Great two days!

01/22/2014

Yesterday I went on a Tiyul (field trip) to Shem Olam, the beach, and then a cemetery in Haifa. In Shem Olam we met with a Rabbi who told us some amazing stories and showed us some artifacts from the holocaust. We then had lunch there and took a bus to a place where we met an amazing old man (Forgive me I forget his name) who lived in Israel and he told us his amazing stories from when he was a little boy. 

The Beach was beautiful we sat and he told us how Jewish immigrants used to come in at this port right off the very beach we were sitting/standing on. You can see in one of the pictures what is left of that port.. 

The First two above are pictures of Israel I took from the bus ride :)

 The Alexander River ^

 Loved the beach :) 

In this picture you can see what is left of the port ^

Beautiful :)

At the cemetery he showed us his aunts grave who died in the Patria disaster. Patria was a ship carring 1800 refugees, the Haganah planted a bomb in the ship to try and prevent it from leaving Haifa but it was miscalculated and the explosion sunk the ship in less than 16 minutes. His aunt died with many children whose graves we also saw. It was a very sad but powerful story that this man was able to tell us. At the end he and the Rabbi noted that the majority of the graves didn't have any rocks on them (to show respect & that they were remembered) because the majority of them were younger and were the last of their lines. Again, a very said but powerful story. We may see and hear about a lot of the bigger bombings/events and what not but many lives were lost in the smaller ones that happened but no one is teaching about them so they are forgotten :(

A picture of the Patria as it sank. November 25th, 1940 killing around 267 people.

01/23/2014

Today Brett had a Tiyul but it was all hiking so he stayed behind. So I decided to miss my classes and we went to Yad Vashem instead :) The museum was so big we didn't even finish it and we arrived there probably around 11am and left maybe around 2:30-3ish. We decided instead of rushing it all we'll just go back one day and do the stuff we didn't see. It was free so it would only cost us a train ride :)

Trying to get a little of the landscape in the back ground lol didn't work :-P

 Walking up to Yad Vashem

The view after you exit the Museum :)

 The Pillar of Heros (Top and bottom picture)

This picture was as we left. It's a quote from one of the Prophets, Ezekiel