The Broken Road to Freedom

(Note: I wrote this Tuesday morning about our Monday adventures, but lost wifi before I had a chance to post it! Tuesday update coming later tonight now that I finally have Internet again)

Yesterday was a long and heavy day. In the morning, we checked out of the Jerusalem hotel and drove to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum. "Yad Vashem" is a reference to a passage in Isaiah. Some people are asking God for help because they don't have children and are worried that they'll be forgotten after death. God says that their memory and their name will not be forgotten. "Yad Vashem" means "memory and name," and the purpose of the museum is to make sure all the people who were killed in the Holocaust are remembered, whether or not they have family to remember them.

The museum is beautiful, and I particularly loved that the architecture was all very intentional and meaningful. I also liked that the museum actually started with video of Jewish people living happy, normal lives in the 20s, and it ended with hope for the future, rather than just being sad the whole time. A very powerful and effective way to tell the whole story. We also went to the Children's Memorial. It's a pitch black room with candles burning and mirrored walls around the room reflecting the candlelight. It looks like a million stars are shining brightly all over the room. There's a voice recording reading the name of each child, how old they were, and where they were from. So incredibly sad.

Yad Vashem is doing a project of documenting Holocaust survivors' stories. They actually take survivors with a film crew to the towns where they grew up, the ghettos where they lived, and the concentration camps they were brought to, so they essentially relive their story. We watched one of these videos, and there were lots of tears all around.

After a lunch break, we went to Mount Herzl, the national military cemetery of Israel. It's actually physically connected to Yad Vashem as a reminder that Israel's existence is intricately connected with the Holocaust. We saw Theodor Herzl and Yitzhak Rabin's graves. We also walked through the military cemetery and heard stories about soldiers and their lives. I was glad that they told us individual stories - it was sad, but made the whole thing more real. It was particularly hard to look around at a lawn full of graves, most of which were for people younger than me.

After Mount Herzl, we said goodbye to the Israelis and dropped them off at the bus stop. Then we drove up to Netanya, where we are staying at a hotel right on the beach, with lovely views of the Mediterranean Sea (see below - the view from my hotel room!). After dinner, we drove to Tel Aviv for a night out by the Port, which is essentially a huge boardwalk right on the sea. It was a nice relaxing night, but we didn't get back to the hotel until late, so today we're all exhausted.

These next two days are going to be a marathon, and I most likely won't have wifi again till Wednesday night. Till then, I hope you all are having a great week so far! Can't believe I'll be home in just a few days!