Steph in Israel. Day 2. Salads and Syria.

Hello! I did NOT sleep last night. I’m staying in a staff room that is still in a dorm with kids and they were LOUD. It’s a group of kids specifically from a school in Philadelphia. It also sounded like they kept moving furniture. I don’t know. All I know is there was not much sleep involved, and I had to get up at 6:45.

I got up, got dressed quickly, and ran to the dining room. The breakfast actually looked decent. There were eggs, lots of salads, spreads, cheese, etc. I ate nothing (a) because I was bloated, (b) because it was early, and (c) because there was no time. We boarded the buses at 7:15. At this point we were just waiting for the teachers. Each group has a specific teacher. Eventually I hear that we were waiting for Yishai, and this is where things got exciting. You see, when I joined JNF, Yishai was Executive Director of the Education Department. He was great – easygoing, funny etc. But, just as I arrived, he left, as his wife wanted to move back to Israel. So, he became a teacher at AMHSI. (Right now he is actually shadowing one of the teachers.) Alas, we got to spend the day together!

We caught up on the 2 hour bus ride north. Our first stop was at the gas station for a ‘pee pee.’ I bought an ice-café (slushy), a water, and an entire full-sized box of Crunch cereal. We then headed to an outlook in the Golan. We were in what used to be Syria, looking out on Israel. We learned all about what that meant for Israelis back before we had the Golan. We also heard an AMAZING story about a man named Eli Cohen. I really couldn’t do it justice here, so you should google it. It’s so so great. You can also click here for the wikipedia article, or just wait for the Netflix series with Sasha Baron Cohen as Eli Cohen.

From there we started driving to our next destination, but as we went it got darker and darker out. The plan was to have a boxed lunch outside at the start of a hike we were going to do, but it started raining, so we detoured at into a mini mall in Kiryat Shmona. I feel like I’ve been to this mall, but who knows. Some people ate the boxed lunch, but most walked around the mall and bought fast food. I went to the one restaurant and got a great nicoise salad. Two kids and the madrich eventually joined me. Nothing better than getting an entire loaf of bread with your salad.

It started getting nicer outside so we headed to Banyas, an area of little springs. We did a “hike” or “nature walk.” It was nice, saw a waterfall. We actually stopped somewhere on the way and everyone sat down so Yishai could explain a little bit about who I am and what I do for JNF and AMHSI. I asked the students how they are liking things, the good and the bad. It was a good discussion.

We were at Banyas for a little over an hour, and from there we headed to Kibbutz Misgav Am (I think). It is the most northern Kibbutz in Israel, on the Lebanon border. From one area you can literally see the Mediterranean see, Lebanon, and Syria. We heard from one of the Kibbutzniks who spoke about his worldview. He was definitely putting on an act, but still true to his beliefs, and he truly shocked these children. He basically said he doesn’t care about anyone else in the world, he carries a gun because he “might have to shoot someone”, believes everyone should make Aliyah, and that anti-Israel jews are the biggest threat to the existence of the state of Israel. Some of the students really seemed shocked as he really didn’t sugar coat anything. He was like ,“you kill me, I kill you. You leave me alone, great.” He said he didn’t care if we took in the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank as long as no one was killing us, because he said Jews would always have more babies so we wouldn’t have a demographic issue. I think the kids couldn’t get over the idea that he doesn’t care about Syrian refugees or other problems in the world. I don’t think they comprehended that he literally lives in a place with guns pointed at him 24/7, he has bigger problems than worrying about the rest of the world, and he just wants to survive the day. Luckily, nothing has happened in a while.

From there we drove to the kibbutz that the students were staying at overnight. We ate dinner, which was a very nice spread of salads, some weird lentil soup, and schnitzel. It was good. Then I had to take a 2 hour, 750 shekel cab ride, back to campus. I slept a little. Tonight THANKFULLY the kids who were in my building (not the ones I was with today) are on a different overnight, so it should be quiet!