As you read this entry our fellow travelers are back home sharing their trip with their family and friends. It is hard to encapsulate the emotions we all feel.
There is no place like HOME
We davened mincha Shabbat afternoon at Maayanot. Rabbi Shneor Broh spoke to our group. He explained that trees grow all over the world. Palm trees thrive in a warm climate like Florida, etrog trees grow in Italy and oak trees thrive in Massachusetts. A person is like a tree, and so too, people thrive in different places. Rabbi Broh told us that the best place for a Jew to thrive is in Israel. That does not mean that Jews are not successful in other places. History has shown us otherwise. It is great we are successful all over the world. But, where do we thrive? In our HOME.
We truly understand this now as we thrived in Israel, our HOME. We visited the places of our strong roots in Chevron and Kever Rochel. Our trunk became strong as we fortified ourselves with ancient history in places like the Kotel, Shiloh and the City of Dovid. We branched out into modern history in places like Akko and the Golan. We learned of the fruits of the heroism and sacrifices that Jews made for Israel during the Battle of Independence, Six Day War and Yom Kippur War. We no longer take this for granted and truly feel that we are reaping the benefit from their actions.
We came as a 7th & 8th grade class and now we have formed strong roots with our peers and have formed a cohesive group. We strengthened our trunks by encouraging each other on hikes, cheering each other as we climbed heights we never knew possible and assisting each other navigate through shared experiences on our travels each day. Our flowers have blossomed into fruits with all the knowledge we learned from Yoni and from our peers.
We each set a personal goal, a social goal, and a Torah goal for our trip. We tracked these goals as we progressed on our trip and plan to keep them as we return back to our regular activities. For the past 10 days we have been HOME. Israel embraced our group and we all flourished there.
We would again like to thank the staff of My Israel Connection for their hard work in planning our stay in Israel. From the moment we landed every single detail of our amazing trip was handled by MyIsraelConnection.com. Our trip is a huge success because of their dedication and devotion to their customers and the land of Israel.
Now, we plan to take all that we learned and experienced and bring it back to our families, school and community. We will continue to grow and make you all proud.