Sukkot

Sukkot on the kibbutz is an interesting place. First of all, besides for every one building a succah we also built a communal succah which the garin aided in completing. While we were helping to build the succah one of the kibbutznikim gave us a demonstration of whittling a mezuzah cover.

Within the kibbutz we have some very interesting succot as well. One family builds an interesting succah every year. This year the walls are built from hay bales with wooden farm accessories in the widows and on the walls. The door way is built from a trunk of a date tree cut in half. The scach is from the leaves of the date trees. In fact all the succot is the kibbutz makes use of the branches of the date trees for schach. `

The garin will also be putting on a play and dance to “introduce” ourselves to the kibbutz. This is not my idea at all, but its tradition (this place is starting to sound like West Point a bit) so we have to. While I may not enjoy this stuff I will at least try and pretend I care at all.

But once the painful part ends we have a group hike on Mount Gilboa on Wednesday which should be interesting. The mountain commands an imposing view upon the entire Beit Shean valley and beyond into Jordan. Thursday will be a bike day. My original plan was to go from the kibbutz, around the entire Kinneret and back, but I was asked not to out of safety reasons. So instead me and several other people from the garin will join in a group from the area to bike a 25k loop. Not quite as interesting but still promises to be fun.