By: Patrick Schmidt Last night our host artist(s) from Karmi’el gave us a wonderful send-off dinner. Great food, conversation, and music. Our group seems to have bonded with their host artist as well as with one another. It truly was a magical…
By: Sally Allan We spent Wednesday morning in Karmiel and Misgav attending one of five workshops run by local artists. Everyone gathered afterwords expounding on their varied and wonderful experiences. In the afternoon we met in an idyllic setting and chose a…
By: Nanci Goldberg There is something special about knowing that when you arrive in Israel you will be staying with an Israeli family. The opportunity to be a part of a family, if even for a small time, is something we as…
By: Alyssa Irvine Shalom! Today we started our day in Acre and visited the Al-Jazar mosque. Ireally enjoyed the architecture of the mosque with the domes, columns, and arches. The gardens there were beautiful and well maintained. It was very peaceful here! The…
By: Russ Bellamy Today was an eventful and busy day. We began with a trip to the Al-Jazar Mosque in Akko. It was an interesting tale of the defeat of Napoleon and an impressive architectural feat. We also visited the Tsippori National…
By: Patty Wyman After a long day of travel we were welcomed by Avi at the airport. We traveled to the Mishkan Museum of Art for a tour with the museum curator of photographs by Gilles Caron. After we checked into the hotel…
By: Kathy Larsen Galecki Where do we go from here? As this incredible week culminates, we carry with us a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and its horrific realities. We are now witnesses of the product of a collective hateful mindset, void…
By: Jeff Biros On Sunday we went to see the Wieliczka Salt Mines. In relationship to the depth and heaviness of what we have studied so far, the salt mines seemed like a break from it all. It was amazing to see…
By: Adam Janosko “It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8 Since I’ve begun…
By: Lauren Zabelsky The idea behind the Jewish Culture Festival, the JCC in Krakow and listening to the people that work there is essentially to resonate with us as visitors that Jewish culture in Poland is not lost. And I think that is true…
By: Meredith Warden While learning about the Holocaust in many of the history classes I’ve taken over the years, I understood that millions of people were murdered. However, for me, it was difficult to actually conceptualize and fully process this massive amount…
By: Ben Brandeis Faces stare. The eyes follow. They look into your soul with bleak faces and lost hope. These are the faces of the dead which line the corridors of a building at Auschwitz. They are all shaven and tired looking…