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Israel 2023 – April 25: Sadie Barnholtz & Sophie Kaplan

Good day GSDS!

This morning we started our day by walking to Ben Gurion’s grave which was located in the kibbutz we had been staying at for the past two nights. The reason that he and his wife were buried in the Negev and not with the other prime ministers was because even though he was such an important and powerful man, one of his dreams was to live there. People living there were afraid that with him living there, there would be raised security and lots of people coming in and out, but that was not the case. He actually ended up working with the sheep.

After that we loaded onto the bus for a two hour ride to Jerusalem. On our ride we took a stop at 11:00 to hear the siren commemorating Yom Hazikaron. Then we got back into the bus to go to a memorial for the fallen soldiers. At the memorial we sang a beautiful song and some of our chaperones told personal stories about people that knew who passed in the war.

Up next, we headed to our new hotel to have dinner and a transition ceremony from Yom HaZikaron to Yom Hatzmaut. During the ceremony we sang songs and listened to another school in our group read poetry. Then we headed out into the town for a fun and crazy night of partying, singing, dancing, eating, and spraying people with silly string!