By Dan Freedman, NFTY in Israel Participant, Bus 3
My Tikkun Olam experience started off with a two hour bus ride from the Nes Ammim hotel. This bus ride finally allowed me to really meet with some of the bus 4 kids, some of whom I had not been able to really get close with yet this trip. When we arrived at our new hotel that is NEXT TO the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, we started by watching a Pixar short film called “Partly Cloudy”. This taught us quickly that everything has a purpose, and to help and reach out for those in need. This provided a good segue into the next part of our trip, as we took a short ride to a mall. We were told to only bring water, 5 shekels, and a pen. Inside the mall, we walked to the very top and were shown a community garden of sorts. Here, citizens can come and take part in workshops about how to take care of the environment, or even just get water or food for free. We took a short walk right across the street and sat in the courtyard of what was designed to be a hotel. The designer gave up because the permits were taking too long to be approved, so he turned it into a multipurpose community area.
Every Friday, they have the best parties in town! Our group leader named Gali brought us to the neighborhood she grew up in, called Nachlot. This was the second neighborhood that was built outside of the Old City. We were shown the difference between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities, which were only separated by a word in the street name. We were brought back to a park where we had a picnic earlier in the trip. All of us got a piece of paper and were told to write our name, a shape, a color, and a word. Once finished, we passed that paper to the person to our left. We were instructed to go into the shuk to buy a gift that reflected the words on the paper we were given. The words I got were: blue, trapezoid, and four. I bought four blue phone cases and a whistle. The gifts were not revealed until the next day. After dinner, we had a short activity about Maimonides’ ladder of Tzedakah. The very top of the ladder tells us to teach a man to fish, rather than giving him a fish. It also teaches us that it is better to give selflessly, rather than give with the intention of attention. I’m super excited to see how this experience can help make the world a better place, and how it directly relates to the ladder.
