Our First Shabbat

After a leisurely morning breakfast of eggs and cereal from the land of milk and honey, we had our morning activity.

The morning activity was led by our staff, Jamie and Brian, who have a serious fear of us lacking water and sunscreen.

Through that activity we created short skits to learn about this week's Torah portion: shelach. We can honestly say that although we were dubious about the skits, they were fun and funny. We now know how to properly sacrifice a lamb through a Rachel Ray recipe.

We spent the afternoon at the pool enjoying each other's company in down time.

We came back together in the afternoon for a discussion about what it means to be Jewish. It revolved around cultural and religious Judaism and our Jewish history. After a lot of debate, one of the most important facets was to be able to call ourselves Jewish, because from that, we are able to create a sense of community and a sense of history, which is central to the experience.

We concluded Shabbat with a "family circle" of Havdallah. For some of us, this was our first Shabbat experience.

We went out for a late post-Shabbat dinner in a small outdoor shopping center - burgers and falafel everywhere. From there we came back and relaxed as a group at the kibbutz.

Photo Credit: @zacharytaxery