Nate's blog

I just downloaded the beta of IE 8. Expect my initial reactions in a day or so.

Yesterday (March 4th) I went to an old castle from the time of the Crusaders in Israel. Learning about the period of the crusaders in Israel is interesting because many Palestinians compare the modern state of Israel to the Crusader kingdom. However after a heated debate we concluded that the modern sate is not like the Crusaders. After that we went to Tzvat (the home of Kabblha). It was kind of cool, I didn’t really have any moving experiences there. (Except for when I bought something from this person who maintains one of the really old synagogues there for free). Afterwards I had dinner in the town of Afulah, I had falafel and then shawarma. It was good.

Also my normal core teacher, Phil, was not able to make it that day, so my teacher for the day was David. David is one of the administrators at Muss.

(the title of this post is the title given for the day on the Master schedule)

Today I went to Yad Lakashish and Hazon Yeshaya.

Yad Lakashish is a place where there are workshops for the elderly and disabled. They work there so they can still feel like they are still contributing members of society. What we did was we walked through the workshop and we talked to people there about their lives now and their lives from before they moved to Israel. In theory that sounds like an easy task. However it was very hard because most of the people there did not speak English or Hebrew, making it really hard to talk to them. However in my limited Russian I was able to tell this elderly gentleman that I was from Los Angeles, then he told me that the town he was born in is hot just like Los Angeles is hot (in Russian), and I was able to tell him that I understood him (in Russian). It was very moving. (so afterwards I felt the need to buy presents for my family in L.A from their gift shop)

After that I went to Hazon Yeshaya. Hazon Yeshaya is an Israeli organization that gives food to people who need it. It made me feel good volunteering there because poverty in Israel is a serous problem. (per capita there are more people below the poverty line in Israel than in Mexico)

I spent the last Shabbat in Arad. It was really neat. Not only is Arad the hometown of Aubrey (one of the core teachers, but not my core teacher), but it is also in the middle of the desert. It was cool because on Shabbat we walked through the town and learned about how Arad gets water from the national water system and also from local reservoirs… and that is pretty much all of the interesting facts about Arad. Seriously. There is almost nothing to do in the whole town. Towards the end of Shabbat we talked with one the locals who said that the only thing to do in Arad is drink.