Yitzak Rabin Day and our program seminar

 Our school marked Yitzak Rabin Day with an assembly honoring his life and death. Rabin was an Israeli Prime Minister who was assassinated by a Jewish-Israeli who disagreed with Rabin's peace policies. Our students performed songs and readings associated with Rabin's life and death.

A few weeks ago, all Israel Pathways participants got together for a seminar on Israeli society. We did activities in Haifa and Tel Aviv related to diversity and political issues in Israel. On the first day, we visited a Druze village in the Carmel mountains. Our guide shared insights with us about the life and religion of the Druze. Since the Druze religion is a partially secret religion, there were many things she could not tell us. One of the most interesting things she shared with us was an explanation of the Druze belief in reincarnation. In the Druze tradition, Druze souls are reincarnated into Druze bodies on the same day that they die. Some members of the community claim to have recovered memories of their previous lives, including a little boy who remembered his death in a terrorist bombing on a bus. Druze populations are found mostly in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

Our guide telling us about Druze life

The Druze flag

Delicious Druze feast!

 In Haifa, we very briefly visited two sites believed to be Elijah's cave.

This portion of the caves is found under the altar of a church in Haifa

Elijah's cave (the women's side)

Strips of cloth hung in the cave

Most of the religious sites in Israel are divided in two (sometimes unequal) halves, the men's side and the women's side.

Prayers stuffed in the cracks of the walls in the cave.

 That night, we ate at Dr. Shakshuka, a renowned Shakshuka place in Jaffo. It's a middle eastern dish of tomatoes and poached eggs. It was served with soups, salads, and bread for dipping.

 After very active days, we also had some very interesting evenings activities. I was very excited that one of them was an opportunity for everyone to register as potential marrow and stem cell donors with the Gift of Life, a registry that operates in Israel and the U.S. and promotes the registry to Jewish communities. The Gift of Life employees let me help get everyone registered and agreed to let me help organize registration opportunities for more MASA groups.
Earlier that evening, members of the Parents Circle-Family Forum visited us. PC-FF is an organization that brings together Palestinian and Jewish Israelis who have lost family members to the violence surrounding the conflict between the two groups. It was one of the most interesting, moving, and relevant experiences I've had so far in Israel. A Jewish-Israeli man and a Palestinian women both shared their stories with us and explained how their grief has led them to take an active role in promoting peace between the two people groups. When we asked whether she thought as two-state solution was the best hope for peace, the woman replied that she didn't care how peace was achieved, so long as it came and quickly. Many of the members of PC-FF have their first opportunity to interact with Palestians or Jewish Israelis in the program, bonding over their shared bereavement. The program's website is http://www.theparentscircle.org/.

The next day, we went to three museums in Tel Aviv. The most interesting of which was the Children's Museum, where we participated in activities designed to help participants imagine what life would be like as a hearing or vision impaired member of society. I participated in an activity called dialogue in the dark, in which a visually impaired guide leads a group through a controlled environment designed to recreated common settings (parks, streets, restaurants). The course through which the guide leads the group is completely dark, so everyone has to rely on touch, sound, and the instructions of the guide to navigate the course. After the course, we sat in a cafe in the dark and talked with our guide about his life. Only at the end of the tour, did he lead us into a lighted room, where we saw him for the first time.

All in all, a very interesting couple of days...