Tisha B'av, Yom Habonim and Givat Haviva

Sunday - Tisha B'av

After returning from free weekend and meeting up at Kfar Hayarok, MBI spent the day learning about and commemorating Tisha B'av. 

Over the course of the day the madrachim ran chugim and peulot about Tisha B'av.  Topics included holocaust education, Janusz Korcaz and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  

From Tisha B'av, we want the kids to understand that while tragedies have happened, Jews have found ways to fight back, they have found ways to be defiant.  They finished the day with a ceremony and a viewing of the film Defiance. 

Monday - Yom Habonim and Haifa

Monday started with Yom Habonim Dror, an event put on by the office of Habonim Dror Olami (World Habonim organization). On a beach just south of Haifa, Habonim Dror members from all over the world joined together. Julian Resnick, the Mazkir (director) of Olami spoke to all of the chanichim who were there for the party. After he spoke they got to hang out on the beach, enjoy the water slides there, and chat with the other members of Habonim Dror. While Yom Habonim is only one part of one day, it gives MBI participants a chance to learn and put a few faces to just how big Habonim Dror is. One's home machaneh in North America can often feel like such an isolating experience, one you think NO ONE understands. One of the reasons I think MBI is such an amazing experience is because it opens up how big Habonim Dror really is and gives them real relationships both in other parts of North America and the world that show them this. After lunch they left the beach for Haifa to explore one of Israel's most unique cities. Haifa, Israel's third largest city, is built into the Carmel Mountain on the Northern part of the coast.  Haifa is well known as being a multi-ethnic city where Arabs and Jews have lived and worked together for years. 

While in Haifa they had three stops:

The first was the beautiful Baha'i gardens where they had a conversation about the origin of their religion. They asked themselves what role religion should have in the modern world.  The chanichim gathered on a promenade above the Baha'i Gardens. The Gardens are a holy center for the Bahai religion. This is where people of the Baha'i faith come to complete their pilgrimage. You can see the gardens as well as the whole downtown area of Haifa from this promenade.

The second stop was Wadi Nisnas. Because Haifa is on a mountain, there are neighborhoods located in different natural formations. A wadi is a dried up river bed and this is evident when walking in this particular neighborhood. You have to descend into it and it is very narrow. The buildings are also small and close together. During the walk through the neighborhood, the chanichim discussed the architecture of Wadi Nisnas as well as the layout of the city as a whole. Another interesting aspect of Wadi Nisnas is that every year local artists are asked to create murals and art installations to be featured in the neighborhood as part of a coexistence project. This is meant to bring beauty to the city as well as Arab and Jewish artists together. The trip to Haifa was meant to showcase Haifa as a multi-ethnic town and to learn a bit about what some of the interactions that causes..

Lastly they had a conversation led by George Stevens, our Rosh MBI this summer, about the Tnuat Bogrim (Movement graduates who have made Aliyah). They learned about the different kvutzot (communes) they have formed in Haifa and the type of educational work they do in and around the city. For dinner they had the chance to purchase their own meal in a neighborhood at the top of the Carmel mountain.

Tuesday - Givat Haviva
Today the group traveled to the Givat Haviva Seminar Center which is located Northeast of Hadera. Givat Haviva is an organization that, "...aims to build an inclusive, socially cohesive society in Israel by engaging divided communities in collective action towards the advancement of a sustainable, thriving Israeli democracy based on mutual responsibility, civic equality and a shared vision of the future." One of the main ways they do this is by running seminars, like they did for our chanichim today, that challenge their views of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from multiple angles.

When they arrived, each bus was designated their own madrichim (guides) that led a lecture about the conflict. The lecture differed from what the MBIers had previously experienced on our program. This time, the madrichim spoke about the history through different stories of individual experiences from both sides. Most of the narratives shared with the group were from those who live in the neighboring villages. This perspective is important to understand because the seminar center is located right near the green line border, separating Israel from the West Bank where historically tensions have been high.

Then, all of MBI then came together for a lecture from an Arab Israeli. He told the group about his experience as an Arab Israeli. He focused on the discrimination in regards to the amount of public funding there is for Arab schools in Israel and the discrimination he faces in the job market. He told MBI that while he is proud of his Israeli citizenship, he identifies as a Palestinian.

The MBIers then left the building and went to an area that overlooks the Palestinian village of Barta'a. What is especially compelling about the village is that the green line border runs right through the town. To make things more complicated, the separation barrier that separates Israel from the West Bank runs behind the village placing the village within Israel. The Palestinian Authority still has governmental control over the village, but doesn't have much access to it physically because of the wall. This makes running the city extremely difficult for the Palestinians. The consensus among the chanichim was that it was interesting to see how the conflict and borders actually affects people’s lives. This seminar gave them many examples of this on both sides.