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
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