Shabbat tonight!

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Tonight will be Shabbat so we are all excited to have a day of rest! We got up early and went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum which has been redone since I was here in the 90's----they gained huge ammounts of records,artifacts and knowledge when the Soviet Union broke up because the Societ Union had under lock and key most of the documents and artifacts that they had seized from the Natzis. The new museum is built in a triangle shape like a long knife slicing through the mountain as a reminder of the slice through history....it is a long and winding path through the museum and it rips your heart out, then you come out at the end and it's a huge open triangle looking over Jerusalem reminding us that we endured... I may write more later but it's hard to write about.

We then went down to the Valley of the People (I think that's what it's called) where they commemorate all of the citys and gettos destroyed by the natzi's built up in pillars of Jerusalem stone...we did a lovely ceremony there commemorating the 6 million who were murdered.

Then we went to the Herzl Museum and learned about Herzl's vision for Israel and how he created Zionism and then visited the cemetary and saw Rabin's tomb.

We then had time to get ready for Shabbat and we got some fruit,cookies and wine to have an oneg and went to shul.
I walked with some ladies to this tiny orthodox shul up on this hill by the President's house. It was packed and all in Hebrew but an interesting experience.
Shabbat dinner back at the hotel was nice and then a bunch of us gathered in one room to play cards, drink wine and schmooze until 1am which was great fun as we watched the rain falling sideways outside!

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