From Ruth Steinman, Josh P and Arielle M, Sarah L and Molly H.
Hello friends and countrymen (women and others. Here on Netzer we don’t believe in the gender binary).
This has been one of the most eventful weeks for machon in a while, with Purim, a birthday and a Tiyul. The Purim festivities began on Thursday, with a half day of lessons. Our rakazim (organization leaders) planned a Purim themed peula for us, which ended with a costume show. The dedication of us machonnicks to our costumes was questionable at best, but there was a very good Addams family.
I won’t go into detail about Thursday night (purim itself), but let’s just say that we all had fun. And most of us remember it too!
Most of us were dead to the world all Friday morning, and the only thing of note all day was a wonderful Kabbalat Shabbat service run by Joe. Becca and Esther sang the prayers whilst all the participants were put through a deep meditation. For many of the non Netzer-niks, it was their experience of another movements’ service, and as such was found hugely interesting.
Saturday was another lie in, but in the afternoon we all went over to the Etgar flat for Yana’s birthday bbq. A copious amount of meat was consumed, and the meal was topped off by the re-emergence of my famous crumble.
Sunday had classes as usual, but all of machon went on a Tiyul from Monday to Wednesday. We began in Jaffa, then travelled up to Zichron Ya’akov, where we stayed for the two nights. We spent our time learning about all 5 Aliyot through visiting places of interest such as an agriculture training centre and an illegal immigrant’s detainment camp. Although informative, I can’t say that it was the most fun 3 days that I’ve had. The tone for a lot of it was somewhat…dry, to say the least. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Tiyul was the tendency towards a tone of unwavering nationalistic pride, which many of us felt left out some of the nuanced issues which riddled the 5 Aliyot. However, we did learn new information (or at least I did), and it was certainly nice to get a change of scenery, not to mention significantly better food.
Until next time everybody!
Weekly report by Josh P and Arielle M ( Etgar)
E: EVENTS- this week we saw the string of birthdays continue with celebrations for Arielle, Marcus, Yana and Mungo. In theory this should have meant 4 days of beautifully baked cakes from jonny however newly turned vegan, part time feminist Rachel sabotaged Mungo’s chocolate fudge cake by swapping the salt and sugar bags around in a desperate political statement against the egg industry thus imposing her veganism onto the entirety of the etgar for one fatefull desert.
T: TIYUL- whilst due to purim there was no official tiyul as we had chofesh on the Saturday the whole shnat livluv group when on a tiyul of our own to the park near Beit Shmuel for a saturday afternoon BBQ as it was Yana’s birthday. we had burgers, chicken skewers, and vegetarian alternatives grilled on Machon’s bbq by alex and joel and had so much food we even gave some as tzedakah to an american youth group that were in the park. The different sniffim showed the group dances they’d learnt back home with varying degrees of rhythm before we finished the evening with a group havdallah.
G: GETTING DRESSED UP- over our extended weekend ur kvutzah got fully into the spirit of purim with every memeber of our flat going all out on costumes. Dawn had a roman Goddess costume made for her by yana with a bed sheet prompting her to run around the house like an overexcited school girl at a one direction concert proclaiming ‘i feel like a princess’. Other costume highlights from etgar included hippies, vampires, salt n pepper, old man dan, a trio of emos (‘josh why havent you dressed up’) and a wizard. Once fully in costume we all headed out to the shuk to experience Purim in Jerusalem where there were street djs, parties and thousands of people in crazily elaborate costumes.
A: ASEPHA- our weekly asephah was shot through with German efficiency as Yana was determined for it to not be longer than a mere 30 minutes and we shot through it with thankfully very few motions.
R: REUNION- This week our Yom Tinua (movement day) was fragmented as Machon was on tiyul so we had our own etgar only day in Beit Shmuel. We had a great Ma’amad ran for us by Jess where we found out the meanings of our our names, the best being Dan: the one who judges. We also had a peulah on sexism within advertising which led to a general discussion on feminism and although we thoroughly enjoyed the day we look forward to our reunion with machon next week.
Josh n Relz
Weekly report by Sarah L and Molly H (Etgar)
This week after the seminar, Etgar had a long weekend and experienced Purim in the streets of Jerusalem. Purim was crowded and crazy but an exciting experience for all of us. We continued our normal classes on Sunday, followed by an incredibly efficient asepha.
On Monday, the usual movement day was not run because Machon were on tiyul, so Etgar had our own movement day – Jes led a beautiful ma’amad and we talked about equality and women’s rights. This week finished off our week of Etgar birthdays (5 birthdays in 7 days) with Arielle’s birthday on Thursday, Yana’s birthday on Sunday, Marcus’ birthday on Tuesday, and finally Mungo’s 18th birthday on Wednesday.
Celebrating the birthdays was mamash kef and as we exit the birthday season, Etgar is excited to see what the next week has to bring, and to get our Machoniks back.