On Monday I went on two field trips: One with my Ulpan class and the other with a group of other sudents.
With my class I went to Mount Herzl. First we did a tour of the museum, which was actually really cool. We had a tour guide and we basically moved through all of these different rooms and screens came down from the ceilings and played movies and we had to keep turning around to watch different screens. It was very engaging. I think my favorite room was one set up to look like where the first Zionist Congress was held. It was 2 stories and we entered at the top and had to walk down and sit among these plastic figures. There were chandeliers hanging from the cielings and it was just really cool. But I was constantly worried that one of the plastic people was going to move and grab me, luckily they were not motorized.

It was cool because the entire tour was in Hebrew, the movies didn't even have Hebrew subtitles. While I'm sure that I missed some details, I got the main points of the tour. And I understood enough to be inspired to take a course on the History of Modern Israel.

Mount Herzl is also the home to a huge cemetery and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial (but we didn't go there). To the right is Herzl's grave, he is buried at the highest point on the 'mountain'- so that he can look out into the country he worked so hard for.


After Herzls grave we walked through the graves of important political figures like Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin's grave is on the right, and it's different than the tombstones marking everyone else's graves because he was assassinated and did not die of natural causes. His gravestone is in Black and his wife's is in tan. They make a half circle to remind passersby of his unfinished life and work. Mt Herzl houses a large military cemetery as well as memorials for other groups of people (I'll get more into that later)
















Above are pictures of Hannah Senesh's grave. She is a very well known Israeli parachuter and poet. The story goes that she was captured and tortured and her mother (who was not even living in Israel) was also captured and tortured, but she would not reveal information about Israel, and she was killed. When we got to her grave we all got together and sang her most famous poem "Eli, Eli" which roughly translates as: "My God, My God, I pray that these things never end: The sand and the sea, the rush of the water, the lightening in the sky, the prayer of the man". It's really a beautiful song. I also really loved how adorned her grave was.





We also walked through the memorial I have pictured to the left. This is probably my favorite picture from the day. This is a memorial for sailors lost at sea when an Israeli submarine disappeared. It was only actually found recently.
The layout of the memorial is really cool, though, because it's underground and kind of looks like a submarine. And every person from the submarine has a remembrance plaque, since the bodies were never found.






To the right is a picture of a memorial for people killed in suicide bombings. It was an incredibly powerful memorial because of its size. Imagine long walls filled with black plaques inscribed with hundreds of names, it's horrible.

There was even a plaque honoring those killed in 2008, it's scary to think about people still dying so much after the establishment of Israel, simply because they are there and there are people around them who don't want them to be.






To the left is a memorial that really caught my eye because of the projects I did last winter in Hebrew and Jewish Ethics about the Holocaust. This is a memorial for survivors of the Holocaust who were then killed as soldiers in the War of Independence. It's shaped like an upside down house, to symbolize the hope these survivors had of finding home and safety in Israel, that was then lost when they were killed defending it.


The second field trip of the day was to Hebron. I was really excited to go to Hebron because I did a report on it in Hebrew Class last year. It's also an incredibly important city for Jews, so much excitement.

Hebron is a very controversial city, however. It has a rich history of Jews settling and then being kicked out, and then coming back, etc. Right now there are 87 or so Jewish families living in Hebron. They live in the 20% of the city where Jews are allowed. The other 80% is run by the Palestinian Authority, and Jews cannot enter.
To the left is a picture of one of the many Israeli soldiers we saw in Hebron. They are everywhere. Since the Jewish population there is spread out into 4-5 different neighborhoods, there are guards everywhere making sure that things remain calm between the Jews and there Palestinian neighbors.

To the left is a picture of some Jewish boys playing. I thought it was pretty cute. It's really incredible that those 87 or so families equal over 1,000 Jews in the city. These are huge families and people are incredibly devoted to living in Hebron. Hebron is known as the place where Abraham and Sarah once lived as well as, much later, King David. Exciting stuff.


The big sight to see in Hebron is the Maarat Ha'Machpela (which I'm sure I am butchering in English, but I could write it in Hebrew, but then you wouldn't get it). Maarat Ha'Machpela is the supposed burrial place of the mothers and fathers of Judaism: Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah. It is mostly controlled by the Palestinian part of town, but Jews are allowed into a small section, including where Abraham is supposed to be buried. The picture to the right is Abraham's grave. It's a little confusing, because in fact, all of these people are actually buried underground, these shrines are built over their supposed burial spots.
Jews believe that about 7 steps up, next to the cave, is directly next to where the mothers and fathers are buried. (This comes from a whole lot of stories including Jews sneaking past Arab guards to go down into the cave and look for the graves). Many Jews gather to pray there, at the spot of the 7th step, to honor them. On the right is a picture of a man doing just that.

Our field trip also took us to the sight of Rebecca's grave, in Bethlehem. This was probably the weirdest experience because Bethlehem is right on or in the Gaza Strip. So, we entered the building with the grave, but outside were huge fences with barbed wire and guards. It was eerily quiet and, for me, just strange. It was weird to think of a whole other world beyond those walls, but still in the same country. The other weird thing was that we took a bulletproof bus for the entire field trip. The bus itself wasn't really all that different, except for the double glass in the windows, but it was just weird to feel like we needed to be in it.