A Journey of Firsts
Breakfast at 7:45am. Sleepy eyes. Exhausted limbs. Eager hearts. Slow sips of a coffee grind concoction that took three days to understand how to create. We leave the hotel in Jerusalem and head to Yad Vashem, the most gorgeous form of memorial I have ever experienced.
In high school, I took a field trip to the Holocaust museum in Dallas, Texas. I remember listening to a survivor and hanging on to her every word, realizing that this women had a connection to my family even though she had never met a single member.
Uneasiness settled in the second my feet made contact with the ground getting off the bus. I'm on this trip with two of my cousins, Rachel and Sophie, and we had briefly discussed our family's relation to the Holocaust prior to today's visit to Yad Vashem. We remember our grandmother's connection and how she spoke of how her great aunt and her family had been murdered in Poland during the Holocaust. The entire concept of the Holocaust brings up many emotions for me, as it should for the entire human population.
We were asked last night during a group activity to choose one word from a list of words that accurately represented how the Holocaust made us feel. I chose confusion. The unfathomable reality of how so many lives were brutally ripped away leaves me in awe.
The memorial here in Israel is structurally beautiful and purposefully designed to guide visitors through the entire exhibit without missing a room. Walking through the carefully designed rooms of the memorial building, I felt numb. I'd catch glimpses of the tv screens that had survivors sharing their stories and at times I had to walk away because of the brutal severity of what they had personally experienced. One woman confessed a desire to kill her own child because the screams of the baby reminded her of the screams in Auschwitz. There was one room where five tattered suitcases lay on display. Five suitcases of Jewish humans who had been cruelly deceived into thinking they were being relocated when really they were being lead to their deaths.
I'm still unsure of the feeling I felt when I sat on the bus and watched Yad Vashem disappear from view, but I know I won't ever forget it.
Later in the day, after stopping for lunch and visiting the city of Sderot, we arrived at the Taglit Village in the Negev desert. This is one of the most incredible establishments in which I've ever had the pleasure of staying. We enter and are immediately greeted by smiles, Israeli music, and large Bedouin tents.
After stocking up on water, we got settled and hung out by our Bedouin tent until the hospitality person gave us an introduction to the settlement. We sat on mats filled with sheep wool under a tent woven from goat hair and learned how the guests that arrive here are treated to cups of coffee & honest conversations. We were then presented with the most delicious dinner a Mediterranean-loving vegetation could desire. Fresh pita, amazing hummus, crunchy cucumbers, flavorful rice, & fried corn patties...delicious! Dinner ended and we split off into our workshops groups. I was in 'The Secret of Herbs and their Uses' workshop and the most kind-hearted, adorable man shared his expertise on growing herbs and the distinct benefit that each herb can have on a human's health.
Other workshops included different dancing or movement exercises, star gazing, drawing, scorpion education, mediation, yoga, and many more. The workshops finished and everyone gathered at the main stage where a show composed of a live band, an incredibly talented belly dancer, two combat dancers, a fire thrower, and a light stick artist joined in uniting the many Taglit groups together in a friendly celebration of life.
The day finally came to a close with smores (strawberry marshmallow, graham cracker-less smores at that) around a searing hot bonfire. This journey has already been filled with many firsts and it's only day four! :-)
