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.