A Great First Night in the Desert

Bus 461 left from our kibbutz in Al Mog and we headed to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, which is in the West side of Jerusalem.

The tone on the bus shifted as we began the climb up the road to Jerusalem, playing Israeli mourning music. The night before this visit to the museum, we had all evaluated our feelings about going to Yad Vashem and discussed them within small groups. As the bus traveled closer to Yad Vashem, we prepared for the feelings that were discussed the night before.

As we exited the bus, we see Jerusalem limestone as the architecture of the museum. We walk to meet our guide, Hershie, who was great, and then began our tour of Yad Vashem.

After the tour, we had a discussion about what we had seen and how we felt going through the museum. A main point of the discussion was how, as Jews, we have to be recounting our history about what happened to the Jewish people in the Holocaust to make sure we never forget.

But also at the same time we have to be speak out about genocide of other groups of people and not stand silent.

Next, we went to the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Playground in Sderot. What made this playground unique was it was all indoors and individuals can get to a safety room in under 15 seconds, if need be. This playground had a wide variety of equipment for all ages and we had fun playing on the big kid equipment.

Then we went to a lookout, where we looked out to the west to see Gaza.

Inbal, our guide, pointed out landmarks of where Israel had built a fence/wall to designate Israel from Gaza.

The last stop was where we stayed for the night: the Bedouin tents. We all had a great time eating Bedouin cuisine sitting on the floor and sleeping all together in one big tent.

Over all it was a great first night in the desert.