8th Grade Israel Solidarity Trip 2024: Day 5

Day 5 - Monday, May 13th

We started our day with a wonderful breakfast at youth hostel and Maia chatted with some of the evacuees from the North that shared they have been there since October 16th and still don’t know when they might be able to go back home. “Look at us, each family lives in a room, kids go to a local school and they eat in the dining room - it’s not a hotel vacation it’s our situation and it’s not fun. But we are lucky since we are alive and well”. Some of them can’t wait to go back home, some shared they most likely won’t and are trying to see how they can afford to move “we can’t sell our home no one can live there, and we can’t afford another home. We are stuck and we miss our lives”. They wanted to hear about us and kept thanking us for coming and told us it means a lot to them when people show up.

We then drove to the Haifa Military cemetery and met up with the Leo Baeck students to commemorate fallen soldiers. Each student from Leo Baeck researched about a fallen soldier and read their summary to us at that specific fallen soldier’s grave sight. It was devastating but at the same time, an incredibly important to never forget their stories and to remember that each person had their own life. Some of the students from Leo Baeck were personally connected to the soldier they wrote about and it was very sad and moving. We continued doing this, and on each grave we put flowers and the decorated rocks we created together during Leo Baeck’s visit to Hausner. We saw bereaved parents and family members, one father sitting by his son’s grave shared how much he misses his son and how he tries to make his grave a happy one by decorating it. He shared with us that we should should know that a parent that loses a child is like a metal pole “looks strong on the outside - hollow and empty on the inside”, he then proceeded to ask where we are from and was excited that we came all the way and took a moment to speak to him. He kept saying thank you for coming. It was heart breaking.

Back at Leo Baeck, we talked about the experience of going to the cemetery, and all the emotions around it. We went around and each shared something personal.

At 11am exactly the memorial siren went off and we stood still for two minutes. Then we went to the  Yom HaZikaron ceremony at Leo Baeck High School. The Tekes was incredibly powerful and moving. The auditorium was filled with both students and soldiers (school graduates that come back especially to be there with their teachers and classmates) The ceremony had several parts including dance, singers, poems, and stories. Early on in the ceremony they read the names of every graduate from Leo Baeck that fell in action. This was incredibly powerful seeing people that died in the 50s until these days. After the ceremony we parted from the students of Leo Baeck. They gave us a bag tied with a ribbon full of candies and snacks. We said our farewell’s, a few more photos and then got on the bus to Atlit.

In Atlit we visited the Ha’apala Museum a camp for illegal Olim during the British Mandate. We got a tour of the British “welcome center” which we learned included disinfecting showers which scarily reminded many of the Jewish immigrants of the process arriving at concentration camps. We continued the tour visiting and hearing about the barracks, watched video shorts, went inside of a transportation airplane and boarded a boat depicting the real life immigration mission. Once we finished the tour, we sat down to eat our pre packed lunch, and got back on the bus to head to Jerusalem.

The change of pace from Yom HaZikaron to Yom Haatzmaut was jarring and intense. We went to a special Havdalah ceremony - Havdalah between Yom HaZikaron to Yom HaAtzmaut. There was a speaker, Teffilah and many songs and melodies. The somber part ended with praying for the return of the hostages and their faces on big screens. Then the prayers and songs picked up and we sang and danced. It was super fun because we were just joining circles of singing and dance and jumping in a mosh pit style. It was incredible to just dance and sing with random people who we didn’t know but still felt connected to at the same time.

Am Israel Chai!