Hi everyone,
Just a short update on the rest of this weeks activities. As mentioned before, the seminar theme was partnership through the years of the British Mandate period in Palestine. The various aspects looked at included The Arab Riots of 1929 and 1936-1939; the British Commissions and White Papers in 1937 and 1939; limitations placed on Jewish Immigration; the resulting illegal immigration (Aliya Bet and the “Bricha”); as well as the various Jewish defence forces of the Hagana, Lechi and Etzel and their merging to create the IDF, together with the many dilemmas faced by the fledging state such as the King David Hotel Bombing and the Altalena.

On Tuesday night, the chavura group ran a peula on the King David Hotel Bombing. On Wednesday night, the participants on Habo U (a program for Habo madrichim in partnership with Haifa University) ran programming for all the Boneh participants. On Wednesday morning, one of the kvutsot picked Butternut Squash and Oranges with Table To Table; while the other kvutsa worked on the Kibbutz – mainly in the dining room/kitchen however a few were lucky enough to work in the refet (cowshed).

Today the workshoppers had a tour of the Atlit illegal immigration camp which was the detention centre set up by the British to contain all the illegal immigrants coming over mainly by ships from Europe from 1939-1948. It was a very interesting parallel experience, and the tour involved seeing the physical barracks and disinfection rooms combined with high tech audiovisual shows, telling the stories of some of the immigrants or the volunteers who were helping on the boats. It is a very special date, as today 60 years ago was when the United Nations had the partition vote which was the precursor to the establishment and Declaration of Independence in Israel. This led to the 2^nd part of the excursion, which was to the Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, where the 1^st mayor of Tel Aviv Meri Dizengoff lived and where the Independence was Declared. The tour included a short audiovisual presentation, listening to parts of the actual UN vote and the actual declaration, together with more background and anecdotal stories from this very important event in history. Currently the workshoppers are having their weekly processing with madrichim, and this weekend they have their final free weekend until the winter chofesh period.

In the next few days, an itinerary and contact details will be sent to families via email regarding the journey to Poland in approximately 2 weeks.

Shabbat Shalom