Israel 2025 – May 7: Elliot Lappen

Today we woke up to a beautiful day at Ein Harod. The weather was stunning and you could feel that it was going to be a good day. Ein Harod is described as a big kibbutz and this is stated in the third Aliyah, but also they describe themselves as the first kibbutz. This is not the real case, because Daganya was the first kibbutz. People call Ein Harod the Plymouth Rock of Israel because of the amount of people that settled here in the third wave of the Aliyah. This kibbutz also used to hold 1000 residents and has a dairy factory, a cryogenics factory, a magnesium factory , and stainless steel factory; because of this, they have a reputation for working in high technology.  Personally, I liked Daganya better because it was a place with a great community and you could feel the togetherness. This is where all of the boys from Beyachad came together and became friends. 

The next thing that we did that day was meet the Beit She’an kids at a place called Roy Rogers for some kayaking. For me this was a great experience, I had a ton of fun, between bonding with the Israelis and kayaking in the Jordan river. We even had a race between another kayak which was very fun and my kayak won. After we finished the kayaking ride, we had some sacks and popsicles before lunch a falafel lunch (which I wasn’t too happy about because I’m more of a meat guy). Even though lunch wasn’t my favorite, it was nice getting to talk to and hang out with the Israelis. Eventually, we went back to the kibbutz for some down time, where the boys and I had a lot of fun on a hammock. 

In the next hour, we started to head back to the Beit She’an kids where we met them at their school. I knew one kid from their class because his brother is Emri, the shinshin, living in my house. We had a fun time getting to know each other better and we became great friends. When we got there we did some very fun activities like a reaction press the button type thing that was very funny. I saw people laughing and having a great time. For dinner, we had really good shawarma and lapha bread. Then we headed back to the kibbutz with special surprise guests, Morah Smadar and Shaylee. 

Later that night we got ready for bed and with our new Madrich Ofri, where she had a special surprise game. We had a fun time bonding and then met a super cute dog. 

Overall, it was a great day and I had a super good time