As the last hours of Shabbat move forward in the Eastern time zone, I
wanted to report about the last couple of days here in Jerusalem.

In fact, as expected, President Shimon Peres spoke at the Mega Event on
Thursday night; overwhelmingly our students enjoyed the music, the talks,
and the dancing.

Friday morning we woke up and headed to Yad Vashem, Israel’s central
Holocaust memorial and heroism museum. Our friends from Ashkelon were
dressed in their IDF uniforms out of respect for the place and we began
our visit there with a talk from an octogenarian named Shaya who was from
Szeged, Hungary, and told us his story and his family’s story from
childhood through the liberation at Teresenstadt and reflected on the
ongoing trauma of what it means to be a survivor throughout his life in
Europe, in New Orleans, and now in Israel. We were joined by a guide
named Yiftach who took us through the new museum at Yad Vashem. We did
not have as much time as would have been ideal, but students still seemed
to find much of what they saw meaningful. We visited the children’s
memorial, the center of which is a single flame reflected by many mirrors,
and concluded our visit with a short memorial ceremony.

This was certainly a day of transitions as we headed back into the City
Center and visited Machaneh Yehuda market where students ate lunch, bought
baked goods and other fun foods, and just explored this epicenter of
Israeli life.

After 40 minutes to get ready for Shabbat back at the hotel we gave
flowers to each student as we lit candles and our bus dropped us off in
the Old City so we could visit the Western Wall Friday evening at the
onset of Shabbat. The Western Wall, the kotel, is a special place for
many Jews because of its close association with the Temple that once stood
on Mount Moriah behind it, and it is a complicated, sometimes difficult
place for many Jews because its ritual life is controlled by the
ultra-Orthodox. There is no option for men and women to pray together in
addition to the separate sections and women may barely raise their voices
in prayer without fear of verbal or physical attack. Our students had a
lot to say about the experience–from joyous to complicated, from moving
to frustrating. We walked around the Old City to Jaffa Street and
continued all the way down Jaffa Street to the new bridge at the entrance
to the City which was really pretty to walk over as we returned to the
hotel for Shabbat dinner. We finished the night with an oneg shabbat at
which we had some tasty snacks and toasted l’chayim to a great trip so
far.

In the morning, some students woke up for some service options in the
hotel and the surrounding area and some slept in. At lunchtime we
reconvened as we prepared to celebrate the Bat Mitzvahs of two
participants from Hopkins. Three people read from the Torah including one
of the women soldiers who had never from fhe Torah before. It was
special.

After the afternoon service, we headed out for a walk on the government
hill near the hotel. We saw the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew
University, and walked by the Supreme Court, the National Bank of Israel,
the State Department, and the Prime Minister’s office. We sat next to the
Knesset (Parliament) building and learned about Israel’s government
structure and then split into two groups to have conversation about Jews
as special vs. Jews as normal–to what degree to we feel each and what
does that mean.

After some duck, duck, goose in the park, we headed back to the hotel, had
a snack, and had a Havdalah ceremony marking the end of Shabbat. We
boarded our bus to the center of town and had time for shopping and dinner
on Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem’s most famous pedestrian mall, before
spending some time at a local bar. As I write this to you we are back at
the hotel. Some students are still hanging out while others have gone to
bed to prepare for our 6 AM wake up call tomorrow when we visit Mt. Herzl
and then head south . . . .