ShnUpdate - Savyon 11.10.18
This week has been a pretty chilled out week for Savyon. We all starting to think a lot about going home and how we’re going to make the most of our time before we leave.
On Sunday and Monday, we all went to volunteering as usual. Some highlights were Leigh doing a variety of painting jobs at Robin Food and Ha Gal Sheli, Jess running a salad-making workshop for a diaspora Israel tour group at Robin food and Sal starting dog walking at the RSPCA in Haifa.
On Tuesday, we went with the Noar Telem to a primary school to announce an event aimed to recruit more chanichim to the movement that afternoon. We played games with the children and handed out flyers. After we finished, we went to the local thrift shop and everyone had a well-needed nap before we headed out again to the event with Telem. The event was held at a Reform synagogue and the theme was Ancient Greece. We all split into different stations like tie-dyeing, face-painting, dancing and wreath-making. The turnout was great and the chanichim really seemed to enjoy it.
On Wednesday, we had Yom Chinuch at Leo Beck School. We had a really interesting talk with Rabbi Leora about the role of interpretation in the translation of the Talmud into Modern Hebrew and about the fact that there are two Creation stories, but we only ever hear about one. As the anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s death is approaching, Hila ran us a peulah on his assassination and its affect on different groups in Israeli society which was really interesting, as we all really love peulot about Israeli politics. We all found it particularly interesting to learn about the effects of events in politics on minority groups in Israel, such as Druze and Armenian people. We then had an asepha where we made some goals for the rest of our time in Haifa and for what we want to get out of Sikkum seminar. We finished the day by having a great meal together at Robin Food and then the shin shins came to our flat later on.
On Thursday, Sal ran a seminar where everyone had to teach each other about something both they and everyone else knew nothing about. Michael S was with his family so couldn’t be here and Nathan was unfortunately sick, but the rest of us had a great day together. First, Sal ran a tree-hugging themed Ma’amad that involved some very unfortunate tree puns, then Leigh ran a peulah about burial traditions and afterlife beliefs from cultures we had not previously heard of which involved Jess playing an eagle and eating Michael’s corpse. Tahlia taught us about some extreme and quite ridiculous protests throughout history, such as a protest at a spelling bee about English being too hard and Michael L taught us about American gang culture through listening to artists such as J Cole and analysing the songs. Jess finished the day for us by teaching us about Ethiopian cuisine and then we all cooked an Ethiopian meal called Afiza for lunch.
Savyon is having a great time on Shnat and are sad it’s nearly over, but we are very excited to have a really fun last few weeks.
