Magen David Adom Certified

Ever since I was a kid, I've always had a passion for helping others. Much of the reason I came to Israel is to help people. For the past 10 days, I have been in intensive training to become a Magen David Adom (MDA) certified first responded. MDA is the national ambulance service in Israel that takes overseas volunteers to work in their ambulances. A very large part of me signing up for Young Judaea is that I will get to volunteer with MDA for 5 months, starting in January.
After 10 days of 12 hour a day classes, I finally became MDA certified. That means that, beginning in January and ending in May, I will be volunteering for MDA, riding along and working in ambulances in Israel between 2-5 times a week. This is a great opportunity for me to gain experience and I am very excited to begin my volunteering for MDA.

Starting at 8:30 in the morning and officially ending at 8:30 at night, we often stayed until 9 or 10 practicing and perfecting CPR or back-boarding  We learned about what it takes to work for MDA and how to provide care and basic life support in an emergency situation. While the course was extremely intense, it doesn't mean we didn't have fun. Sometimes the fun came from just hanging out with my MDA friends, guessing about the life of one of our instructors, and sometimes it came in a nice competitive back-boarding race against the Spanish class (which my team won in 1:40). Sometimes it came with acting out scenarios and trying to come up with the craziest scenarios, and sometimes the fun was with watching me try not to pass out after they put an IV in me and took it out. All in all, it was a very fun, but intensive class.
For me, volunteering in an ambulance in Israel means more to me than just gaining that experience. It means that I am making a difference. I am helping people in Israel. I'm not a tourist anymore. Israel is my home for the next 7 months and I am making a difference while I am here. It means a lot to me to be able to help people here. As I've said before, Jews have survived for this long because we work together and help each other in any difficult scenario. Volunteering for MDA is part of my way of helping other Jews survive and working together with them. I am honored to be MDA certified and I am looking forward to beginning my MDA volunteering. Shabbat Shalom and stay tuned for more updates...

Tzfat, Shabbat, and Eilat (Ok I didn't actually go to Eilat, it just rhymed)

This past week has been a rather hectic week for me. I have been traveling around a lot and I haven't had much time here in Jerusalem to update my blog. So I'll quickly update you on what I've been up to the last week.
  Last weekend 5 of my friends and I traveled to a friend's house in Rehovet for Shabbat. We got there Friday afternoon and spent the next couple hours making Shabbat dinner for the 7 of us. Once Shabbat began, we went to the Sukkah to do the blessings and then we went back and ate our meal. We had a great meal but the best part about the meal was that we were actually talking to each other. For the first time ever, I actually kept Shabbat. That meant no phone, no music, no TV, and no computer. No distractions at all. Just the 7 of us sitting around the dinner table talking to each other, undistributed. That night, as well as the next day, we just hung around the apartment, talking to each other,  playing games, learning card tricks, discussing politics, and having the deepest conversation about religion I've ever had. In a world where I can be 6,000 miles away from people and still have instant communication with them, it was nice for once to be able to put away my phone and my computer and focus on the people who I was actually with that weekend. It was nice to just get away from the normal, fast-paced world for a little bit and just relax and have a legitimate day of rest. While I may not consistently keep Shabbat every week, I did learn a lot from that Shabbat and I realized how nice it is to get away from your normal life every once in awhile.
 Saturday night after Shabbat we came back to Jerusalem only to leave for Tzfat (Safed) the next morning. For those of you who don't know, Tzfat is a religious city in the Northern part of Israel that is the central city of Kabbalah. It is one of Israel's four holy cities (along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias). We traveled there for Simchat Torah which is the end of the holiday of Sukkot. After a long bus ride there, we arrived and almost immediately began our celebration. Simchat Torah is a very unique holiday, especially in Tzfat and I was so lucky to be able to spend it in Tzfat. After about an hour of settling in, we walked across the street for prayers. But these weren't just any normal prayers. These were anything but normal. These services were 4 straight hours of dancing and singing. As the Rabbis' said, "On Simchat Torah, we dance until our feet can feel the Torah." We danced to Israeli songs, to prayers, and to basically everything. It was 4 hours of dancing in a circle, going crazy. We literally danced the night away. But it didn't end that night. The next day, starting even before I woke up, the whole city of Tzfat was dancing. We danced in the street, we danced with the chief Rabbi of Tzfat at some random synagogue, we danced wherever we were. It was a great, albeit tiring experience. It was unlike anything I've ever done before. I knew Simchat Torah was a day for celebrating, but I never knew that the celebrating included 48 hours of nearly constant dancing and singing. It was a crazy holiday but one of the more fun things I've done here. We did also learn about the history of Tzfat and about the Kabbalistic thought but out of everything, most of it included dancing and/or singing.
 After Simchat Torah, we came home and ever since then I've been hanging out at Beit Ar-El. On Monday I begin my 10-day Magen David Adom class, which I am very excited for. Also, this Thursday there is a huge Hadassah 100th year celebration which I will be attending. I will update again soon, most likely after the Hadassah celebration. Hope everyone is doing well back home! Miss everyone!