The Poland Journey

Workshop has arrived home from Poland! In my opinion, the week was both an educationally rich experience, as well as a catalyst for refocusing the kvutza on the values that bring us together.

We spent the first part of our week touring Kazimierz (the old Jewish section of Krakow), the Krakow ghetto, and Aryan Krakow, including the Sukiennice, the large town square. Between our excursions in Krakow, we also made a day trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Auschwitz I. We then traveled for one day in Lublin, first touring the city and learning about the Nazi presence there, then visiting the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, and finally venturing on a somber tour of Majdanek, a former labor camp. 

The last part of our trip was spent primarily in Warsaw, though we spent one day visiting the small town of Tikochin,--where half the population was formerly Jewish--then the Lopachova Forest,--where the Jewish residents of Tikochin were shot and buried in mass graves--and finally Treblinka--an awful death camp that is now the site of a memorial of seventeen thousand stones, each representing a person killed during the day of the camp's largest mass extermination. In Warsaw, we visited the orphanage that was run by Janusz Korczak, the famous Jewish educator and studier of pedagogy that was murdered along with his orphans at Treblinka. We toured important sites that were in the Warsaw ghetto, and finished our time in Warsaw with our madrichim leading us on The Path of Heroism, essentially a tour of important spots related to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

I had a really meaningful time on this trip to Poland. One highlight was meeting-up with Jan, a relative of mine who lives outside Krakow, along with his wife, Maria, and their daughter, Magdelena. The family took me out to a really nice restaurant in the Sukiennice, and I enjoyed a meal of warm bread, grilled vegetables, and mouth-watering chocolate torte. As we sat and talked, I learned that Jan had not been told that he was Jewish until he was forty years old, as his mother had kept it a secret to protect her family. It was fascinating to hear Jan talk about family history and comforting to be with all three relatives so far from my home. I was sad to leave after spending only two short hours with them!

Another highlight of the trip was learning about the history of the Dror movement. Both in Krakow and in Warsaw, we visited buildings that were previously Dror communes. Ohad, our Poland madrich, read us excerpts of accounts written by commune members, and we noted how the commual lifestyles those movement members led sound very similar to our communal lifestyle here on Workshop! We learned about the resistance that movement members did throughout the Holocaust, and discussed as a kvutza how we feel that resistance is necessary in our lives today. All throughout our Poland journey, we found ourselves in constant discussion, which I feel was even more important than seeing the sites that we visited. 

This was my second journey to Poland, and while I saw many of the same places as I did with my grade only a bit more than two years before, this felt like an entirely different trip. The discussions that we had with one another strayed away from focusing on vicitimization, and instead focused on methods that bring people together, enabling them to resist. One discussion topic that stood out to me was capitalism's presence in the Holocaust, how not only did the Nazi's gain a profit in any way manageable at the expense of dehumanizing and murdering Jews, but Jews oppressed other Jews to gain money as well. In Warsaw, we stood outside of the ghetto's former Judenrat (Jewish council) building and discussed how the council had refused to raise taxes on the rich in order to aid the poor and dying within the ghetto, as they themselves were the rich. This topic got me thinking about capitalism's immense presence in our society today, and how I don't think negative aspects of it have been combatted since its horrible factor within the Holocaust. Another discussion that topic that I found interesting was one revolving around why the youth movements were such strong resisters in the Holocaust. As a kvutza, we talked about how movement members had grown up learning about the importance of living and working together, so it was natural for them to feel inclined to collaborate during hard times. This made me think about my life right now, living and working with my kvutzamates, and how important a lifestyle this is to me.

Most importantly throughout the journey, I felt an enormous sense of love for my kvutza, and a sense of gratitude that I'm fortunate enough to have this structure in my life. Communal living can be hard, and we certainly aren't all the best of friends, but at our core, we remain a group of unique individuals that constantly question the world, want to work together to actualize values that we hold dear, and most importantly, truly care about one another's well-being. 

Kaveret in Karmiel

Now that we're over a month into Kaveret, we've now established a pretty stable weekly schedule! I've decided to split this post into four important aspects of Kaveret: Messima, Yom Kvutza and Yom Kaveret, Poland Seminar, and Karmiel Adventures! 

Messima

On Sundays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, I travel to Tveria, a city along the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), to do messima at a middle school with Max and Julia, two of my kvutzamates. Messima (which literally means "mission") is work that the movement sees as actualizing its values. With the guiding of our melaveh (accompanier), Orr, the three of us do our messima by running peulot for kids to not only teach them English, but to encourage them to question their identities and the way that they relate to their classmates and the world around them. 

Sundays: Our mornings at the school begin at 8:30am, and we proceed to run peulot for five classes until the end of the school day. We then go to Hanoar HaOved run Bayit L'Meida V'Amda (BAMA), which stands for the House of Science and Stance. While the permanent site of the BAMA is under renovation, the BAMA's temporary location is set in a small room within the school. My tzevet plays games with the kids who come, eat lunch with them, and aid the madrichim in running peulot and fun chevratis! 

Tuesdays: On Tuesdays, we again run five morning peulot beginning at 8:30am. In the afternoons, however, we run an hour and a half long English Club for students struggling a bit with English. Our most recent peula was one focused on positive communication. Julia, Max, and I set the classroom where English Club is located up like a theatre, with chairs placed in rows facing a "stage," or empty area. The three of us dressed in silly costumes and performed skits for the chanichim, with each skit displaying either a positive or negative social interaction between characters. The students analyzed each skit, explaining what aspects of the interactions made them either negative or positive. We then created an English Club Communication Declaration, where the chanichim listed types of methods they want to utilize in relating to each other within the English Club. Afterwards, the chanichim each signed their names to the written declaration, all the while marveling at one another's handwriting when writing in English. Once English club finishes, Max, Julia, and I head to the BAMA to once again hang-out with the kids there and help the madrichim.

Wednesdays: Wednesdays are our Yom Tzevet! These days are run by Orr, our melaveh, to help us enhance our skills as madrichim and learn about the lifestyles our chanichim are used to. On the Yom Tzevet which took place on election day in Israel, Orr took Max, Julia, and I to the tayelet (boardwalk) in Tveria, and sat us down along the water. We talked about each candidate running for prime minister (and in Israel, that's a lot of candidates), and the platforms of the parties that they represent. Orr then had the three of us walk along the tayelet and conduct a survey of passerby to gain a sense of who the majority of Tveria residents would vote for. I loved this exercise! It gave me the opportunity to engage in fascinating discussions in Hebrew, and learn more about the motivations for people to vote for various Israeli political parties. Once we'd crossed the tayelet, the three of us sat down and discussed the results, and discovered that it seemed that Tveria would have a high percentage of residents voting for Likud (the major right wing party) and Shas (an ultra-orthodox religious political party primarily representing religious Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews). We talked about the reasons why residents of Tveria, a pretty low socio-economic, religious city would vote for these parties, and related our discussion to how these mentalities shape our chanichim. 

Messima has been very fun and meaningful thus far! The chanichim are usually active participants in our peulot, and are genuinely friendly to and interested in us Americans! Our chanichim are also eager to discuss tensions in their own lives, such as animosity between Moroccan and Russian students, perceptions of Israeli Arabs, and dislike of living in a state of war in some way or another. 

Yom Kvutza and Yom Kaveret

A consistency between Boneh and Kaveret is that Mondays are still Yom Kvutza! Every Monday, Sarah and Bar (our new madrich, as Yo'av needed to leave around a month ago) run peulot for us at our home in Karmiel. Lately, the peulot have been very focused on how we relate to one another as kvutzamates, and what we demand from another in this collective. 

On Thursdays we have a special day called Yom Kaveret! This day is run by our Kaveret rakazim, Dean and Bria. The two rakazim run peulot for us throughout the day, and then optional Hebrew classes are offered in our house in the early evening. Our past few Yomei Kaveret have focused on the affects of capitalism, eventually zooming in on issues revolving around capitalism within Israeli society today. This included "The Game of Life" created by our rakazim, where the kvutza was split into different families of varying economic privilege, and needed to decide how to spend our money and how we would respond to large life decisions. The game gave us an idea of how much necessities cost in Israel, and gave us perspective on how difficult it can be for almost a quarter of the country's population to afford the living basics.

Poland Seminar   

Us Workshoppers and British Shnatties will be leaving for a week-long journey to Poland on the tenth, so us three kvutzot joined together for a three-day seminar two weeks prior to our departure. Our days were spent at the Ghetto Fighters' Museum not far from our home in Karmiel. As a kvutza, we explored the exhibits with Bar and Sarah, as well as with our Poland madrich, Ohad. Ohad led us in discussions about how we relate to the holocaust, and how we relate to revolt and rebellion. After leaving the museum each day, we stayed at the Shlomi Hostel where we had half of our Workshop Orientation in September, and engaged in peulot each night. One particularly controversial peula followed a quick film about the Hitler Youth, and we discussed what we perceive indoctrination to be and whether or not we feel that indoctrination is present within our our own lives and educations.

Following the seminar, our kvutza has had a group-wide check-in about how we're all feeling going into this Poland journey, and about the goals that we have to grow as a kvutza during this process.

Karmiel Adventures

Living in Karmiel has been extremely different from living on Kibbutz Ein Dor. Our house is only a few minutes walk from a mall and a strip with many stores and eateries. Some of my favorite spots in this area are the bakery--where I love to indulge in potato burrekasim and chocolate ruggalach--and the ice-cream parlor, which has the most delicious berry sorbet! Still close by is the Park HaMishpacha (Family Park), where Karmiel residents can bowl, slide, golf, do other fun outside activities for free. Across the street from the park is the home of a lovely family that invites Workshoppers and members of other gap-year programs into their home as often as they want. The family truly is wonderful, offering us home-cooked meals, produce to take home, excursions to the park, and the opportunity to hang-out with their teenage son with cerebral palsy.

Only a five minute walk from our home is a masorti shul, where many of us attend services on Friday nights and a couple go to on Saturday mornings. Two weeks ago, a large group of us attended Friday night services and then joined the shul in a wonderful Tu'Bishvat seder and potluck. The food was delicious, and the experience provided us with the opportunity to make friends with more Karmiel residents!

Three weeks ago, I celebrated my 19th Birthday here in Israel! I had a joint Birthday party with my friend Zak, who lives in Rishon L'Tzion, and a fair amount of members of the Rishon kvutza traveled here to the Karmiel house to celebrate with us! The theme of the party was "Bible Bakery," and everyone was encouraged to dress-up like their favorite Bible character and bring homemade baked goods! Knowing how much I fancy the doughnuts here in Israel and being aware of my disappointment that the bakery here has ended its doughnuts season, Abigail surprised me by making jelly sufganiot! At midnight, everyone sang me Happy Birthday, and lifted me in a chair in a Habonim Dror ritual to chant our traditional Birthday cheers!

The next day, Anya and I went out for my Birthday lunch at a local sushi restaurant, and upon arriving back at our house, Julia brought me soy iced coffee, a delicious drink that I've been craving but have had trouble finding without milk (as I'm lactose intolerant). A bit later, a group of us went to a really fun park only a fifteen minutes walk from our house. The park has one of the largest slides I've ever seen, as well as a large rope jungle gym and a stage where Julia and I danced and sang to some of our favorite country songs.

Late at night, a large amount of us ended my Birthday by going out for sorbet and icecream! Due to my Birthday being in January, I've never before been able to celebrate my Birthday in a Habo context, so I especially enjoyed  being able to this year, and being able to do so with my kvutza!

Tomorrow we'll be flying off to Poland! Kvutzamates are currently packing, cooking, and cleaning in preparation for our journey. I traveled to Poland with my grade during my program in Israel in eleventh grade, so what I'm really looking forward is this time is having a kvutzati experience.