ahka | Trip to Israel day 5

Thursday, Day 5

Today, we had very emotional or emotionally sad day. We started with the lecture by Ken Spiro about Anti-Semitism that was gloomy and disturbing. There are so many lies and misconceptions about Jews in the world, it is very sad and makes me feel powerless. Even Jews themselves believe in those lies and don’t want to find the truth. That makes it even worse!

After the lecture we went to the Yad Vashem -- Museum of Holocaust where I cried and cried and cried. Last time I was in that museum I remembered crying very hard while visiting children’s memorial. This time it was emotionally difficult throughout the whole museum. Here is the picture of the exit from the museum:

After the Yad Vashem they took us to the orphanage Kfar Yeladim David where we also cried. It is a wonderful place for the kids, however the concept that they don’t have parents who can take care of them was difficult to handle. The kids at the orphanage were singing a song about Ima (Mother) they did it twice and we all were weeping. They gave us the lyrics of the song in English and reading the words and listening to the girls singing and dancing was touching to tears.

After that we went back to the hotel to change in modest closes to go to the very religious area of Jerusalem Mea Sharim Geula. We really had fun during this walk through busy streets. We turned onto the little streets to see the real life Jewish Ultra Orthodox neighborhood. We bought presents there for much cheaper than they are in the area of Kotel (Western Wall).