Shabbat Shalom

We ended our work week on Thursday with a potluck dinner. Using all the equipment in our eco-kitchen, we all worked on dishes to share: we made pizzas and bread in the taboon mud-oven, several salads and stews, and for dessert we had watermelon solar-oven baked brownies. It was fun to all cook together, and everything tasted amazing (or maybe I was just tired and hungry from the three hours of cooking).  We didn’t stay up too late because of our impending early wake-up Friday morning. In order to get ready for Shabbat, there were no classes on Friday morning. Instead we headed out at 6:00 in the morning for a hike through the desert mountains before it got too hot out from the sun. A guide from the Kibbutz brought us up into the rocks and taught us all sorts of things about the history of the land, and also about the hundreds of thousands of birds who migrate over the Arava desert every year. This desert is one of the driest in the world – this year they only got about 6 millimeters of rain total. It is amazing that so many people have been able to cultivate the land, following Israel’s first president’s dream to “make the desert bloom”. 

We made it back in time for breakfast, and then spent the morning in the pool. After lunch we all bummed around relaxing in the bustan. I sliced some apples and put them in our solar-dehydrator to make apple chips. They were just a first test, so they weren’t perfect, but they did come out pretty good! After this, it was time for Kabbalat Shabbat services. About 35 of us came for services, in a small community room on the Kibbutz. Sitting in a circle on the floor, a few Lotan teens played guitar and we sang many of the same tunes as we use at camp. It was a really magical service... I didn’t understand much of anything anyone said but I could feel the passion in the air and hear it in the voices of the community as they sang in harmonies. It was a short service, only about an hour as the sun was setting, and then we all headed to dinner. It was a nice meal, served to our tables instead of the normal buffet-style set up in the chadar. After dinner all of the people in the Living Routes and Green Apprenticeship program walked about a mile off the residential part of the Kibbutz to have a bonfire over by the date farm. We made tea from herbs we picked in our neighborhood and looked at the stars in the clearest sky I have ever seen. At about 12:30 we made our way back to the Kibbutz for a party that lasted until about 3 in the morning and then finally conked out for the night.

Because of Shabbat we got to sleep in today, so I woke up around 1:00 just in time for lunch. Today is a chill day, nothing on the schedule, so we’ll probably hit up the pool and then join some of the Kibbutz teens for an ultimate frisbee game. Tomorrow morning we return to our normal schedule and also start our hebrew lessons. Until later, Shabbat Shalom from Kibbutz Lotan!