TJJer Spotlight: The first Shabbat in Israel on TJJ was just unreal, it was nothing that I thought it would be. We first started with the candle lighing and then welcomed Shabbos by sitting on the beach of the Kineret while Rabbi Arieh told us an amazing story about how it’s never too late to connect to Hashem, which really touched me. After the view of the Kineret, we headed back to the hostel, getting ready for the Friday night meal. After dinner we had an oneg which some of my friends told stories about themselves and made me think more about how they celebrate shabbos. Shabbat day is a day I can never forget. After kiddish we had book club, where we split up into 5 groups and each group had their own book to look through. I got to listen to the first story in the book called “Holy Brother” by Yitta Halberstam Mandelbaum, which really touched my heart because After listening to only the first story I had a different perspective of the world: we are all diamonds. When lunch and free time was over we had a thing called Family time. This is a time where our whole bus, which we call a family, played a game. We played a chair game so that we know each other’s names. The chair game then ended and we went into groups where we got to talk about different topics and it was so much fun just talking, talking about your own opinion on what you think on life. As shabbos was sadly ending, we sat outside in a circle, we sang and we talked about how our day went and we said goodbye to shabbos. My first shabbos in Israel has been life changing. I Will never forget it. That day just felt right, it felt like home.