Jewish Communities Kennes!

July 21st Written by Daniel Goldstein The Diller Jewish Communities Kennes was from Sunday the 19th to Tuesday the 21st. We arrived at Sde Boker in the Negev nervous but excited. We were less eager to meet the other Dillers because we didn't want our group to get separated! As it turned out, absence made the heart grow fonder and we all fell in love with each other even more. We became each others rocks to calm down with if we got overwhelmed by the 250 new people we were surrounded by. I don't know if any of you reading this have been to Sde Boker or know about it, but it's an incredible place. It was where the first prime minister of Israel David Ben Gurion (DBG for short) retired in an attempt to stir a nationwide move to the Negev (unsuccessfully I might add). What makes this place truly incredible though isn't its history, but its location. Sde Boker sits directly on Mitzpe Ramon, the largest crater in Israel. It is truly the most awe striking sight I, and most everyone on our trip, had seen in my life. What Kennes was, in a nutshell (sorry Isy and Channah amiright), was a lot of get-to-know-you stuff with the other cohorts the first day, a lot of interesting programing the second, and a field trip the third. Let's just focus on days two and three for the sake of time. Day two had two main topics that the programming focused on: DBG and the history of jews in general. Both of these topics were split up into two parts. The first part of the DBG topic we split up into groups called color groups (we stayed with them all of Kennes for these kinds of activities) and debated the four most controversial points that DBG and his fellow zionists had to discuss before they could declare a Jewish state independent. These four points were: 1) Name 2) Boarders 3) Usage of the word G-d in the declaration 4) National Language After we chose what to do with these we decided whether or not to declare our state independent. The second part of DBG, we met in groups based on what issues we were most passionate about in the world today and talked about impact projects. For the history of us topic we had a lecture for the first part (which turned into a nap for an unsettling percent of the fellows), and for the second part we tried to figure out the story of the first Jew in North America and acted out what we thought (the answer was pretty anticlimactic not gunna lie. It was some Dutch guy who was sent to NYC to see if it was a nice place for the Dutch Jews in 1658 or something like that). Day three was a kicker too. It was a bit more chill, while hectic at the same time. We woke up at 4:30 AM to get to Masada while the sun was weak. We spent a little time there (from like 8 to like 11) before going to lunch at a hostel and heading to the Dead Sea. We had fun floating but for a lot of us it really hurt! And was very warm. At 3 PM we left the Dead Sea and headed to HAIFA FOR COMMUNITY WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!