2 month aliyah-versary

Another month has gone by, so I feel that I am due for another blog post.  It is almost Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) which means that the summer is coming to an end.  In Jerusalem you can feel a slight drop in temperature due to the nice breeze in the evenings.  With the end of summer comes the end of the summer festivals.  There were tons of festivals and concerts in Jerusalem, and the one that I went to this past month was an arts and crafts festival (yes, you did read that properly).  I took more interest in the food stands than the arts themselves, but the real reason for my attendance was a concert of Shalom Chanoch which capped off the evening.  The concert was great and the location was amazing.  It took place in the Sultan's Pool.  It is located in the valley just to the east of the old city.  In ancient times, the area was made into a pool for some sultan.  Now they have grand stands set up there for the many concerts they hold each year.

I finally managed to do some touring around Israel this month.  For the most part I have only been In Jerusalem with a couple of stops in Tel Aviv.  As one of our 2 main trips with the ulpan they took us for the day up north to several places that I hadn't visited yet.  We went to Zichron Yaakov, a town just south of Haifa.  They took us to a garden where we learned about Baron De Rothchild who in the early 1900s funded the establishment of many villages in Israel (including Zichron Yaakov), many of which have grown to become towns and cities.  At the beginning he was known in Israel as the 'Known Benefactor' due to his quiet involvement in the helping of building Jewish life in Israel.  Upon his death, Israel held a huge funeral for him which included sending a navy ship to France in order to bring his body and his wife's to Israel where he was buried in the gardens we were at.  Aside from the towns that he founded who's names are connected to the Rothchild Family, he himself has a street named after him in just about every city in the country.

From the gardens, we went to the town of Zichron Yaakov itself where we were told about the story of Nili and the Aaronson family.  During the Turkish rule over the land, the Aaronsons founded a group called Nili that operated as a spy ring callecting information on the Turkish troops.  Sarah Aaronson, who was one of the founders of the organization who was caught up in a very sad love story during the course of her life, was captured by the Turkish and tortured for days as they tried to extract from her information about Nili's operations.  As they were taking her to be hanged, she asked to stop at her house to take a shower.  There she took a gun and killed herself.  The Turkish investigation into Nili stopped as they had no further leads, which shows that Sarah did not give up any info during her torture.

Our next stop was in Atlit to visit the detention center.  Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the British limited the number of immigrants into Israel to 1000 per month.  With tens of thousands of refugees fleeing from Europe after the holocaust, the British set up this camp to hold Jews before they received permits to enter the country.  The camp was not big enough so they set up a much larger camp in Cyprus.  If the British caught the boats prior to reaching Israel, they would escort them to Cyprus.  Possibly the most famous story related to this topic is that of the Exodus.  The British guarded the camp in Atlit, however there were Jewish Agency workers inside the camp teaching people Hebrew, and helping them get accustomed to life in Israel - very similar to what this ulpan is doing for us almost 70 years later.

In a few hours it will be Rosh Hashanah and the start of many holidays in the upcoming several weeks.  This means that the better part of the country goes on holidays.  For the new year, I am in the middle of a 5 day weekend, and next week I will be off from ulpan for just over 2 weeks!  I don't have any plans yet, but I hope to spend the time travelling a bit and I will be able to provide more interesting blog posts.

Thank you to all my readers and I wish you a happy and healthy new year!
שנה טובה