This week has been new to me. Over this experience so far, I have come to realize that I have been to many of the places we go to. I know the information, seen the miraculous sights and heard the foreign sounds. But this week, we went to a place I have never ever been to before. All 12 of the boys got the opportunity to go to a tefillin factory. All these years I have been able to complete the mitzvah of wearing tefillin for morning prayers. About five years ago, I actually got the opportunity to make my own tefillin at camp. But this was a completely different way of making tefillin. It took a full year to complete one pair of tefillin. We watched a video about it and watched them make it. At the same place, I saw something that I have never seen before; I saw a real life scribe writing the torah. I went up to him and asked him to take a picture and I did. It looked like that they memorized the torah but they were just so perfect. Every symbol had to be perfect and every line. They were also people that were scribes writing kosher scrolls of the megillah and the shamah. It took the same skill, same lighting and same delicateness.

Another thing we did this week was we went to Yad Lekashish. This is by far my favorite place in Israel. It makes me so happy watching the old people use their skills to their advantage because the elderly are not useless. On top of that, the art that they make and sell is some of the most beautiful art. After the tiyul to Jerusalem, we went to a city in the Negev called Arab. This city was where my teacher Aubrey lives. This city was so cute and small and so was the youth hostel we stayed in. We went to Aubrey’s house for an oneg after Shabbat dinner. He provided us snacks and tea and he told us some good Shabbat stories. Yes, it was a tight fit for all 40 of us to fit in Aubrey’s house, but it was still really nice and it made Shabbat even better. This week was somewhat of a normal week. But next week is the week of Purim and the week we go to a Maccabbi Tel Aviv basketball and I am pretty excited for that!