As we woke up on our last morning with our host families (tear tear) we arrived at Beit Halochem and we started off our day with a wonderful presentation with Gili, a Diller Bash-Banash fellow’s dad and the director of Beit Halochem Beer Sheva, explaining to us about the centre and what the organization does. The centre is for veterans who were wounded in battle, either physically or mentally. The workers at the centre design a personalized rehabilitation plan to help each soldier get reintegrated into Israeli society and feel comfortable.
After watching a few videos about the centre and some of the soldiers it had helped, one soldier, Amit, came to speak to us. We had previously watched his video about his injury and his time at Beit Halochem. After our talk and learning so much about beit halochem we were able to experience what it is like if we did or didn't have working legs. How? We played wheel chair basketball and it was interesting to learn the functions of the wheel chair and how to make it stop, go etc... It definitely is much harder than it looks!!!
After Beit Halochem, we went to the Sde Boker army base where we were able to experience and get a taste of what it is like to be in the army as we participated in a short version of Gadna! We did some activities, which were lots of fun. We learnt about army stances, camouflage, the army crawl, how to hold guns based on where the target is and even got to try on real army uniforms!
The commander didn't warn us whether we needed to run or walk, she did what she did and we followed. After that, we had to hold plank for 4 minutes and the rule was that 3 people can take a breath at a time and if more than 3 people were on a break, then we all have to restart. We needed to work together as group to make sure that we completed the task and that everyone could take a break when needed. It was a chance to test both our leadership and team work qualities! Let's just conclude that activity showed us fellows that we are 100% out of shape! Following plank, we had a small talk session with a head commander and then our favourite picture time came, trying on outfits and pretending we are in the army! If I have to make a comment on how we looked, I'd say Diller BashBanash Montreal should deffs be a part of the army! We all looked fantastic.
By the end of the day, we arrived at Kennes and concluded our community week with a final magaal with our Israeli friends. We all sat in a circle next to David Ben Gurion’s grave. It was very meaningful as he is such an important Israeli leader and a role model to us fellows in perseverance and leadership! In our maagal, we were asked to either choose what we take away from the trip, what our favourite memory is, someone who we feel we connected to or something that we learnt from our Israel Winter Semiar. Then we had the chance to thank anyone who we wanted in a public setting. Then it was time for Diller Bash-Banash to leave ☹ Our goodbyes led to crying, but i kept saying see you later instead of goodbye because it's not an official goodbye, it's more of a see you later because some of us will be back in israel soon and will definitely not miss an opportunity to see our new Israeli family!!
Later that night, we reunited with our colour groups from the mega-evening to begin the North American Kennes. Liat, the senior director of Diller Teen Fellows International, led a workshop of the history of the Jewish people and how we went from being one nation at Mount Sinai to being scattered into tons of different communities across the world. We then had dinner and some free time before a truly meaningful maagal laila. Sarah handed each fellow a container of Play-Doh and asked us to mould what we thought our parents would be thinking about us right now. How they would have felt if they saw us over the course of the trip, etc. We all shared how we thought they would have felt and then Sarah turned the maagal laila 360 degrees and handed each of us a letter from our parents. Overall, it was a very meaningful maagal that I will never forget.
Written by Jamie Wajcman with contributions from Noah Adessky
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