Israel 2025 – May 6: Daniella Babayev and Elizabeth Matsievich

Tuesday was our last day together as a group with our new friends from KBA and Schechter Hartford. We started our day by going to the Maccabiah Sports Musuem where we learned about how the Maccabiah Games began. They’ve been around since the 1800s with a fencing club because they wouldn’t hire a Jewish coach. There were a lot of artifacts from famous Jewish athletes in the museum. After a tour of the museum we went to Shuk Ha’Carmel for lunch and souvenirs. Nachlat Binyamin, the artist market, was also open which was cool to see. 

Next, we went on a graffiti tour with a company called Graffititiyul. We’ve actually had a workshop with them in Cleveland! On the tour,  we learned how graffiti helps people express themselves. Graffiti art is illegal, so in order to avoid the police, they do it at night. Graffiti artists only spray on public property out of respect for people who live in the area. Some of the art that we saw paid tribute to the heroes of October 7, like Rachel, who lived on a kibbutz that was attacked. She fed the terrorists a full meal and entertained them like guests until the IDF came to rescue them. After a tour of the graffiti around the city, we actually got to make our own graffiti on record disks.

Finally we went to a park and talked about the trip as a group and had a farewell dinner for the other two schools leaving. We drove them to the airport and said our final goodbyes, which was really sad.  When we got on to the new bus it felt empty without our friends. We will definitely miss them! After a long night, we headed to the kibbutz in Ein Harod for a good night’s sleep.