CESJDS 2018 students spoke eloquently about their teachers, Akiva Gersh and Elhanan Brown, during their end of session banquet. Take a look at what they wrote:

A couple weeks ago, I was reminded of something my teacher at AMHSI, Reuven Spero, once said: “you can’t experience a culture by going somewhere and staying in a fancy hotel for a week or two. If you really want to get to know a culture, live with a host family for a year. Do what they do, eat the local food, speak the local language, etc.”

It’s eighty degrees out. The air outside smells like citrus and sweet perfume, and flowers cover the highway. Not flowers you see here, but big exotic flowers that are vibrant and blooming and can be seen miles away. The scenery flies by as the car zooms along the road at the average speed limit of 80. When the car stops we walk into a garden filled with orange trees the same sweet smelling flowers that were all over the country. In the middle of winter it felt like I was in a summer paradise, with warm days and beautiful gardens and beaches with the most blue ocean water I have ever seen. For two months I lived in this land that resembled a Utopia, visiting the north and south, climbing mountains and playing in sand dunes in the desert.

This past week we went to Tel Aviv which was one of my favorite cultural experiences on this trip.

Since I have been here, there have a been a number of culture shocks that have stood out to me. Of course, I have noticed how everything shuts down on Shabbat, and some places do not even open back up on Saturday nights.

Another week at Muss has flown by! After Core and General Studies on Sunday and Monday, we had a tiyul on Tuesday where we went to the artist’s market in Tel Aviv called Nachalat Binyamin. I was so excited, because my mom had hoped I had been going there and told me all about it. All of the artists there sell their own work, and their art was truly incredible.

This week we went on an amazing tiyul in Tel Aviv. On Tuesday, our original tiyul was canceled so we ended up taking a fun little trip to Nachalat Benyamin which is a beautiful, outdoor market. There was handcrafted art made by native Israelis. I loved looking at all of the jewelry.

We’ve now made Hod Hasharon our home for over 2 weeks, and I couldn’t be happier. I feel as though I am always ecstatic and smiling here, and we are constantly on the go. Since last week, we have finished learning about the events of the Torah, and zipped through the Judges period, the prophets, the kings, and onto the 2nd Temple period and the Rabbinical Era with Rabbi Akiva and Shimon Bar Kochba. Last week, our big trip was to Masada and the Dead Sea. We got to learn all about King Herod’s elegant “summer home” on the top of Masada and how the fortress of Masada as a whole fell many years ago. The people living on Masada had a hard decision to make as they were being surrounded on all sides of the mountain by the Romans, as to whether they would fight for their lives and they’re Judaism, or they would die by choice in honor.

Another week has passed here in Hod Hasharon, and it sure has been an amazing 7 days. First of all, on Tuesday, my session went into Jerusalem and toured through various museums about ancient Israel, which included seeing a model of ancient Jerusalem.

While Israel is predominately Jewish (and for good reason!), I would contend that one of its most undervalued aspects almost unknown in the world community would be its variation of ideology and culture. From its conception in Herzl’s Der Judenstatt, the way in which Israel’s predecessors though the state should be established differed incredibly.

For this blog I want to focus on my trip to Jerusalem. On this past Friday I went to the Shuk for my first time. The energy there on a Friday afternoon was unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

I cannot believe how fast this trip is going! It feels like just yesterday I walked into my dorm for the first time, worrying about making friends. Now I have some of my best friends ever and am totally in love with the state of Israel and HSI. This past week, we had so many amazing tiyuls filled with cave crawling, hot springs, art galleries and so much more. One part of our tiyul that stuck out to me was when we visited Yad Lakashish, Lifeline for the Aged.

This past week has been amazing! We started it by studying different Zionist leaders from the beginning of the 20th century for our Zionist Seminar. For this activity we had to create a poster, a skit, a biography and a song about our groups assigned Zionist. My group was in charge of studying Ahod Ha’am, the man who started Cultural Zionism. This project helped me learn so much about early Zionism and the fight for a Jewish state. My group got to present second and we had a very good presentation ending with our ‘Hamilton’ parody. After our presentations on Tuesday, Talia, one of our madrichot brought us to Nachalat Binyamin in Tel Aviv where we made purchases from the arts and crafts fair. This was our first time in Tel Aviv as a group.

This week, I would not like to write about the incredible religious and spiritual experience I’ve gotten out of this trip, rather how my hobbies and interests correlated with the trips we have taken over the past seven days. If there is one thing I have ever enjoyed through and through in my life, it would no doubt be the exploration of the past. Put simply, I like history. A lot. And I don’t know what it was, but the past week has really catered to that interest.

We had our second unit test this week on Medieval and Judaism post the destruction of the second beit hamikdash. My last question before completing the last part of the exam asked: Is Judaism as divided today as it was at the time of the Sadducees Pharisees, Zealots, and Essenes?

This weekend for Shabbat, both classes in my session went to Jerusalem! On Friday morning, we took our second unit test on Jewish history, and then we packed really quickly and headed out on our trip. Our first stop was to Machane Yehuda, a very famous (and very busy) marketplace.

The past week by far has been our busiest city so far! We started this amazing week at the tunnels from the Bar Kochba Revolt. Yossi led us as we made our way through the crawlspace. We crawled into the main cave where we could see ash from Roman oil lamps. Yossi instructed us to turn off our flashlights. As we turned them off, we began to sing Henei Ma Tov and it felt absolutely amazing.

Over the quick course of the past week we have studied, in our Core class from the time of the Bar Kochba Revolt and the time of the Rabbis, all the way through the Crusaders period, and the Spanish Inquisition, until the time of Jewish Modernity in the world. At Muss, it is not just about the vast history that we are studying, however, but it is about making Israel our classroom and actually stepping off campus to see these historical fantasies really come to life.

Today is now the 18th day that I have woken up in a place that is not home, and I love it!! Although we all come from different places all with different backgrounds, we have become a loving family of 29.