August 3

Today was a meaningful and mournful day on the No’ar Hadash Israel Experience. We started off our day with a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. We spent the entire morning walking the halls of the museum and learning about the lives of the European Jews who fell to the horrors of the Holocaust. The museum shed a new light on the Holocaust for all of us, and made us think about the Holocaust’s role in the creation of a Jewish state. 

After a solemn lunch at the museum we made our way up Har Hertzl, Mount Hertzl, stopping first at a grave in the military cemetery along the side of the mountain. The grave was for a young soldier named Guni. Maya read us a story that his mother had written about him, to help us understand that each of the graves had a unique and heroic story. Walking from the Holocaust Museum to the cemetery was a powerful and moving experience. We learned about a time where innocent Jews were murdered for simply being Jewish, to a time where Jews are dying in battle defending the Jewish homeland. Maya’s stories and thoughtful comments helped us to connect to the cemetery.

We stopped briefly at a few more graves as we made our way up, among them Yitzhak Rabin’s and Hanna Senesh’s. Finally, we reached Theodore Hertzl’s grave, which marks the top of the mountain. We visited the Hertzl Museum, where we learned about his life and dreams. Exhausted and overwhelmed from our day, we grabbed some well deserved ice cream and headed back to the hotel for some free time and debriefing of our experiences. After dinner we had another night out on Ben Yehuda street. We enjoyed our last night in Israel shopping, laughing, and having fun.

Stray Cat Count: 139 Cats