This morning after breakfast we met with the 8 soldiers who will be staying with us for the next few days. Kobi (our tour guide) did a short introduction and we all introduced ourselves with our favorite dance move.

Our first activity of the day was a jeep ride through the upper galilee mountains, in the Beerya forest. We had a soldier in each jeep. It gave us a chance to get to know them and for them to get to know us.

After the jeep rides we headed to the holy city of Tzfat. Our first stop was Livnot U'lehibanot, a small Jewish center where we did text study in groups and discussed Jewish ideas. My group discussed tikkun olam/changing the world.

At lunch, I had my first schwarma and others had their first felafel. This gave us another chance to sit and talk with the Israeli soldiers. We learned more about what they do in the army and what their experiences have been. They also asked a lot of questions of us, especially about our heritage and culture growing up.

After a little time for shopping, we visited two synagogues. At the first, we learned about the Jews who came to Tzfat because of the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. They brought a Torah with them which is used in that synagogue three times a year, even though it is 500 years old. At the second, we learned about the Ari, the rabbi who developed Kabbalah.

We finished up the afternoon with two more stops. The first was an art gallery of Jewish mysticism. The artist there was originally from Detroit and came to Israel to learn more about Judaism and study Kabbalah. He was kind of a strange guy, but it was fun. Then we went to a small food shop with a guy from Yemen. We had a chance to try his food, which was amazing. We learned a little about him and he spoke to us about "abra cadabra" which means I will create as I speak. He talked about the power of words.

Overall it was a fun day because we got to meet the soldiers that we'll spend the next few days with and met a lot of interesting people along the way.

--Caelynn Grossman RU'11