Awwwwwesome - Finishing up the Israel portion

---

I ended the last blog as we were on the bus up north. We skipped the planned winery stop and instead went straight to Tzfat. The Rabbi gave us a short walking tour to a few of the very famous synagogues in Tzfat, both of which I had seen before, but they are so beautiful there's always more to see in each one. After the tour we stopped by the workshop of Avraham, the very kooky Michigan man who moved to Tzfat and became an artist who bases his work on the Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism) he's a very far out dude but he has a love of life and it's mysteries that is to be admired.

We had a little over an hour of free time in Tzfat, spent mostly window shopping because everything there is pretty expensive, worth it, but only if you have the money. So instead of actually shopping I walked around with some people, bought a very large sandwich for 20 shek and then found a Taimani (Yemenite) pizza places, where the store-owner cooks these amazing personal pizzas out of I believe spelt flour and covers them with cheese and tomatoes and (self-added) spicy sauce. It was delicious, but I was left with a very large sandwich I no longer wanted. So as every shopkeeper heckled me to buy something on my way down the street I started heckling back, asking people to buy my sandwich. In the end I got a keychain for five shek and I sold my sandwich for 15! We made one last stop at the Nerot Tzfat candle store, a must-see and on my way out of the store I passed by some men on the street at a table eating some really good-looking fish which I mentioned - very loudly - as I walked past. Immediately the guy grabs us and brings us over so they can rip off chunks of bread and dip it in the sauce and cut pieces of fish off so that we could all try it. It was sooo friendly of them and it was as tasty as it looked. I really love visiting Tzfat, even though I could never live there, but where else in the world can you find kabbalistic graffiti everywhere?

From the parking lot in Tzfat we met with our Jeep excursion drivers, six - seven passengers to each Jeep and we headed out to explore the Galilee. Our first stop was an ancient Mikvah (ritual bath) located in a field at the bottom of the city. Allegedly it was very cold but i felt the water and maybe the people claiming it was cold just hadn't ever had to shower at our hotel in Bat-Yam. We continued down the mountain and stopped to pick good smelling leaves from a vine and at this breath-taking overlook from which you could see the Kineret (Sea of Galilee) and Tiverias and everything was SO GREEN because it was the rainy season and it just looked like Narnia, or the swiss Alps in Heidi. It was another one of those scenes that can't really be captured adequately by a camera. The trip continued towards these incredible cliffs that rise about 400m above the valley and are pock-marked by caves which legend says were used to store treasures from the Temple but excavations haven't been able to find anything yet. It was one of those experiences where we saw the cliffs from a distance and were seriously unimpressed and then as we got closer and closer and the cliffs loomed over us more and more that we realized how very imposing they were. There were also horses running around and playing in the field at the base of the cliffs and doing everything they could to make the view unbearably picturesque.

We finished the tour up above the Kineret able to look across at Jordan and the Golan Heights, and then got back in the bus to commence getting lost again on our way to Migdal Or. We visited an orphanage that takes care of over 6000 children currently and is this huge operation started by a Rabbi who came north to one of the worst neighborhoods in Israel to connect with the younger generation and found they had no support network and were ending up in jail and started Migdal Or in response. I actually saw the founding Rabbi speak in the Staples Center during the Maccabbi Tel Aviv v. LA Clippers game in LA that is apparently a big fundraiser for the orphanage.

We drove back around to the Kineret and checked into our hotel on Kibbutz Kinar, managing to get lost repeatedly because no one that worked there bothered to tell us that our rooms were outside the hotel in the villas and instead just watched us all walk over to the elevator banks and riding them up to the third floor while we tried our damndest to find the fourth floor.

Once we got that sorted out and actually found our rooms we got dressed and went for dinner at Deck's a reaaaaally nice meat restaurant on the kineret. I've literally never eaten so much food in my entire life, it was pretty much coming out of my ears. We actually ate five different animals in one meal, starting with Tuna and salad, then moving to an appetizer of Lamb, then a main course of steak, chicken, (sweet potatoes and fries) onion rings, and finishing with duck - and dessert. And vodka shots. And wine. And fireworks at midnight. And a marriage proposal (not from our group), and then dancing with Ecuadorian missionaries. Then singing and dancing some more before we ran to buy more alcohol before the bus left to go to the hotel. We got about fifteen minutes out of town before we realized our guard hadn't actually made it on the bus.

We pulled over to wait while the guard tremped (hitch hiked) to meet us and the crazzzzzy Chechen bus driver forced us all over the bus so he could fuel up and then literally threw a gigantic shit fit when the machine ran out of receipt paper. At one point the police were involved. But we made it home safe and then instead of drinking more passed out instead.

It was a lot more fun than we expected to have and it was really great to spend New Years with new friends and a cool group of people.

Friday morning we woke up early, ate an entirely unnecessary breakfast and then left for Jerusalem. We made it to town with minimal bathroom stops, checked back into our hotel and received our shabbas keys. We had free time until 3pm so I just went for a run around town and met my sister by Ben Yehuda and went shopping for scarves and various random jewelry in these little discount stores on Jaffa Street, then walked all the way to the city center so she could catch a bus and I ended up having to run from the city center back to my hotel (20 minutes or so) which is actually what I feel like I end up doing ALL THE TIME in Jerusalem.

I made it back in time to take a quick shower and get dressed for shabbat before we bused over to the old city. Our Madrich took us to a lookout spot over the kotel plaza and we sang Ha-tikvah and other songs before we lit candles in the Aish building (there was quite a bit of confusion over what building we were actually supposed to be in - finally we found a room with extra candles and the girl said she would go "check to see if we could use them" so as soon as she left I lit, which was the right decision because she never came back). Kabbalat Shabbat at the Kotel was a really fun time, instead of standing by the mechitzah and trying to figure out what the boys were up to we had our own minyan and sang the songs everyone knew and sang more songs with people we didn't know from Michigan and then each had some private time with the Kotel. It was definitely the time that I've felt the most connected to the place and the Kedusha that surrounds it. It felt like before I knew it was supposed to be a really special place but I didn't quite click with it and I finally this last time really got that special feeling.

We left the Kotel for our Friday night dinners with host families. I was with four other girls and we went to an apartment in a very tiny, quaint little courtyard hidden behind a large wall and door. The hosts were parents to a five-month old with her first cold and an older boy in his terrible twos. He had a hilarious mix of hebrew and english that he was using as a language (He'nay spoon!) but as much as I'm sure the parents really wanted to host guests for Shabbat what they really needed was a nap. They just looked so tired, and the food was all bought not prepared and the boy just spent the whole time trying to destroy everything he could get his hands on, or move it from where it was supposed to be, and the mom left for like half an hour to put the baby to sleep. It was really really nice of them to host us I just felt like we could have been more help if we had offered to babysit while they got some rest! After dinner we stumbled back to the hotel and I went immediately to sleep, I was so tired I was falling asleep while trying to hold conversations at that point.

Saturday morning I woke up too late for Shacharit, which is unfortunate because our hotel was next door to the Great Synagogue and I would have loved to see part of a service there (I say part of because I spoke to a girl that went to the service and it apparently was very long and the cantor had a terminal case of the Ay-yay-yays).

I got breakfast at the hotel, apparently our 11 am lunch was actually a 1 pm lunch but they hadn't done a good job of disseminating that information. After that I just went on a walk through a few parks nearby the hotel until lunch at 1pm and then after lunch I packed up most of my things and went on a short walk through the neighborhood around the hotel. We had one last project development meeting and then a Q and A session with Rabbi Sorani - mostly focusing on the "soul" and reincarnation, etc. It was very interesting to hear people's questions after the whole trip was almost finished. We ended shabbat with Havdalah and then packed up our last bits of belongings.

At this point I was going to work on my travel blog but instead I received a phone call from my sister that her friend had an e-mail from our shul that on Friday afternoon our Grandfather, my dad's father, whom I would visit every summer, without fail, from the summer after seventh grade through this past year, had passed away. Unfortunately my parents were seven hours behind Israeli time and so we couldn't do anything to contact them.

So with that information I went to the goodbye dinner, where we ate kosher chinese food, which was very well done, and split a bottle of wine with a few other people before we made our project pitches to the representative of the organization that funded a significant portion of our trip, requesting funding for our projects from the same foundation.

After dinner it was a rush back to the hotel and then everyone was off. Except for me.

But it's now 2:30 am and I just realized I still have to shower and will only be getting 4 hours of sleep at the most so I'll end here at the end of the group trip and pick up my own travels in the next blog.

---