Page 28 - Issue 33

Usually shnatties begin their educational odyssey
with an introduction seminar, ours was no
different, except the peulot were run exclusively
outside in 35 degree heat, a nice contrast from
our 16 degree air conditioned containers. Isolation
mostly consisted of sleeping, eating, chatting and
more sleeping. As isolation horror stories go, ours
really wasn’t so bad, and served as a nice calm
incubation period before we entered our new
world. Following normal covid protocol, we did
another PCR test on the seventh day in hopes to
get out that night, or on the morning of the eighth.
To much surprise, the small pharmacy in an little
Arab village only took 3 days to return our test
results, and of course we all had to be positive!
That’s another joke, we were all negative (woop
woop!). Just like that, we were out of quarantine
and into another seminar, this time an
introduction to ‘shorashim’, or ‘roots’ – a series
of peulot on Jewish History. This was an intense
educational experience in which we learnt and
queried dynamics between different diaspora
cultures and the importance of our history. On the
social side, we mingled with the Aussies and Yanks
and set the tone for our three months of shared
living, between forty people, with one kitchen and
two fridges (less woop woop!).

To end the shorashim introductory seminar, we
had a sikkum (conclusion), where we split into
different kvutzot and wrote poetry, speeches,
wrote some music, and of course an interpretive
dance, in traditional habo style. Shortly after, we
were told to pack our bags, “we’re going to
Jerusalem!”. It was time for world sem. A seminar