Day 7: Making the Desert Bloom, Baby!

Gabby G and Danielle here, writing to you from Kibbutz Ein Tzurim. We started our first full day with our Israeli partners in the Negev Desert at 5:00 in the morning. As painful as that sounds, we had the privilege of watching a beautiful desert sunrise before a 3 Kilometer hike along the Machtesh, a natural crater in the middle of the Negev. The hike took about 3 hours with stops to admire the occasional plant and HUGE rocks. It was quite a feat for us to complete such an intense hike, with the day getting hot as early as 7:30. We finally reached the buses ready to go to bed. Unfortunately, it was only 9:30 AM and we had a full day of programming ahead of us.

Our next stop was at Sede Boker, the desert kibbutz where Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, is buried. After a bathroom stop with real toilets and a short discussion, we reboarded the bus to Shvil HaSalat, an organic farm close to the place where Gilad Shalit was captured. After learning about how the people there have transformed the desert into a productive, commercial farm that grows everything from tomatoes to herbs to super super hot peppers, we released homing pigeons in honor of Gilad Shalit, hoping that he will soon come home, just like the birds.

Another bus ride took us to Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz dedicated to the memory of Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. We toured the kibbutz’s Holocaust Museum, which focused on Jewish resistance, especially in Warsaw during WWII. It was also dedicated to the memory of the Egyptian attack on the kibbutz in 1949 when Israel was at war with its neighbors. It was a very personal museum, dedicated to remembering the lives of heroic Jews rather than their deaths.
Finally, after a hot, sweaty day, we arrived here and showered. Now its time to relax, have fun with the Israelis, and get pumped for Kenes and Congress which start tomorrow afternoon.

We’ll be in touch soon.....Shalom!