Today we woke up really, really early and had to be on the bus by 4.15am! We left by bus and arrived at the bottom of Har Tsfachot while it was still dark. However, since the moon was full there was enough natural moonlight to start the hike.. We hiked up and it got lighter and lighter as we went up! At one point, Rabbi Rael stopped the group and asked us questions about when we thought day and night was in Judaism – and we were just at the point where it was the crack of dawn! He called it ‘Judaism in practice’. After a long sweaty and challenging ascent of the mountain, we finally reached the top before sunrise. We stopped to take pictures and hung out there for a bit. We then did the morning prayers together and the guys put on tefillin. It was so inspirational to pray and put tefillin on at the top of a mountain with a breathtaking panoramic view surrounding us as the sun started appearing behind the distant hills… The sun rose more and alas it was time to go back down before it got too hot. We had a challenging descent and arrived at the bus that took us to the hotel in time for breakfast at 8am – what a morning!

After breakfast, we loaded the bus with our suitcases and left Eilat for a drive back to Jerusalem… On the way we stopped at a lone ranch – a man from Tel Aviv who had been a successful engineer decided to pick himself up and move to the South of Israel to start up a farm with his wife. They lived there with three small children without sanitation or electricity for 5 years before they established it there! On the one hand, we thought he was an absolute nutcase, but on the other hand we were kind of jealous that he went so far to run after an ideal…

Following that interesing episode, we drove a half hour to a kibbutz called Kibbutz Lotan where a man spoke to us about the kibbutz and showed us a video presentation. He explained to us that this was a co-operative kibbutz where everyone’s salary is pooled into the kibbutz’s account and in return te kibbutz took care of all of it’s inhabitants. We split up into two groups and did two activities: the first activity was building a bridge out of bricks and we then stood on the bridge to test it’s stability (look at the pictures!) The second activity was rolling seeds into small earth balls to protect the seeds from being eaten. So we made small earth balls with broccoli, fennel and sunflower seeds! We then had lunch at the kibbutz and since they’re very environmentally friendly, we recycled everything that we used up for lunch into different bins.

After kibbutz Lotan, we got back into the car for a super long drive back to Jerusalem! It was about 2 hours from there… We got to our hotel and went to dinner. At 8pm we had a very special speaker come in. His name is Rabbi Schippel (from Yeshiva University) and he gave us a talk which taught us the whole of Jewish history in an hour! He split it up into 8 periods to make it simpler: 1000 years from Adam until Noach, another 1000 years from Noach until Avraham (Avraham was born in the Jewish year 1948, the same date as the gregorian date in 1948CE for the creation of the State of Israel). We then have 500 years from Avraham until the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. We then have a period of 1000 years until the end of Tanach, split ip in the following way: 40 years wondering in the desert, 850 years in the land of israel (440 pre-temple and 410 with the temple), 70 years in the Babylonian exile and 40 years back in the land of Israel. We then have a period of 500 years until the writing of the Mishna, and another 300 years until the writing of the Talmud. Then, between the years 500-1500CE (in the Christian calendar) we have the middle ages and following that is 400 years of the renaissance bringing us to the 1900’s. The last period is 113 years of modern Jewish history bringing us to the Jewish year 5773 today. Needless to say, it was super interesting! He made random people get up and repeat the whole of Jewish history to him – Jason went up first and got it perfectl So Rael said he would buy him a shwarma! Then other people got it too…

After the shiur, we had some free time and curfew was at 11pm – we went to bed and got ready for an amazing day tomorrow – maarat hamachpeilah in Chevron! (the cave where our patriarchs are buried) good night!