Tel Aviv - Here We Come!

This morning we woke up early, got on the bus and headed to Tel Aviv.  We started our morning at Kikar Rabin, Rabin Square, where Rabin gave his final address to the Israeli people and was assassinated.  We read excerpts from his acceptance speech at the Noble Peace Prize in 1994 and talked about how leaders often have to take a stance which angers many people, but how powerful his message of hope was. 

From there things got considerably lighter as we split up into 4 teams and participated in a scavenger hunt of the Dizengoff and Neve Tzedek neighborhoods.  We ran around the streets talking to and taking pictures with Israelis who thought we were only slightly crazy but totally willing to go with it.  We were shocked at how friendly they were and how willing they were to help us find our way from point A to B, even if they ended up sending us in the wrong direction most of the time J.  We also met many ex-pat Americans who only wanted to hear about our trip and give us helpful advice for navigating the city.   We had a great time exhausting ourselves running around.  Congratulations to Alyssa, Caleb, Daniel, and Liat for winning the game!

After a quick lunch in a local park we headed toward Bina, a secular yeshiva near the Central Bus Station.  The yeshiva’s mission is to open up classic Jewish texts to secular Israelis to that they can feel ownership around these texts  and figure out if these texts have any meaning or relevance to their lifestyles.  One of the tracts they run is a social awareness tract which combines text study and social and political action in the neighborhood.  We took a tour to see how migrant and foreign workers live in this area and heard about the governments’ and the populations’ response (or non-response) to this community.  It was fairly shocking to see the poverty and terrible living conditions and our text study post tour revolved around what we see as Jewish imperatives when it comes to these type of situations.

We stopped by Yaffo to see the Mediterranean Coast and eat an ethnic dinner of shakshuka, cous cous, stewed vegetables and majdera.  We are excited about our second day in Tel Aviv tomorrow.