Tuesday, April 28, 2015

There’s No Place Like Home By : Shani O. Grade 11

Recently, I was on a plane heading to the United States with our Jewish Diller (a teen leadership program) delegation.  It was my first time ever leaving Israel, and I had absolutely no idea of how it was going to be out of my country.
At first, we were excited, it was really thrilling knowing that you are meeting with complete strangers, that you're talking in a different language and walking on a foreign land.  Quickly the excitement wore off. We drove around town, picturing through the windows that those were Tel Aviv's streets we were passing.
We all kept imagining ourselves eating our Israeli Humus, Jachnoon and Shawarma, and how we cherish each bite.
We were all dreaming about Israeli weather and the warm sunshine patting our faces, about Israeli trees, Israeli birds and Israeli ants.
We couldn't stop thinking about Israel. 
Don't get me wrong, it's not that we didn't have fun! We truly did, in the most superlative way of the word! 
After all, it wasn't just a trip aboard. 
Our delegation had very important and exciting causes --to strengthen the connection between Israeli Jews and Jews in the diaspra.
Learning about Jewish communities outside of Israel, and many more beautiful goals, which we all believe we have succeeded reaching, thank Hashem! 
It wasn't anything like we imagined, and we can't believe how privileged we all are getting to that spectacular program.

I guess we just had a major case of Homesickness. 
Israeli-sickness!

It's amazing how you can have the tallest buildings, the cheapest living, exotic food, amazing malls and gigantic houses -- and still, you just know...it's not it.
A week ago, the national memorial day of the Holocaust was taking place in Israel. Yesterday, we had the national memorial day of the IDF and Terror casualties.

Tzur Erlich, An Israeli writer, said once that the difference between those two was how much it has cost keeping the Jewish nation safe inside Israel, and how much it has cost without it. 
Israel, thank you for being our home.
Thank you, Hashem, for giving us our home. 
Actually, thank you for everything.




Young Ambassadors Seminar By :Senem N Grade 8

During the Pesach vacation my friend Sharon and I were getting ready to get on the bus. We had a few more people joining us Ravit , our teacher from our school,  three more people from Ronson and one other student. The seminar was a very interesting experience. We had to sleep in tents, but boys and girls were separated. The tents were huge and very close to each other. We learned about the Buddhist religion. We learned that men could have up to five wives if he wanted to, because he needed to have as many children as he could. But the women were not allowed to have more than one husband because if she did she would not know who the father was. We also learned that if you get lost and a Buddhist family finds you; you will be their guest for  up to three days. If you don’t leave by then, you are considered to be a part of the family and will be treated like someone in the family. You will do work and help other family members. The family can also kick you out of the house after the three days had ended if they wanted to. The food was delicious and we had a good night sleep. We woke up five in the morning to get breakfast but we didn’t eat where we were, we went to a Masada to eat. We had some activity before we ate.  After we ate we were separated into groups to talk about the events that happened there. Jews were living on Masada for about  seven years or and barely had  anything to eat.  To add to their lack of food they were under attack by the Roman people. They thought that the best way to escape this nightmare was suicide. So the men killed their own family and then killed each other.  When the Roman people came to the place where the Jewish people were staying almost everybody was dead.  There were a few people who didn’t think that suicide was the right way out:  They were taken by the Romans as slaves. It was quite interesting to see what different people thought was the best for their family and themselves.  We then went to some kind of a museum that I don’t remember the name of. But it was so cool and a lot of fun. We could play games there and it was so awesome.  On the ride home most of the people were dead tired; it was wonderful to go home and sleep in my own bed. A great finish to a wonderful trip.