By Rachel Friedenberg and Sophia Deutsch

After an amazing Shabbat in Jerusalem and an amazing experience Motzei Shabbat on Ben Yehuda street, we moved on with our journey up north for a week of hiking and fun! Today we visited Caesarea where we discovered the ancient port city built by King Herod. At Caesarea we saw where that port once stood. As we made out way to visit the theater, built for entertainment, we had a race. Ori Manahan and Jason Kramer came neck to neck but there could only be one winner. Congratulations to Ori Manahan! We arrived at the theater and learned about all of the different entertainment they had back then.

After visiting Caesarea, we left and had an amazing opportunity to meet Mr. Stechler, who graciously opened his holiday home to us. The boys gave our amazingly enthusiastic bus director, Rael Blumenthal, an unexpected dip in the pool, and didn’t get into trouble! (watch the hilarious video of Rabbi Rael getting pushed into the pool for some entertainment :P) After having some light snacks and fun in the sun by the pool, we made our way to a beautiful park where we had lunch and some down time. We then continued our way north to the rope park in Kibbutz Lavi. There, we played many games that tested our team work, especial when Mitchel Lock and Rachel Friedenberg had to put their trust into their friends hands while walking across wooden planks held by their friends. Rachel also has the opportunity to walk across a thin rope  and trust her friends not to let her fall, and her spotter Justin Stein who allowed her to use his head as a support. Thanks! After all of that there was still more to come! We played a game similar to Simon Says and David Buckman lost his first game of the summer- there’s a first time for everything! We had a fun, full day of excitement and ended it in kibbutz Lavi where we got our keys to our rooms and had an amazing yummy dinner.

After dinner, we had a fascinating educational program- we watched a TED video which was a talk by an atheist man listing the benefits of religious rituals, followed by learning in groups with our advisors, which got wrapped up by a conclusion given by Debbie Stone, an amazing speaker! (she’s British too :)) We can’t wait to see what tomorrow has In store for us!