“Aint no one gonna break my stride, aint no one that can hold me down, oh no, I’ve got to keep on moving” – Matisyahu lyrics (originally from Ace of Base?)
The theme of day was ‘The Judean Wilderness,” enough said. In the morning we began our descent into the desert to the south. On the way, we stopped in Tiberius to volunteer with Christians who had emigrated from Lebanon; for almost twenty years they had formed the South Lebanese Army and fought on Israel’s side, but after Israel pulled out in 2000, they were harassed, persecuted, and forced to flee from their homeland. As a result, they are in Israel. We did some crafts with the kids, played soccer, learned traditional Lebanese dancing (!!), and ate amazing carbohydrate concoctions. They were extremely thankful to have us there and to have the support of the larger international Christian community; it was incredibly touching to see their response to such a small gesture on our part, which once more served as a reminder of the kind of positive effect our smallest actions can have!
After this, we drove to the Dead Sea, where we swam (or rather, floated), covered ourselves in mud, and generally relaxed for the rest of the day! In the late afternoon, we went into the pool at our hotel room, where we stayed for (no joke) several hours. On a tangent: at one point we chose to entertain ourselves with chicken fights, and I must say that I won all of the girl matches!!
In the evening we had a Shabbat dinner. The women lit the candles and Avi and Ohad sang the traditional songs…in the middle of our hostel we had a truly heartfelt dinner. Then we all went to bed early, in preparing for the marathon day that our last day in Israel was sure to be!
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