December 30th 2018

Hey Everyone!

It is late night at Kibbutz Gadot in the Upper Galilee.  It is hard to believe that our day started this morning with breakfast, loading the bus and several hours at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial.  Our group met our wonderful guide, Eran, who began our tour by showing us a few of the people honored as Righteous Gentiles.  We were proud of every single member of our group for entering the museum and winding through the entire museum.  The guide shared many interesting, impactful stories and taught a lot of history and provided historical context—he really had a good sense of our group.  During the museum and in our small group processing time, group members used words like “terrifying,” “heart-pounding,” “sad,” and “emotional” to describe the experience.  One commented, “So many Jews killed by the Nazis is what upset me the most!”     We learned that the Holocaust Museum now has names of 4.5 million of the 6 million killed; we witnessed the very moving Hall of Names.  We also walked through the Children’s Museum as the names of the 1.5 million children killed were recited.

Our processing time and discussion were followed by a pizza lunch and a long bus ride up to the Galilee, via a bathroom stop in Beit Shean . Group members helped make a mincha minyan for our driver, David, whose mother died two weeks ago.  They really understood how important it was to do this mitzvah so he could say kaddish.  Some even offered words of comfort, which were greatly appreciated.

We arrived to Kibbutz Gadot and caught a glimpse of the Kineret, the Sea of Galilee, on the way up.   We learned a bit about the history of kibbutzim, settled in to our rooms, relaxed and enjoyed dinner in a very peaceful dining room—we seem to be the only group here.  The night concluded with a “Getting to Know the Israelis” on our group activity.

Tomorrow, we are headed to Safed and to a chocolate factory.  We hope it won’t be too cloudy to get a good look in to Syria from Mount Bental in Israel.