Goodbye!

Hey Everyone

This is my last blog post from Israel. These past few days have been the strangest, saddest, and happiest days of my life. 

Let me start by giving an update. There were two planes for going back to America. The first goes to the East Coast and the most of the midwest. The second is the California and random places flight. I am on the second flight. The people on the first flight left a couple hours and it was most likely the saddest thing I have ever experienced and has been the first time I've cried in a loooooooong time. Through leaving my friends and family in America, all the programs here in Israel, the death camps in Poland, and everything else we've done, (we've done a lot here) saying goodbye to everyone who just left was the worst. I love those people so much and am already thinking about seeing them again. 

Currently there are about 30 of us left for the next flight and were chilling on the kibbutz for the day because our plane doesn't leave till tonight. This is the strangest I have ever felt physically and emotionally. I have got about 18 hours of sleep the past 5 days including 1 last night. I feel pretty nauseous from crying for a couple hours. And I haven't eaten anything today. All the crying makes you a little dehydrated and add it all up and that is my physical state. The emotional state is much worse. I already talked about loving everyone so much but it goes on for so much more. When will I come back to Israel? When will I see my friends again? Am I happy about going back to Dallas? Is EIE really ending? Did I do everything here that I wanted? There are so many questions and weird feelings going through my head right now and I don't know what to think. Right now, everything is terribly depressing and Tzuba is empty. As much as I love Israel and my friends and everything this feeling is horrible and inescapable and I want it to end. If I sound despondent, I'm not. I know I'll get over everything and life will go on but right now everyone doesn't know what to do. 

I'm only sad because EIE has been amazing. I enjoyed just about every minute of it and everything has been amazing. I keep on thinking about my brother coming home and talking about EIE and talking about his friends and his experience and then I remember that we are different people. I came to Israel and had my own experience and it was amazing. I made friends with people across the country and I'm closer with some of them than I ever thought. I learned enough Jewish History to overflow my brain. (Me and my friend Andrew make Jewish history jokes all the time and no one back home will be able to understand them. Its funny because they are so nerdy and dumb but also because we understand them. Heres an example

So its shmona b'av fools day and Yochanan ben-Zaki and Eleizar ben-Yair are chilling in a mikvah getting purified. Yochanan goes over to Elezair and says "Hey! The temple is destroyed. Haha. Just kidding. Shmona b'av fools day." Yair then proceeds to stab him in the back. 

If you understood that then col hacvod.  What makes it funny for us on EIE is that just about everyone understood that joke, even if they didn't get every detail.) This has been an experience I will never forget and I'm so happy I came.

When I do get home there will be a few positives. (This is me being positive.) There will be Mexican food, Wilma, privacy, my family and friends. There all going to be nice and I do miss my family and friends but leaving is so unnatural. I love EIE and I'm going to try and enjoy my last few hours. I'll be in Dallas soon and if you want to meet up just give me a call or an email. I think my email is somewhere on this account. Thank you for everything and this is my last post considering I made this for my trip to Israel. I love everyone and this has been more than amazing.

Joey Blatt

Its been a while.

 

Hey Everyone!

 

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted. There was nothing really exciting happening and then we were in the North for a couple days but now I’m back at Tzuba. This will probably be my second to last post here. I can hopefully get another one in before I leave in a couple days. It went by fast and its weird to think its coming to an end.

 

Exams are done and now I’m on summer break (kind of). My last exam was Thursday and then we went to the North on Friday. The tiyul to the North is called the security tiyul. We learn about the borders with Lebanon and Syria, the Yom Kippur War, both Lebanon Wars, and the general area. It was a lot of fun and really interesting. It was also fun to go places and learn without being the in the school setting. We joked about pulling out our notebooks and taking notes. In addition we did a lot of outdoors stuff. We swam in the Knerret, kayaked in the Jordan, and went on a walk to this waterfall thing. The waterfall was so pretty and so much fun. We walked in this field till we got this trench thing and then we walked through it and came out at this pool. Then behind that pool there was another pool with a huge waterfall. It was gorgeous. We all chilled and lay in the sun and swam. The water in the Knerret was perfect. IT was warm and clear and just a lot of fun. The kayaking was fun too. I was in a boat with a bunch of my friends and we splashed around and jumped on other people’s boats.

 

Learning about the borders was really cool. We first went to the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed after gaining in the 6-day war. I don’t want to get political but the Golan is a disputed territory between Syria and Israel. Both claim it. Luckily the border has been the quietest border since the Yom Kippur war even though there is no peace treaty with Syria. David, my teacher, was on border patrol there when he did his army reserve service there last year. He said it was pretty boring which is good. The Golan is really strategic because it’s elevated and has good land and over looks a lot of Israel and Syria. The views from the hills are really pretty. The North isn’t as green and pretty as it was during Pesach a couple weeks ago. It stopped raining and everything dried up like it does every summer. I still liked it though. It was hotter which was good and the nights weren’t as cold.

 

The Lebanon border unfortunately hasn’t been as quite as the Syrian border. There was the first Lebanon War in 1982 and the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Lebanon is a very unstable country. There have been civil wars, political assassinations, and power vacuums. Fattah came to power. Hezbollah has come to power. The Christians were kicked out of power. No one supports dictators but at least with a dictator, like with Syria and Egypt, there is stability. Not even Syria recognizes a government in Lebanon. Anyways, we learned about that border. We went to a border military base thing. There was an American there named Phil who was in charge on the base and he took us around. One really funny part was we walked to a wall, he picked up a rock and tossed it over and said with his thick Southern draw, “Lebanon.” We all kind of chuckled. But we saw the fences and the tanks and learned about the soldiers. All the soldiers were Druze and spoke Arabic and Hebrew. We went into a bunker and it was just really cool.

 

One really interesting thing we did was meet with Arab Israelis our age in the North. Arabs not in the West Bank have the same rights as Jewish Israelis but still identify with their Arab Muslim heritage before their Israeli citizenship. In the Middle East citizenship does not always equal nationality. It might be a hard concept but there are many ethnicities in the Middle East living in arbitrary borders. Back to meeting with the Arabs. They spoke Arabic, Hebrew, and a little English. Some spoke more than others. At first everyone was a little nervous because we didn’t know what to expect. But we had topic to talk about like where we live, sports, our friends, and things like that. They are normal kids living in another culture. They usually had bigger families and had different relationships with the opposite sex. It was really interesting. The most interesting question was about how they felt during the war. During the second Lebanon War there was a lot of rocket fire in the North and rocket fire is in very random. They fall on Arab villages as often as kibbutzim or anything else. They were all scared and didn’t really talk about being the minority or anything. Arab Israelis is a really sticky situation and people have been trying to solve the issues for a couple generations now. These kids were really nice and interesting though and I’m really happy we met even though it was a little awkward at first.

 

Later that day we met with a Druze man to learn about the Druze. The Druze is another ethnic group in the Middle East. They broke off from Islam in the 12 century (I think) and started their own religion. People have 73 lives but can only remember their previous life.  The religion is very close and people can’t convert or marry into the religion. If someone married another religion they lose their Druze identity. People can choose to become religious at age 15 and then they continue to learn about the religion. I hope to learn more about them because they were really interesting. The guy who talked to us was not religious but talked about his previous life. He used to be a Druze in Lebanon and when he saw the house he started crying and I think a lot of us didn’t know how to react to that. Some us were like “What the Hell?” and some were like “That’s amazing!”  The best part though was the food. The entire tiyul we were eating gross hostel schnitzel and we got sick of it real fast. The Druze brought out huge trays of food with laffa, chummus, lentils, beans, and it was amazing. I ate so much and it was one of the best meals I’ve had in Israel.  It was up there with Abu Gosh and Pesach.

 

Now were back at Tzuba. There's a really strange feeling here. We’re all dreading going home but trying to enjoy our last couple days with each other. We had a program the other night about our time here and just about every one was crying by the end of it. They also told us to start packing. The pool opened today and hopefully I’ll go soon. I also bought a really breezy Israeli white shirt and it’s awesome. I’m planning on weaning it today for Shavuot. A couple people volunteered to do a dance in front of the entire kibbutz and I’m going to do that. Then at 4 AM tonight/tomorrow morning were going to the Kotel for a big ceremony. I’m really excited. And lastly I got this really awesome poster of Ben-Gurion and Einstein chilling on a bench together with their crazy white hair and their infinite knowledge. Einstein is saying something like, “I came up with relativity and am considered the smartest person of all time.” Ben-Gurion responds by saying, “I founded the first independent Jewish state in over 2000 years and can speak 10 languages.” I can go on and on about how amazing each of them is.  

 

That’s it for now. I really want to go to the pool and I hope I can post again before I go back to Texas. And this is Reuven’s blog. I mentioned Reuven before but basically he is the smartest person whenever he walks into a room and made aliyah almost 40 years ago and never went back to American to visit or anything. He teaches here and everyone loves him.

http://malbisharumim.blogspot.com/

 

Joey

Quick Post

Hey! 

Yesterday was log b'omer which means everyone in the country lights bonfires. My class was having dinner in a park in Jerusalem with our teacher. It was a lot of fun and his band played. David's band is a cover band of Crosby, Stills and Nash. They were really good and I kind of freaked out when David first started singing. I like jumped and starting screaming because I was so excited. And then he had a solo and we all were freaking out. It was amazing.

One funny story of the night: Me and my friend, Molly, were standing by one of the fires with our other friend Emma. Then a little orthodox boy walks up to Emma and ask her to cook his hot dog for him. So Emma being a nice person gets closer to the fire and tries to roast this hot dog on a stick but the fire is really hot and she can't do it. She has to cover her face to protect herself and me and Molly are just cracking up. Then Emma asks the kid, Raphi, if its cooked and he goes, "Nope. Needs more." So Emma goes back and cooks it more and Raphi is showing no emotion and me and Molly are cracking up. Emma is trying to get it caught on fire to cook it but can't get close enough to the fire. Finally its done roasting and Raphi takes the hot dog. We were all laughing about it in a second. On top of it, Emma is a vegetarian. It was really funny. 

The kibbutz still smells like smoke from log b'omer. I have an AP tomorrow. English. Thats it. 

Bye!

Joey

Hey

Hey Everyone!

I think this is the longest I've gone without posting while still being at Tzuba. Sorry about that.  Stuff is starting to wind down a little bit but a lot has still happened. AP tests are starting and finals are soon so we can't have any more tiyulim.  

Yom Hazikaron started Tuesday night and ended Wednesday night. Yom Hazikaron in Israel has a different meaning than Memorial Day in America. Israel is constantly at war and everyone goes into the army so every family has some connection to someone who died in the army. Tzuba has two boys who died in the different wars. We went to the Tzuba tekes at the kibbutz cemetery. It was all in Hebrew and I didn't understand anything but I'm still very happy we all went. Tuesday night we went to the state tekes at the Kotel. We weren't guests of honor or anything. Everyone in the country can go. Shimon Peres, the president of Israel, and Gabbi Ashkenazi, the head of the military, spoke. My madrichah, Jomi, was translating. She did an alright job but we were all able to get the meaning of the speech. I also wasn't really able to see anyone speaking. It was really crowded and I was only able to see from people holding their cameras up and then looking into the cameras. But Yom Hazikaron was a very interesting day and I'm glad I was in Israel for it.

As soon as Yom Hazikaron ends Yom Haatzmuot starts. Its a very sudden transition but Yom Haatzmuot was a lot of fun. We were with another American high school for a bbq. It was an EIE vs. Alexander Mosk type deal where we played a bunch of sports. I played basketball and it was a ton of fun. I hadn't played basketball in a while and the kids on EIE aren't that bad. Only a couple people play basketball for their school and I used to play in middle school and for a bunch of teams. We won. We came back in the last couple minutes. It was a lot of fun. Then we also played soccer and volleyball against them. The best part of the whole outing was getting to grill. About 10 of us were grilling the whole time and we made so much food. We made hamburgers, chicken, and steak. There was enough food for two EIEs and afterwards we all got to take the leftovers back to our rooms. Shai, one of our madrichim, has a panini grill so we got some pita and anything we could find and took the leftover meat and made paninis in our roon. They were so good!  We only eat kibbutz food and fast food falafel so eating fresh cooked food was amazing.

The SATs were alright. We went into Jerusalem to take them Not much to say about them. I hope I did good. In Israel after high school everyone goes straight to the army and then takes time off and then goes to college in their late twenties. It has its advantages and disadvantages. When people are older they know what they want to do and know more about themselves. Most kids in America have no clue what they want to study when they are 18. So by going into the army and then working or traveling, Israelis are more mature when they start college But in high school they don't work as hard because college is so far off. Its different but to me it makes more sense. 

School is starting to get harder. Finals, APs, and no more tiyulim. It kind of sucks. This week we had a 5 day week and people were freaking out. We haven't had a 5 day week since the second week of school and school here is killer. 8 3o to 1 15 in the morning. then 2 10 to 6. Thats about 9 hours of real school. No journalism or art or fake classes. They are all legit classes and 5 days of school is pretty hard here. I know it sounds kind of weird because back home, its 5 days every week but its true here. 5 days is hard. I'm only taking 2 APs so thats not too bad. I have a slanted view on what is a lot of APs because at TAG I saw sophomores taking 4 APs, juniors taking 8, and seniors taking 7. Not everyone but a lot of kids. So only two APs really isn't that much and when people complain about 2 its a little weird to me. 

We started the modern period in Jewish history, which means the State of Israel. There a lot to learn and I'm happy that I'm getting a class on it and can piece together all the knowledge I've accumulated about Israel.  We got our review sheet for the final and there was so much information! So much more than an AP class. Its cool to think that we've learned that much though. 

Were going to Tel Aviv in a couple hours. I am really excited because we haven't really spent very much time in Tel Aviv. Only tiyulim. Tel Aviv is a really cool, modern city. It should be a lot of fun.

Thats about all. I come home in about three weeks which sucks a lot but the summer is going to be a lot of fun. Got to stay positive. I got to go but hopefully I'll get to post soon. Bye!

Joey

1st Week Back

Quick Updates:

We had a Jewish History Test yesterday and now we've started the modern state of Israel. 

We observed Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) this week. Next week is Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom Haatzmuot (Independence Day). 

We had two full day tiyulim this week, both to Tel Aviv. If Jerusalem is the spiritual center of Israel and Judaism, than Tel Aviv is the secular center of Israel. Its really cool. I got cool sandals.

The SAT is soon and APs start soon. AH!

Its finally getting warmer. Israel has a quick transition for winter to summer (about one week.)

I didn't talk about my roommates last time. They are David, Josh, and Rob and we have the best room by far. 

I'm wearing tevas with socks right now. It looks really good. 

And here is an article that David, my Jewish history teacher, sent me. It was written by Reuven, another Jewish history teacher here, and its about Hebrew.  

http://forward.com/articles/104667/

Back in Israel and Back at Tuba

Its been a while. And my two and a half weeks were action packed. I don't want to say every little detail that happened because that would take somewhere around 5000 words to say so I'll hit the high points. 

Poland. Everyone, remind me to never go back to Poland again. Its not that the country is terrible itself, its just that, for me, as a Jew, I can't escape the feeling of the Shoah. Poland has this odd spook. Its a giant Jewish graveyard. Judaism was there for centuries, flourished there for centuries. And in a matter of a few short years, Judaism was extinguished. Judaism in Poland is a museum. A museum not only to the Shoah but also to the way Judaism was before the Shoah. And now its gone and its not coming back. No one really wants to being it back either. And I don't blame anyone. The Jews that survived left because they couldn't stand to be there anymore. They went to Israel and to America and anywhere they could because they felt the same feeling that we did. So now there are about 4000 Jews in Poland, depending on how you define a Jew. Thats under the number of members of my synagogue in Dallas Texas.  So there's Judaism in Poland. Its a memory and a graveyard. 

In Poland we went to Majdanek, Auschwitz-Berkenau, a remake of a shtetl named Tikochin, Krakow, Lublin, and Warsaw.  Like I said, I would love to give all the details of every place but its been a while since we've been back and my fingers would probably fall off. So, I'll start with Majdaneck. Majdaneck was the first camp to be liberated because it was so far in the East and was easily reached by the Soviet troops. As a result the Germans weren't able to hide and destroy as much as they could have. The gas chamber is still there, the crematorium is still there, and I think almost every building is. There are no crumbling buildings like at Berkenau. As a result Majdanek is much more raw. Its in the middle of Lublin which is weird. It was built to be on the major road in Lublin. That kind of disrupted the mood because there are people that walk their dog past a death camp every day. But thats the way it is. The most overwhelming part of Majdanek was the massive, inconceivable amount of human ashes, all from bodies cremated at Majdanek. Majdaneck only killed about 78,000 Jews (Majdaneck was for Jews especially) and that pile was ridiculous. It was about the length on a basketball court in diameter and I don't know how deep it was. Easily over ten feet I could see. We had a small ceremony there and said kaddish.  Since Majdaneck was the first camp we visited, it had a different feeling for many of us. 

Tikochin, the shtetl, was very powerful. Before the final solution was brought up, Nazis had special squads that would take all the Jews of an area have them dig graves and then shoot them into their graves. This is what happened in the town of Tikochin. The city was reconstructed to remember the Jews and be as a museum. The synagogue is reconstructed and its very strange. The Polish people who lived there decided to do this. Then a quick drive into the forests outside the town are two mass graves and we had a ceremony there too. Tikochin was very eerie. The one good part was when we had a song session in the synagogue and in a way revived the Judaism there. 

A couple days later we went to Auschwitz-Berkenau. The camp is near the Polish town of Oswicien. Berkenau was the death camp built for the Jews and Auschwitz was the labor camp that held Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and other minorities. The weird thing about being at Berkenau was that we all picture a windy, cold, overcast day every day at a death camp. People are cold and are needy warmth. But it was an ironically nice day when we to Berkenau. The grass was green, the trees behind were pretty. It could have easily been a park. Nonetheless it was depressing and powerful. There's nothing that can be done to escape the feeling of a death camp. We went and saw the barracks and the remains of the gas chambers. The Nazis had time to destroy them before it was liberated. When we were walking, there was a pool of water and David Solomon, our vice principal, reached down and we all gathered and he reached down and picked a small white rock. He said, "This is what is left of European Jewry." It was a piece of bone.  

Auschwitz was the labor camp about a mile away from Berkenau. Its hard to be at Auschwitz because its hard to be in a death camp and a museum at the same time. Everything is in glass cases and guides take you around. It threw stuff off but it was still powerful. We were also all really tired and out of it because we had already been to Berkenau and woke up really early. It kind of looked like a college campus with the big buildings and the grass and such. Not how I pictured it at all. Auschwitz has the entrance sign that we've all seen with he German writing at the top. Berkenau has the train tracks that lead to the entrance. 

We're done with the camps. Krakow was a pretty cool city. We spent a couple days there and we walked around the town square and stuff. Warsaw was alright. We didn't really go out into city. The country side of Poland is kind of depressing. Its barren and could have been the exact same from the times of Communism. In Warsaw we saw the old Jewish cemetery that survived the Shoah and learned about the Warsaw ghetto uprising. By the end of the trip we were all pretty Jewish history and emotionally drained. 

The best part of Poland was probably leaving. Our plane was EIE and an Israeli tour group that we saw a couple times in Poland. When the plane left we all started yelling and cheering. The Israelis were really nice and cool and we all got along really well. When we landed we started cheering and sang Shalom Alechem. That was really cool. We were all ready to be back in the homeland after a week in Poland and it was so good to be back.

We stayed in Jerusalem for two nights, mostly just resting once we got back from Poland. Then we all went to different families for Pesach. People have family and friends and if someone can't find anyone to go with then they go with a host family. I went with my friend Jordy's family friend in Ranana. They were really nice and interesting. The dad had been in the peace core and the mom was Filipino and the son had just gotten out of the army and the daughter is going to enter the draft in July. All the dad's stories started like, "Back in 1985 when I was in the jungle in Borneo....." I laughed every time he started a story. Anyways, Jordy and I slept and ate for most of our two nights there. We were really tired from Poland and hadn't had a home cooked meal since we've been in Israel. The food at the seder was so good. I ate so much. And the seder wasn't too different. We were all really hungry so we kind of rushed though it. The two families there speak English perfectly. Like they speak it in the house. The weirdest thing about Pesach was being away from the same 118 people I'm with every moment. We talked about the people the entire time. We are all kind of in love with each other. But not being with everyone was weird. I can't imagine how weird its going to be to leave for good. 

From Pesach we went to the Kinerret in the North to start yam l'yam. I thought we were going to leave form one yam and walk the entire way to the other. But we took buses twice and it wasn't quite what I wanted it to be it was a lot of fun nonetheless. A lot better than Gadnah. We did hike a whole lot though. the first real day of hiking was pretty long. We hiked up to the top on the second tallest mountain in Israel. The second day was mostly downhill. And the third day of hiking was a bike ride all downhill to the Mediterranean. Everything was so pretty and this was one of the weeks that the North is still in bloom. I always talk about the North being really pretty and green and pretty soon, when it stops raining and starts getting hot it all turns brown and dry. But the flowers and the landscape and everything was so pretty. I would totally do yam l'yam again. And my group was really good. There were people that I usually don't spend a lot of time with that I got to be closer with. 

Getting to the Mediterranean was glorious. We were all disgustingly dirty after not showering for a couple days and sleeping (if you call it that) outside. We all went into the sea and splashed around and then went to Haifa. Haifa is really pretty and the shower was awesome. Probably the best shower of my life. We all hung out and rested after the hike. We also went to Bahai gardens which were so pretty. And one more thing. There is this game called assassin where each person is assigned to kill another person by whispering something in their ear with no one around to see it happen. The winner is the last person standing and you are supposed to be all secretive about it. We played that game in Haifa and it was a lot of fun. I killed one person. 

We were only in Haifa one night and then got back to Tzuba. We had classes on Thursday and today was the ACT and we've all just been getting readjusted. Unpacking, getting back in the swing of things, school. Me and my friend Josh pillaged the girls rooms for extra cubbies for our room. Nothing ground breakingly exciting here. It is 3:19 AM though and I should be asleep. So, good night everyone. This has been my longest post so far. Sorry, a lot has happened and I had a lot to say. I have one more comment on the Shoah that I wanted to save. The difference between this genocide and others is how it was carried out. Genocide is always terrible but their is a difference between people going around and shooting people as ethnic cleansing and a superpower using all of its resources and energy to carry out the systematic and organized extermination of a culture. Its what separates the Shoah from other genocide. 

Anyways, happy late Easter and happy late Pesach to everyone. I lost my phone and will be getting another soon. And everyone be good!

Joey B.

Going to Poland

This is my last post before Poland and I don't know if it will be 100 words. I still need to finish packing but I promised one more post before I leave. I don't think I mentioned that I am doing yam l'yam which is a hike form the Kinneret in the north to the Mediterranean sea. I am soooo excited! I am thinking about doing the north to south Israel hike and if is this is fun then I definitely will. Israel is so pretty, especially the North. My ipod was broken but now it works. One of my friends here has a brother who works at an apple store and I called him up. I still haven't found the word to describe how I feel about going to Poland. Excited/scared/prepared. I feel like we often dance around the Holocaust and now I will confront it. I didn't think this before but The Holocaust and this trip has been looming around everyone for a couple days now and I am ready to go. Its hard to explain. The Holocaust is hard to comprehend itself so its hard to explain feeling and thinking about it. I also go to my friend Jordy friend's house for Pesach. They sound like totally cool people. I can't wait to meet them. 

Thats all I have time for! This was actually longer than I expected. Everyone be good and safe and have fun while I'm gone. This post might have some errors because I typed it in about 15 minutes. 

Love y'all!

Joey Blatt =)