Purim and Leadership Week

I hope you're not all scorning me for my lack of blog-posts, you should all know better than to expect more than this from me by now. I do have QUITE a lot to tell you about though.

Soooo, to back it up like, 4 weeks, Purim was the second week in March. For those of you who don't know what Purim is, it's a Jewish holiday (big surprise) celebrating someone (Haman) who wanted to kill all the Jews...he couldn't (another big surprise, you'd think all these guys who want to kill us would see a pattern eventually), we killed him, and now we have parties. Purim is a very happy holiday, and in Israel it's treated like Halloween, with everyone dressing up and parading around (although without the candy and trick-or-treating and with a lot of wine for the adults). While in America Jews often celebrate Purim as a rather minor holiday, in Israel it is a week long affair. We started preparing for Purim the week before the actual holiday, as a custom that goes along with Purim is the exchanging of 'Mishloach Manot,' which are essentially gift baskets that usually include a drink, fruit, snacks, candy, and hamentashen, the traditional three-cornered jelly or chocolate filled cookie that represents Haman's hat. Rather than putting together huge mishloach manot, my apartment decided to just make hamentashen for everyone - neighbors, host familys, and gan teachers. So for an entire day and a half our apartment operated as a smooth-running, hamentashen-baking machine, and we ended up making about 150 of them from scratch to deliver around town. And they were excellent, if I do say so myself, and enjoyed by all.

The actual Purim celebrations first started on Sunday, which was my last day of gan, as everyone has off for the week. I went to gan in full costume (as Peter Pan) and all the ganim (gans) in Yerucham were all dressed up and celebrating. I had tons of princesses in class (complete with fake nails and lots of make-up), as well as policemen, Israeli soldiers, bunnies, lions, pirates, and superheroes. My gannenets, Buruyah and Etie, were dressed up fabulously as a giant Sunflower and Bunny. The whole day consisted of parading around to visit other gans, eating cookies, and dancing around. All my kids looked absolutely ADORABLE, and my gannenets even gave me a huge mishloach manot basket after I gave them my homemade hamentashen.

The following night all of Nativ went to Kibbutz for a Purim party. Everyone was in costume - our apartment had a Peter Pan, a rastafarian, Abu (the monkey from Aladdin), a devil, and one half of a Siamese twin. On Kibbutz we read the Megillah (the scroll that tells the story of Purim), had a barbeque dinner, and a dance. My friend Ari, who I know from USY at home and who lives in New York, was visiting, so it was a great night that I got to spend with him.

Yom Nativ for that week was Yom Purim, which basically consisted of us all baking hamentashen while in costume (which my apartment had already done). The following day was a free day, since it's technically still Purim, but only in walled cities like Jerusalem. Nativ offered a day of optional programming, and Misha, Kesha, and I went. In the morning we toured around some of the crop growing areas of the Dead Sea Region, and we even got to eat peppers fresh off the vine at a pepper farm. That afternoon we were treated to a wonderful lunch and spa day at Ein Gedi spa. We went in the sulfur baths, which stunk and stung but which make your skin SO soft (although they will turn all your silver jewelry green) and then in the dead sea. Even though I'd been in the dead sea before on pilgrimage, I was still glad to go again - I definitely think that the dead sea is one of the coolest places in Israel. Even though you go in expecting and knowing that you'll float, it's still amazing to be able to stand vertically without sinking or touching the bottom, or to be able to sit indian-style and just float there. The dead sea has been shrinking at a really alarming rate, and walking up to it the land is barren and salt-covered, as it used to be the bottom of the dead sea, and everywhere you look there are giant chunks of salt.

The end of that week, sadly, brought me to my last day at gan for two weeks. I told all my kids, as well as Buruyah and Etie, not to forget about me, and left for Jerusalem and leadership week. Thursday night I met some of my friends in Jerusalem, since Ashley's sister was visiting from America. We stayed at Agron, which was really strange since it was inhabited by other youth groups visiting from Israel and was no longer 'Nativ turf.' We took Sara (Ashley's sister) out for a nice dinner on Emek Refayim, and Friday morning we showed her the shuk and introduced her to Marzipan ruggelah. Shabbat brought the start of leadership week, which consisted of a week of programming for all of Nativ. We had a closed Shabbat where we stayed in a hotel in the hills outside of Jerusalem. The view of the valleys surrounding Jerusalem was gorgeous, and it was really nice to be together again as all of Nativ. Plus, since we were staying at an actual hotel, the food was AMAZING, which caused the Nativers to attack the buffet like we'd never seen food before. The weekend basically reverted us all to our USY years, since it was structured very similarly to a USY convention, with mandatory prayers and a lot of lectures and discussion groups. Saturday night was complete with kareoke, which actually ended up being way more fun than any of us had anticipated.

Sunday brought us back to Agron for a few more nights. We were assigned rooms at random, and purely by coincidence, I was given my old room, 311. It was so weird to be back there, except this time the room was packed as I had 3 roommates instead of just one. I didn't sleep in my old bed, but I did sleep on my side of the room: sleeping on Becky's side would have just been too weird. Even though it's a little strange to return to Jerusalem, it's nice to be back in a place that 1. has more than one grocery store and 2. was home to us for so long that we know our way around easily. We all went out for sushi at our favorite restaurant, and for drinks at our favorite bar, and it was just really nice to be back in familiar territory.

After our time in Jerusalem was up, we traveled to the North and stayed at Kibbutz Chanaton (where I spent a Shabbat earlier in the year, if you recall) for a few more days. On the way to Chanaton we stopped in the forest and spent the day doing 'team building' exercises, which included a ropes course and a 'navigation run,' which many of us opted out of. The next day we went to the only kibbutz in Israel founded by Holocaust survivors, which is a very interesting place, even thought I'd already been there.

That day, I got on a train, hung out at the airport for about 7 hours, and then was on my way home for the first time in 7 months!