Winter Israel Seminar cohort 7: Post #1

Travel and our 1st day:

by Leora Tolfer and Elana Muroff

We began our journey with a 10 hour flight to Zurich. This flight was interesting. At the Zurich airport we endured a seven hour layover. This was almost unbearable, but we were able to get through it by finding lots of food. After another four hour flight from Zurich to Tel Aviv, we finally made it to Israel!

After taking a short rest in our hotel, we got ready to meet up with the Tel Aviv fellows. We took our first drive in Tel Aviv (in daylight, at least) to the museum where we would be having our Mega-Evening in order to meet the Tel Aviv fellows before the event started. We played some ice breakers with the group and had a chance to reconnect after eight months apart.

The rest of the day consisted of our Mega-Evening with all of the North American and Israeli fellows (with the exception of Toronto). We were able to meet a few hundred Diller fellows and it was a fantastic experience to finally feel like a part of the larger Diller community! We’ve had a great start to our trip and we can’t wait to see more of this beautiful country.

Day 2:

by Becca Speyer

Our first full day in Israel was a very intense day. The day consisted of Yad Vashem and Mt. Hertzl. Yad Vashem is the Holocaust museum and Mt. Hertzl is the cemetery Israel’s greatest leaders and the fallen soldiers. The trip consisted of taking the path from the Jewish peoples’ worst experiences to learning about the creation of Israel through talking about the most influential people’s lives while walking through the cemetery. Mt Herzl ended with us walking through the “newest” part of the cemetery which was the most impactful and emotional part of the day for the fellows to endure because of how close in age the fallen soldiers are to us.

Then we headed to Ramat Rachel, our hotel, to meet up with the Israelis and eat dinner. After dinner we did a maagal lila consisting of the fellows choosing pictures that represented how their summer felt to them. It was really impactful to see the different experiences over the summer as two different communities dealing with the hardships that arose.