Week 2

On the 2nd of December we went to Hirbet Midras which are very small tunnels built by the Jews when trying to escape the Romans. The tunnels were used by the Jews as part of guerrilla warfare. They would attack the Romans and then run away and hide in tunnels. The tunnels were so small that the Romans weren't able to follow the Jews down with their large shields and armour. When the Jews hid in the tunnels they had to be completely silent in the pitch black to avoid being detected.

When you start the crawl through the tunnels it is extremely small and tight however you end up crawling out into these large open spaces. When we reached these larger caves we turned off all of our lights and sat in complete silence just as the Jews would have done. This was an amazing experience as the darkness and silence allowed us to let our minds wonder in ways it can't in our busy day to day lives. When we switched our lights back on we all burst in to song and sang at the top of our lungs. It was an absolutely incredible experience. The feeling moving from the tight spaces to the large open cave was surreal and an experience we will never have again.

We then travelled to an old Roman amphitheatre where Jews used to be forced to fight soldiers, animals and each other for entertainment. We sat in the amphitheatre and had many interesting discussions. One of which was about the Hadrianic Laws. Originally Jews were allowed to be part of the Roman society, as they served a function to improve the economy. However, the Roman emperor Hadrian banned all Jewish customs and traditions hoping it would result in all Jews leaving Judea. This gave the Jews three options. One, to leave and continue practising Judaism. Two, stay and follow the Roman rules. Three, stay and rebel against the Romans, continuing to practise Judaism with the risk of being killed.

This discussion made us realise how fortunate we are to be able to practice Judaism unopposed.

When we got back to Hod Ha Sharon we all went to the beit kenesset and had a ruach session. We danced and sang for an hour and everyone, including the muds, got involved. It was the perfect way to end the day and it was so much fun to be surrounded by all of our friends and doing this amazing Jewish tradition together. It was amazing to see how all the struggles of our ancesters during the Roman rule now allows us to be here and celebrate our Judaism openly.

Over all the day was fantastic and it was so interesting to learn about where we come from and why we are able to practice Judaism freely as well as learning about a time where needed to be strong in order to survive. And it did and still does today!

On this fine morning, we woke up after staying the night in a youth hostel in Karni Deshe. After breakfast and a quiet bus ride, we had a lesson at the top of the beautiful Mount Arbel. Here, we concluded our exploration of ancient Jewish history, and moved into the realm of modern Judaism and Zionism. We began speaking about how modern anti-Semitism pushed waves of Aliot to Israel. We then hiked down the mountain, with an incredible view. There were some challenging aspects of the hike, such as the first few hundred meters (which was sort of terrifying) where we had to descend the side of a cliff face, but we all survived. After the hike, we learnt about many influential zionists who were some of the first to work on kibbutzim. One story that really impacted our whole group was that of a poet by the name of Rachel (Benjy says that you know you’ve made it in life when you only need your first name on your grave stone). She dedicated her life to the establishment of kibbuztim, and despite sickness for a large part of her life, remained faithful to her passions. We were lucky enough to visit the Kinneret cemetery where she is buried, and we read some of the poetry that was left next to her grave. This story really inspired all of us, and turned into a deep discussion about what we believed were some major issues in our world today.