After awaking from a mere 5 hours of sleep, my fellow cohort and I congregated in the hotel’s dining hall to fuel ourselves before a physically and even more so emotionally, challenging day. As I sat, eating my toasted, buttery bread, I pondered on how my day would play out. I was looking forward to going to Machanei Yahudah, the shuk in Jerusalem. As you may have read before, the group had previously been to the large marketplace, and I wanted to see how the shuk compared today rather than to its pre-Shabbos rush on Friday. Then, after breakfast, we were off to Yad VaShem, the Israeli Holocaust museum.
At the end of the heart wrenching tour of our nation’s greatest tragedy, the group reconvened at the foot of Har Herzl (Mount Herzl). We began our climb up, where we saw the graves of people who helped construct the state of Israel. This included the graves of Theodore Herzl, Golda Meir, and many more. We then concluded our day, as I said before, in the shuk. I felt like the this was the perfect way to end the day because, after realizing the pain and suffering that our ancestors went through to get this country the way it is now, our group felt the true impact of what Israel really stands for.
--Jeremy Olbum