Poland - Tykocin

On the second day we were in Poland, we went to the Tykocin Shtettel where we learned about the traditions of the people that lived there as well as their proud heritage before they were taken by the Nazis.  As we walked around the Shtettel we learned stories about the importance of prayer and Torah study to the Jews that lived there.  One story we learned about was how an old man always read through the entire Sidur when he prayed.  The Besht came through the Shtettel and taught the old man what to do when he prayed but the Besht then realized that the old man wasn’t doing anything wrong and learned that there were multiple ways to connect with God.  There were other stories that we heard where simple Jews were reciting parts of the Mishnah that they learned in the Beit Kenesset while they worked to become more knowledgeable Jews.  This showed the devotion that everyone in the Shtettel had to Judaism as well as the tradition of trying to be more knowledgeable Jews.

After exploring the Shtettel while learning about the Jewish stories, traditions, and proud heritage, we had lunch and then went into the synagogue that was built in 1642 which had parts of prayers and Hebrew writings on the walls.  Then, we brought life and t’filah back into the old synagogue that was full of singing, excitement, and dancing.  Right after our t’filah, we were told to silently get on the bus where we were dropped off near the woods.  As we walked quietly into the woods, following in the sad footsteps of the Jews of Tykocin, we felt the emotions of the Jews that were full of life and then confused and scared in an instant.  We then got to a clearing where we saw three pits with roses, candles, and Israeli flags.  We were at the spot where the Jews were forced to march into the forest by the Nazis and were shot into the three pits.  After, we had a ceremony in memory of the Tykocin Jews and walked out of the woods which was the thing that the Tykocin Jews weren’t able to do.

Even though the fate of the Tykocin Jews is very sad, they were also very proud of their heritage and traditions.  What traditions are important to you?  What would you want future generations to remember you for?

מסע לפולין Day 3: Lublin (לובלין)

  מסע לפולין Day 3: Lublin (לובלין)

We began the third day of our Poland Pilgrimage (מסע) in the old town of Lublin. We walked through the beautiful city looking for signs of Jewish life, Christian life, and anything we found weird or interesting. Seeing as the old town of Lublin was full of Jewish life before the Shoah, I expected to see a lot more remnants than actually existed. It is no secret that the area is now extremely Christian (excluding the obvious LARGE church that can be seen throughout the whole place). The city itself is beautiful and full of color, even in the cold rain. The castle overlooking the space is also beautifully built and doesn’t feel too overbearing to see. 

After walking around the city and enjoying ourselves in learning, we headed to a nearby hotel that was once a large Yeshiva. Yeshivat Chachamei Lublin was once a grand Yeshiva that introduced many new ideas, one of which still exists today. This Yeshiva was founded by Rabbi Me’ir Shapiro (מאיר שפירה). When the school was inaugurated, Shapiro invited many non-Jews to come and see this great place that he had built and to invite them to see what the Jews could be capable of, and what they could bring to the society. Unlike many Yeshivas at the time, Yeshivat Chachamei Lublin was focused on Jewish studies AND interpersonal relations. This was quite new, and made the students of this Yeshiva to be great scholars in various subjects. The Yeshiva was elite, as well. Students were required to memorize 200 pages of Talmud (front and back) in order to be accepted. To go along with this elite mindset, Shapiro introduced the idea of a Daf Yomi (דף יומי). The Daf Yomi is a when one page of Talmud is studied each day. The idea of studying one page of Talmud daily (front and back) is to bring the Messiah and to bring the Jewish people together all over the world. Everyone that takes part in this practice starts on the same page and reads one page in order every single day. The entire cycle takes about seven and a half years, and is then repeated. This keeps all of the Jewish people united and encourages Jewish learning in everyone. 

 

We ended our day in Lublin at the Nazi death camp Maidanek. I’m not really sure how to put into words what I saw here. My mind and body were quite numb (admittedly my body was more numb from cold and my mind from the site). Maidanek was different from other Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. It was originally used as a POW concentration camp for non-Jews of different ethnicities. Once the war got worse, Jews started being taken there to work. After some time of it being a concentration camp, Maidanek was transformed into a death camp. In order to give us some hint of an understanding of what Jews went through when arriving at Maidanek, Ariella made our first stop inside the camp the gas chambers. We then moved on to walking through the various buildings along the main road. Those buildings were mainly used to house the belongings of those who passed through Maidanek. For example, one of the buildings housed over 10,000 individual shoes that belonged to the victims that came through the camp. I think that the hardest thing for me to grasp was the fact that this was a reality. Those shoes belonged to real living people at one point. To me, the whole camp just looked like a museum, not the real actual camp. I felt like I was walking in a bubble of sorts, seeing but not really seeing everything. If I was an artist in any way, I could easily draw you a picture of every single thing I saw, but then I was walking without being able to focus or see. Throughout our tour, Ariella read us passages from a story a survivor of Maidanek had written. This to me didn’t make the experience any more real. It was hard for me to believe that this was a true story. We continued through the camp hearing stories and seeing a horrible face of destruction of our people. At the very end of the camp, before we saw the crematorium, we passed a statue. This statue was built by Jewish prisoners and was a column with eagles on the top. Each day, the Jews were forced to pass this statue and bow down to it. In order to help them continue, the builders took some ash of those who were killed and placed them in the bottom of the statue without the Germans knowing. This way, when they were forced to bow down to the German symbol, they knew they were bowing down toward their people, and gave them a hope and motivation to survive in honor of the people that perished. At the very back of the camp sits the camp crematorium. In this building thousands of people, Jews and non-Jews, were cremated. The building sickened me. It was the first time during our time in the camp that I felt anything other than numbness. I felt physically sick and nauseous. The worst part to me, the sickest thing I could have ever imagined, was the fact that there was a bath tub in a small room off of the room with the burners. In this room, Nazi officers would take a bath next too burning bodies just to get the hot water. It was just ridiculous to me. The ending of our day was the hardest for me. We finished at the memorial that the Russians built at the very end of Maidanek. This memorial consists of the ashes of thousands of people and a little bit of dirt. This pile…. really can’t be put into words, I don’t think. The enormity of it and the sickness that accompanies it is just too much. I hadn’t had any emotion throughout the camp until that memorial. Right before our (beautifully done, thank you everyone that participated) ceremony, the dam broke. I hadn’t made any connection that it really was real until that moment and that was it. It doesn’t help that if needed, Maidanek could be up and running as a fully functional death/concentration camp within 24 hours. All in all, I’m very grateful that I had this opportunity to see evidence of all that I’ve been learning for years. 

What was the most interesting part about the old town of Lublin to you?

Would you ever consider taking up Daf Yomi? Why or why not?

What did you feel during Maidanek? Are you glad you had the opportunity to see?

Gadna: A Taste of the IDF

This past week was highly anticipated by most of us on EIE. We had the eye-opening opportunity to get a very mall taste of what it is like to be serving in the IDF or צה"ל. The first thing that we did coming of the bus was line up. In no time, we had put our bags in our tents an received the uniforms that we would be wearing for the next couple of days. Personally, I was terrified mostly because I had no idea what our new mifakdot were saying. They quickly laid down he rules for the week and told how to stand at attention, or akshev. Throughout the week would stood like this very often while waiting or orders. The first lesson we had was about how to use a gun. We go to a building with classrooms inside in a method we would be using all week: running in ten and twenty second increments. After the time ran out we weren't allowed to move. Eventually we got to the classroom and the "Samelet", a higher commander than our mifakdot, talked to us about the responsibility of using and possessing a gun. After this we learned ore specifically about how to shoot the gun and what the different parts were called. We also learned the different commands that we would be using at the shooting range.
After our first exhausting day in Gadna, we had some free time to shower and relax before being in bed. After ten o'clock we could not talk or use our phones, only sleep.
After an early rise the next day, we continued learning more about what it was like to be in the IDF. We exercised and reviewed the gun commands. After lunch it was finally time to go to the gun range! Some of our group was nervous to shoot the guns, including me, but it turned out to not be very scary at all, and was a lot easier than I expected.
Over the next day our responsibilities as a group grew significantly. This was most relevant when two of the three groups had lunch kitchen duty. The lunch hour was busy and involved much running around for me, cleaning up each table before ore people came to eat lunch. Some of us worked in the kitchen and some served the food. After lunch, I don't think any of us were expecting to still be cleaning four or five hours later. After cleaning the floors, tables, and every single dish and utensil used during lunch, we finally finished. Luckily, we got a nice break after that.
Over the course of Gadna, we learned so much about Israel's national army, its units, its ranks, and the soldiers' responsibilities. As we were leaving it was really nice to talk to our mifakdot like people. It was nice to see my mifakedet smile without holding a clipboard in front of her face, which she had done whenever she had laughed during the week. I'm really glad that we had this awesome experience in Gadna.

טיול חלוצים Chalutzim

So, on Tuesday we travelled to Kfar Tavor and the Kinneret to learn about the Chalutzim coming to Eretz Yisrael. The Chalutzim were the pioneers who came to cultivate and work the land of Israel in order to later settle it as a nation.  There were two main waves of Aliyah which ranged from 1881-1903 and 1904-1914.

              The Aliyah Rishona was the first wave of Once to Israel (60,000), in itself there were two types of Chalutzim in this movement. The “Yeshuv Yeshan” and the “Yeshuv Chadash”. The old seat were the Jews who came to the four holy cities to study Torah, they had a rather poor lifestyle because they lived off of a fund send from other countries and didn’t work. They were the über religious Jews thoroughly devout in their studies there. Whereas the new seat weren’t necessarily religious nor did they focus on it. They wanted a new life in which they’d work and make a connection with the land (Labour Zionism). They worked as a community in Moshavs however unlike the second Aliyah, they worked for their own profit. A “Productive Jewish Society” was the start of a new revolution for these pioneers.            Despite how promising this idea was, there were still many challenges at hand for the Chalutzim. First of all the land that they bought was much less than appealing than promised, often times it was actually swampland which wasn’t 

farm-able in addition there was also disease present there. One major problem was their financial cr which made them reliant on Baron Rothschild despite their desired independence. He even sent clerks over and ran everything from afar to not lose any further money much to the protest of the Chalutzim. Other than that, the Jews had problems with the local (Arab) neighbors and the Turkish governmen

            The second Aliyah criticized the first because of two main things; lack of independence and outsourcing labour. That being said we can tell clear differences between the two. The second Aliyah was first of all more successful than the first but also this time there were a good number of determined, young, labour capable people (3,000 out of 33,000). There were three main causes for the second Aliyah which were the Kishinev pogroms, failed socialist revolution in Russian, and the Uganda proposal. Yosef Vitkin wrote an outcry to appeal to the young Jews to come and make Aliyah after the failed Socialist revolution. The second wave of Chalutzim wanted to rebuild and cultivate the land, they were also quite into having a socialist situation so they made small communities (or groups) with their friends called kibbutzim. They believed everything should be communal and that Hebrew should be the spoken language for the new nation.

            I thought that for the people to move to a completely different country and to risk so much was quite brave and I admire how they were able to do so. I think they could’ve done better in some aspects but given their situation I think they handled everything more than okay and pretty well actually. I think that what the Chalutzim did and envisioned was admirable and I give props to them for what they created however past that I don’t have much to say.

            The cemetery of Kinneret to me presents the memories and experiences from k’vutza Kinneret and that envelops both the hopes and despairs of the Chalutzim there. For instance the grave for Lotus was signifying a despair at the loss of the first child of the kibbutz. On the other hand it shows the inspiring and hope providing tales of some certain individuals like Rachel for example. I believe that the cemetery signifies both sides of this equally and that these, like two sides of a coin these memories make up and show the character of Kinneret.

            So, after a long day of learning and travel, what do you think you’d have done in the position of the Chalutzim? And which form of Zionist do you most agree with in terms of the Chalutzim? -Seth Crandus   

Yad Vashem - Holocaust Musem and Memorial

Yad Vashem

This morning EIE had the amazing opportunity to visit Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, literally meaning "Hand and Name" is a Holocaust museum and monument honoring both the people who were killed in the Holocaust and the people who did their part to help save a Jew from the horrors of the Nazis. Their mission is to commemorate, research, and educate people about the Holocaust. We were introduced to our tour guide, Tamara, who gave each one of us a headset to listen to her throughout the day. Before going in to the main museum we started our tour next to a tree with a plaque reading "Irena Sendler". Tamara told us Irena's story. Irena was a non-Jew living in Warsaw during the time of the Warsaw ghetto. Being a nurse, she got clearance to go in and out of the ghetto. Each day she would bring the Jews supplies that they needed, and when the "liquidating" of the ghetto began, she smuggled out children to get them to a safer place. She kept a record of each child she saved and even when she was arrested and tortured, she never once gave up a name. Irena Sendler is referred to as a righteous gentile. There are over 25 thousand other people like Irena, who risked the lives of themselves and their families to save others.
After learning about Irena Sendler, we entered the main building. The first thing we saw was a huge triangular screen playing real footage of Jews in their everyday life before the Holocaust. This was to create the context to show all that we lost during the Holocaust. Tamara showed us that the entire main part of the museum was in the shape of a triangle. There are multiple possible reasons why the museum was built this way. The triangle could represent half of the Star of David, showing that we lost half of out Jewish population. The triangle is also seen as a strong building structure, representing the resilience and hope that we had after the war. Tamara also pointed out that the walls were significantly narrowed towards the middle of the museum and that the middle was lower than the rest of the museum, representing where the lowest point of the Holocaust was located in the museum.
We began walking through the museum and Tamara spoke to us starting at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed by a German Jew. She spoke about the crumbling economy and morale of Germany. She walked through the museum, explaining the rise of Adolf Hitler to power, and the beginning of anti-Semitism. We saw propaganda posters showing how evil the Jews were seen.
We then walked into a small set up of an average Jewish home in Germany before the Holocaust. It had a menorah and some religion- related literature, but apart from that, it wasn't very different than any other house you could have seen back then. After this, we learned about how other countries including America, coldly turned the other cheek to the terrible thing being done to the Jews and other undesirables in the eyes of the Nazis. We walked through an exhibit on the different ghettos including the Lodz ghetto where Tamara told us the story of her father-in-law's experience in the ghetto. As we walked on the images displayed in the exhibits got increasingly more disturbing This elevated the most when we were in the exhibit on the concentration work and death camps.
Personally, it was extremely difficult to hold in the tears while passing under the replica of he sign that was up over the entrance of Auschwitz camp. It read "Arbeit Macht Frei." This translates to "Work will set you free." As we passed more and more difficult images, it became extremely difficult for me and some of my classmates to look at the footage of the death camps. As we exited the last of the exhibits, we came to the large triangular window, sometimes referred to as "the light at the end o the tunnel".
After leaving the main building, we wet to the Children's Memorial. In the Memorial there were five candles surrounded by many mirrors. As we walked through we could hear a list of children's names being read. It looked as if there were an infinite number of candles in the dark room. In my opinion this was on of the most meaningful exhibits in the museum. After we left, Tamara spoke to us about carrying the legacy of everyone that was killed in the Holocaust was our duty. This trip was extremely meaningful and the Museum was an amazing monument for all that was lost in the Holocaust. This trip gave me an even stronger desire to learn more about the Holocaust, and the people who died and the ones who lived through it.
Questions:
What part of the trip was the most meaningful to you? Why?
If you are comfortable with it, please share any personal family stories about something we learned about today.
Our tour guide emphasized the importance of how the museum was built. Do you agree with the set-up method? To you, what did the way the museum was built and organized mean to you?
How did you feel about going through the museum with a tour guide? Do you think it would have been more or less meaningful to go through without one?
Lana Kolchinsky

Tel Aviv/Yaffo Tiyul

אתמול אנחנו הלכנו לתל אביב
(just kidding I'm only in כיתה ב׳. But my sad attempt at speaking Hebrew is relevant to this תיול!!)
Yesterday we drove to Tel Aviv and Yaffa to follow the path of the cultural zionists from the 20th century. Tel Aviv started out as an ancient port that served as a gateway to the holy land; it even served as such before the times of David). This port is where people would pass
through as they made Aliyah to Israel. We started off our day in יפו, the area in which many Jews would settle as they came through תל אביב. Unfortunately, this area still lacked hygiene and Jewish culture, so in 1906, a group of Jews doubt the lands until they come upon sand dunes and decide to establish an ער עברית (a Hebrew city) filled with a בית כנסת, בית ספר, museums, restaurants, music, and newspapers. Their goal is to create a culturally Jewish city.
Led by ארוד העם, the cultural Zionist movement  seemed to create a Jewish cultural center because they feared that in exile, the Jewish people left the עם aspect of the triangle.
Meanwhile, coming back to my attempt at a coherent Hebrew sentence, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, fearing that the Jews had lost identity and nationality, he travels to Jerusalem to further develop the Jewish language. In fact, not only did he want to develop the language, but he made a pact to live and only speak the language. Eventually he goes far enough to develop the first מילון, the first dictionary. For the words that did not exist in the Hebrew texts that already existed, the Torah for example, Ben Yehuda worked for a logical way to name the words. גלידה (I hope you all know what this means), for example, came from the Aramaic word for cold, and the word for water bottle came from the sound that water makes when you pour it out. Though people thought he was crazy, who knows whether Hebrew would still be around if not for him.
Though Eliezer and Arad did not work together, they both had the common goal of Jewish nationality by going back to the land and the language.
Sixty-six families began the cultural Zionist Aliyah to Israel. They had a raffle to decide which plots of land each family would recieve. As we saw in our simulation of this event, some were thrilled with their location while some were entirely less happy. Furthermore, there were ups and downs to each location.
The major institutions of this neighborhood originally consisting of two streets were the גימנסיה הרצליה (a non-religious high school that, while taught in Hebrew, did not teach Hebrew as a language) and the first kiosk that sold coffee and still does today!
Towards the middle of the day, we got to visit the Evans wife to learn about Soluto, the hi-tech startup company she works at. Though the company is clearly very modern, Ariella still managed to draw the stretched connection between this and Ben Yehuda only speaking Hebrew and his movement in the early 20th century. We got a tour and all left with the dream of one day getting to work at a place like this that allows dogs at works, prefers bean bags to desk chairs, and offers a variety of employee benefits. We also got excited about the somewhat ironic street crossing between Arad-Haam street and Hertzel street because of the conflict between the views of the two men; Arad-Haam a strong cultural Zionist and Hertzel being a strong political Zionist.
Throughout the day we had a series of simulations to demonstrate life in the עד עברית. We tried to go about 15 minutes with only talking in pure עברית (I definitely had trouble with this) and then interviewed random citizens about תל אביב today. Some of us found that even people today still consider Hebrew such an important language because of the language of their ancestors and because it is more than just a language, but a nation and a belief as well. It was thrilling to discover that to most, Hebrew is still so important and even more so meaningful. Those that decided to switch to עברית made such a sacrifice because it was considered an old dead language that the Jewish people led by Ben Yehuda managed to revive. For me personally, I loved being able to make the connection between Tel Aviv as it was founded and the people that inhabit it now. It was truly a culturally fulfilling and beautiful Tiyul.
At the end of the day, Ariella tried to show us a song about the little friendly competition between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Check the song by Sarah's cousin here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNwJFLkoX80

Some questions to make you חושב :
1.) Is Tel Aviv today the fulfillment of the Zionist dream? why or why not?
2.) Is Hebrew to you just a language? why or why not?

Rabbi Yitzchak Breitovitz and Nachlaot

Last Sunday Kitat Arava had the privilege of listening to Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz, a Haredi Rabbi, and visiting a small Hassidic Kehila Kedosha.


Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz talked to us EIE students about what it meant to be a Haredi Jew. Being a Haredi Jew means dedicating your life to studying Torah. Before coming to Israel the only time I had ever seen an Orthodox Jew was when my family and I went to NYC and drove through Brooklyn where we could see tons of men and women dressed in very modest clothing. Men wearing all black suits with those big fur hats and women wearing wigs and skirts that went down to their knees or longer.  Rabbi Yitzchak talked to us about the many different types of Hasids and how to distinguish between them by their dress and style of the kippah. One of the main goals of Haredi Jews is to strive to improve ourselves and to make the world a better place. The Kippot is a reminder that Hashem is about you and that you yourself can never be more powerful than God. 
After hearing all about life as a Haredi Jew, we hopped on a bus and went to the Orthodox neighborhood, Nachlaot. We walked in and out of little buildings and we observed their home lifestyle. When walking on the streets in this neighborhood you see bulletins everywhere advertising and letting people know what's going on the community. 

(some advertising found on streets)

When you walk through the streets of this neighborhood you will see many interesting things like a genizah, tzedakah boxes built into the houses and a very beautiful synagogue. The synagogue that we walked by was decorated with symbols of the 12 tribes and many other things like that. 

When you think about your Kehila Kedusha what characteristics come to mind? How do  these characteristics differ from the ones in Nachlaot, and why are some of the things necessary in these people's everyday lives?