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By

Annette Powers

Exploring Akko

The 8th grade started off the day with our last meal at the hotel. After a nice breakfast and Tifilah in the amphitheater, we gathered our bags and loaded the bus. We arrived at a super cool international school that hosts high schoolers from Israel, Palestine, and tons of other places all round the world! A few teachers led an activity where they asked the 8th grade to create a way to educate the students about the situation in Israel. Each group discussed their plans and predicted challenges. Later on students from the school came in and talked to Gesher...
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8th Grade Flies High Above Israel

This morning Hannah Senesh’s 8th graders began the day with a wonderful hot air balloon ride with the most spectacular view of Israel, before doing tefilla in the park. 8th graders then spent the rest of the day at the beach, watching the Yom Haatzmaut air show, hanging out in the water, and surfing! We took a surf boarding class, which was a new experience for many, and had an amazing time! After the day at the beach, the 8th grade drove back to the hotel for a fun activity and dinner. We ended the day by visiting a mall...
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Yom Hazikaron in Tel Aviv

To start off the day of remembrance we went to a local school for a Yom Hazikaron tekes. At the tekes we heard songs and stories commemorating those who had passed while fighting for Israel. After an emotional ceremony we went to Shuk haCarmel for pizur lunch and free time. The Shuk had an abundance of  scrumptious food and delectable treats.  After our time at the Shuk, we went back to the hotel for some free time and another scrumdiddlyumptious dinner. After a day of mourning, it was time to party! At sundown Yom Hazikaron ended and it was the...
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Last Day in Jerusalem

For our last day in Jerusalem, we started our day with a final visit to the Kotel where we prayed and read Torah. We then went through an archaeological tour of the ruins of the temple at the southern wall and got to see all the artifacts and learned about what they looked like at the time. After exploring the ruins of the temple, we walked to the Jewish Quarter and had a pizur lunch full of delicious food. On our way to a new hotel, we stopped at Tel Afek,  a beautiful park with a lake and shallow pools,...
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Exploring Jerusalem

Hello, today we started the day by making a choice to visit one of three synagogues (the Great synagogue, the Italian synagogue, or ShiraHadasha). Soon after we had lunch we went to a park in Jerusalem, where we ran, played and celebrated a birthday with some yummy snacks. We ended the night by heading to Ben Yehuda street and spending time with family and friends. Overall we had a relaxed first Shabbat. -Anna On Sunday, we started the day with praying right next to our hotel in Jerusalem. We then traveled to Yad Vashem, the National Holocaust Museum. There, we...
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Shabbos #1

Today, the 8th Grade had an early wake up from their Bedouin tent and started off their day with a hike up Masada to watch a spectacular sunrise. Following that, we took a cable car back down to an amazing breakfast at a hotel along the Dead Sea. Then we drove to a beach on the Dead Sea and went swimming. We all had such a fun time floating and rubbing mud on ourselves. Afterwards we drove to Jerusalem and checked into our hotel and got ready for Shabbos. We went to the Kotel and got sturdy with some chassids...
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Thursday in Israel

We started off our day davening right at the edge of the Makhtesh. Despite the beautiful view, it was incredibly cold and windy, and we had to move before the Torah reading. The night before, we packed up all our things to get ready to sleep in a Bedouin tent. We locked our suitcases in the bottom of our bus and drove off to an alpaca farm. At the farm, we got to see alpacas, llamas, goats, dogs, and horses, and also learned the difference between a llama and an alpaca. We even got spat at by some.  We drove...
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Our Time in the Negev

After a (mostly) restful night’s sleep in Mitzpeh Ramon Youth Hostel, we woke up early to drive to Midreshet Ben Gurion, overlooking the canyons and ravines of the Negev. We davened under the olive trees of Ben Gurion’s garden and then visited his gravesite next to his wife Paula. Afterward we went on a hike through Ein Avdat National Park and saw water fall through the valleys. We had falafel and ice cream in the nearby town before we feasted on cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, kumquats, and strawberries at Shvil Hasalat (the salad trail) on a moshav in the western Negev....
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Arrival in Israel!!

Hello Senesh and Senesh Families! Welcome to our first blog post of Hannah Senesh’s 8th grade 2023 Israel trip! It was a long two days of travel, and a hard day of being archeologists! Everyone was a good sport on little sleep. While we were archeologists at the ancient city of Maresha, we dug, sifted through rubble to find treasures, and uncovered pieces of pottery that hadn’t been touched in 2200 years—since the time of the Maccabees! We then crawled through the very narrow passageways of caves! We had to squeeze our bodies through small tunnels and winding paths. At...
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4/18 – Second Grade Blog

Writers Workshop The second graders are working on studying sentences. They learned what a subject and predicate is and practiced identifying them in sentences. Then they worked collaboratively in sorting  fragments and sentences. They are now able to explain if a fragment is missing the “who” or the “what”. Reading The students learned about the soft and hard sounds of c and g. The rule is that when a silent E follows c or g at the end of a word, the consonants make a soft sound. They then read passages and found words that follow this rule. They found...
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