Today was tisha ba’av, A day in Judaism in which people remember the destruction of the temple. In addition to this, many other events that affected jews In a negative way also happened on this day. To experience this tradition of remembrance we learned in groups and watched shindlers list, a holocaust movie, and went to the kotel. The moment we arrived we see the whole place is packed!

We all separated and davened. Although it was a sad day I found the sight absolutely beautiful. Seeing Jews of every tribe unite for this day and all stand, pray, and sing together was a spectacular sight. A circle of singing teens formed a little distance away from the wall and in no time more travel groups and strangers young and old joined in for the songs. At first I stood from a distance watching them all and I was slowly pulled closer and closer and later sat down and joined everyone along with some others from my bus. Soon after that we went to an amazing Italian restaurant and had a great time. To end the night we visited Ben yehuda once more, although this time was different than the first.

I bought a small drum and messed around with it a bit until me and the small group of people I was with had the idea to sit on the ground and sing and play the drum with a hat in front of us in hopes of collecting money. To our surprise it worked to some extent. All together we collected about 2 shekels but the real gift was making people smile and getting them to sing along with us (woah, that was cheesy). I look forward to more events like this in the future and more spontaneous great ideas.

Opher out!

-Segev Opher