May 2nd, 2004
Hey everyone, time for a chill update on what’s been happening since
Pesach... Right, so basically the first important thing was
Yom Hashoah. I'd always heard how Yom Hashoah in Israel was
really different. Wow. It for sure was. I mean, lets put it
this way: the 33 of us are doing a little tekes (program) for
Yom Hashoah in a nice park near a busy street in Jerusalem. We
do the usual passage reading, candle lighting and song singing,
but then at like 9:57 we stopped and all walked to isolated areas
(some kids went on the street, sidewalks, grass etc) and waited for
a siren at exactly 10:00 am. At that time, sirens went off all over
Israel for two minutes. Picture this: cars whooshing buy, people
walking on the streets, kids chilling with their parents at the
playground, and then a total and complete freeze and stop of
everything. For two minutes, Israel was silent and in mourning
for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. It was over
as quickly as it had happened. Two minutes were up, and cars were
zooming again as if nothing had happened. Pshhhh. 
Now, in order to get into the mood for Yom Hashoah, we went to the
Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, the day or two before or something.
Basically the effect it had on me was pretty simple. When I see
innocent Jews murdered, I get angry. It essentially brings out
the militant rightwing views of mine. And boy did that damn
museum evoke those views. Whatever, screw the Nazi's. And the
Palestinians too (to be politically correct, 90 percent of them
or whatever number). 
Okay, now the fun times. For Yom Ha-atzmaut, we partied. This
was the first time our program had permission to go downtown, so
we did! Ben Yehuda and Kikar Tzion were central areas which we
chilled in, and it was awesome. Basically that’s all I can say.
Awesome. The next day, we went to a beach in Ashkelon and chilled
there for most of the day. We happened to run into the NFTY program,
which had BEN BERAHA on it! Yes! That meant like 6 hours of Ben filled
fun! Totally ridiculous amounts of fun. Word. that brings us to Shabbas
where I was in Tel-Aviv with my camp friend, Yair Shein, which also
was a very nice time where I ate a lot and slept a lot and caught up
on the good times. 

Jonah Liben
Israel Affairs Vice President
Natick USY