Taglit-Birthright Israel: DC Community Trip Day 5

Tsfat and a Man Named Avraham
By Eshkar Vesler (Herzliya, Israel)

Writing a blog is something new to me, and I hope I can handle it. Let me tell you about Avraham or "awesome" or whatever we would like to call him. After sitting in his shop for something like 20 minutes, more or less, and listening to his life story I found myself getting confused. I'll tell you that the experience made me uncomfortable. It was not just that he repeated the word "awesome" a million times - it was because I knew that it was the first time that many of the people in our group had an experience with Kaballah. I'm Israeli and Jewish and it's only like 5 or 6 years that Kaballah has been trendy - in Israel and around the world. Most of you probably have heard about Madonna and other celebrities' relationships with Kaballah.

I find myself to be a curious person and took lessons to understand what Kaballah is. I found that there really are great main ideas in Kaballah, which means "receiving." From my point of view, that day was dissapointing, but after speaking with the Americans in the group, I see that he influenced everyone and made them think about this belief system and methodology and enlightened everyone and made them want to explore the subject. I was really impressed by everyone's openness and respectful observations. Moreover, I thought that the discussions and debates were really mature and polite. I hope that we, the Israelis, can learn this from you.