October 17, 2014

Sorry I haven't written for a couple of weeks. Life has been pretty busy here and if I don't write on Saturday then I don't usually get a chance. 

The first picture is of 3 students in my class (Katelyn, Erin & Emma).  Obviously we are standing in front of a camel, but it has a sukkah on top of it. The rabbis say that it is a legitimate sukkah if it's on a camel! So since the feast of tabernacles has just finished, I thought that it would be a fun picture to send.

The rest of the pictures are from our field trip on Monday. We went to the Shphelah, which are the lowlands of Israel and visited the ancient cities that controlled the major valleys that lead from the coastal plains up to the high lands where Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron are located. There is soooo much history involved in all of the sites. The two parts that the students loved the most were slinging rocks in the valley of Elah 

(where David defeated Goliath; This is Loren with her sling) 

and shining lights between Azekah and Lachish. I'll need to explain the last one. Azekah and Lachish were two of these fortified cities guarding the valleys. At Lachish a piece of pottery was found containing a letter from the military leader of Lachish to the leader in Jerusalem. It dates from around 585 BC, the time when Nebuchadnezzar was coming with his army, wiping out cities on his way to lay siege to, and destroy, Jerusalem. The letter says that he is guarding his signal fire because he can no longer see the signal fire of Azekah--meaning that Nebuchadnezzar has overcome Azekah and is now heading towards Lachish to wipe it out as well. When we were at the base of Lachish I told this story to the students and they weren't overly excited. But then we went up on to the top of the hill with a large mirror. At the same time we had organized for the other bus of students to be on top of Azekah, which is about 25 kilometers away. We had the students on both hills use the mirrors to reflect the sun's light. They were trying to get it right for a couple of minutes and then all of a sudden we saw a huge flash of light from Azekah! It was sooooo amazing, and the students and other people on top of the hill were so excited! Suddenly the story that I told them at the bottom of the hill had real meaning and they were excited about it.

This is a place called Bayt Guvrin. The picture shows places where the ancients mined limestone so that they could make plaster for their cisterns (to waterproof them), and to plaster the walls or their homes and buildings. The picture shows what is left. The acoustics in them are amazing and when we arrived there was a concert going on! The sound was brilliant!