Weekly update by Olivia Tate and Sammy Rose
Chofesh started for the machonikim finishing southern tiyul and going to either Tel Aviv or back to Jerusalem from Be’er Sheva. For those of us that went back to Jerusalem, we had 3 hours of either relaxing or manic packing at Kiryat Moriah before we had to leave. From Kiryat Moriah we went to Beit Shmu’el and either stayed in the flat or a hostel room. Our first night all together we all had pizzur (money given to participants to by their own meal), so we all went off into Ben Yehuda for dinner.
Friday was spent getting ready for Seder. Everyone broken off into groups in preparation, with people working on the Haggadah, Kabbalat Shabbat service, Kef peula after dinner, cleaning and decorating the flat, and of course getting ready for dinner. At 4.30 Barney and Charlie ran a Kabbalat Shabbat service for us and we had the pleasure of being joined by Ella J-K’s mum. Then at 9, Mikaela and Noa lead us through their Haggadah. Through this we acted out the story of Moses’ life, looked at the story of Pesach through a modern perspective, had anyone that was the youngest in their family to stand up as a group and sing the Ma-Nishtanah, and mostly yelled ‘Dayenu’ at each other. Most of the meal was vegan and turned out very well.
Once the Seder finished at midnight Sam, Tommy and Barney ran a Kef peula where they put us in 3 groups and ran competitive games for each plague in the Pesach story. The main event taken from this was when they got to lice, each group had to get as much body hair as possible into a bowl, causing Jordon to loose most of his hair and myself to get a slightly high and crooked undercut.
As the next day was Shabbat we all went to the park and got to chill together, we stayed there until the spiders became too much and we left. We mostly relaxed as we were limited of what we could do, so we finished the evening having a movie night of a bunch of us watching Pride, and the British explaining to the Australian’s what the Miner’s Strike was. On Sunday most of us ended up in Tel Aviv, as some people were staying there and some of us wanted to go for a day trip. When we got there we all went to the Yaffo and went to the Shuk, from there we made our way to the beach where we met up with everyone, and made some of the Sydney-siders, and Perth-ian, think of home as we all got to go swimming in some nice fresh salty water. We finished the trip with Ben W taking up to a vegan ice cream place then walking to the central bus station. Once we were back in Jerusalem and leaving the central bus station we saw the light rail and started running which ended in Daniel getting tripped and falling.
On Monday all the Zorba people were getting ready to go, and were packing or buying their food for the rest of Chofesh. Tuesday morning most of the people left for Zorba and there were 4 of us left in the flat. That day Ayanda went and saw her brother, Maya chilled in the flat and Sammy and I went and had lunch with Lior. Wednesday we turned into a chill day and after doing nothing all day we decided to all go out to dinner together.
So far we have all been loving Chofesh and it has been well needed but we also can’t wait to get back to our daily lives on Machon and Etgar.
Etgar on the Dead Sea, sharing their master piece-