the present is suffering a drought and terrible dryspell. It has become a true crisis, that the religious community has tried to counteract by having a fast day for rain, and by the huge gathering of people to pray for rain. On Tuesday we had a special trip to Rachel's tomb, it was a moving trip to be there, but the atmosphere seemed wrong with people davening there were pretty pushy and rude, elbowing people to move and looking on to visitors with disapproval. I probably would've enjoyed the trip significantly more, of we hadn't gone during Mincha, if it was less busy and with less people it would've been nicer. After the tiyul on Tuesday to Rachel's tomb, we had a heated discussion that night at Tea & Torah about the issues of homosexuality in Judaism, it was interesting to see that most of our group was okay with homosexuality but still wouldn't want their children to be homosexual. After the discussion I headed to the bus stop in Alon Shevut to make my way to Jerusalem to stay the night. The next afternoon, after having some lunch at Ben Yehuda St., I went on the bus to Rishon Le-Ziyyon to visit my cousins for a Chanukah party on the first night Chanukah, she made her speciality of milk meals, with lasagna, quiches and strawberry cheesecake on the menu. After spending the night there and a lovely visit with my family which is always a pleasure on a holiday, I made my way back to Jerusalem to stay with my boyfriend's family friends, for Jerusalem we went to the shuk to buy our hosts some doughnuts in spirit of Chanukah and picked up a package from the Bnei Akiva offices from my mom with some great things inside. After going to do errands we had another chill afternoon and dinner out on the town. The next morning we headed to the train station to go on a train to Nahariyya for our group Shabbat up north, on the train ride we saw the clouds of smoke around Haifa and Carmel mountains, that showed evidence of these wildfires being one the worst national disasters of Israel. The Shabbat was really nice being near the beach and had lovely weather for the weekend, in the package my mom sent me included a game called Munchkin which became a great time passer on Shabbat, the game is basically the card version of dungeon and dragons, it's a great game and very entertaining. On Sunday, we had a Bnei Akiva youth movement resolution voting day, with all Hachsharot meeting together to make resolutions for the youth movement, it was a very boring day overall. On Monday, we had an interesting day including a morning class about olive oil making which was cool, because the teacher brought an actual olive press so we could actually make some olive oil, which we did and light an oil menorah with the oil we made that night. In addition to lighting candles we were honored to go to a wedding on the kibbutz of two converts to judaism, living on the kibbutz, it was a really beautiful wedding just to see two people truly in love, but it upset me to see the bride's family unhappy at the wedding, when her parents should be happy for their daughter on one of the happiest days of her life, but it was still very interesting to see an orthodox Israeli wedding; after we had a Chanukah party with all the girls, with secret Santa gift exchange, games and food, a lovely night and day without a doubt.