{"id":855,"date":"2012-01-22T09:40:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-22T14:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/?p=855"},"modified":"2012-01-22T09:40:06","modified_gmt":"2012-01-22T14:40:06","slug":"yad-vashem-and-the-biblical-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/22\/yad-vashem-and-the-biblical-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Yad Vashem and the Biblical Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yad V\u2019shem and the Biblical Farm<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yesterday I left out a little bit of what happened after being in Jerusalem, because I thought it would better fit into my story for today.<\/p>\n

After returning from a long day in Jerusalem, we were all tried.\u00a0 I took a quick nap before heading off for dinner.\u00a0 We were informed that following dinner we spend some time prepping for Yad Vashem.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t know, Yad Vashem is a library of Congress of sorts for the stories of those who perished during the holocaust.\u00a0 It is one of the most extensive and incredible holocaust museums I have ever seen.<\/p>\n

Anyway, following dinner, we were forced to ask ourselves some tough questions.\u00a0 One of the ones we posed was whether Israel exists because of the holocaust or despite it.\u00a0 To be honest, I don\u2019t really what my answer to that is in my mind.\u00a0 It\u2019s something I think I will personally struggle to define for a while, but I can certainly say I am glad that Israel exists.<\/p>\n

We all talked about our experiences learning about the holocaust as a collective group.\u00a0 I tried to recall where my knowledge of the holocaust came from.\u00a0 I have vague memories of talking to friends of my grandparents who had survived the holocaust.\u00a0 My mother told me stories of the parents of her friends that are engraved in my mind.<\/p>\n

I considered my trip with camp years ago to Whitwell, Tennessee, a small town where students at a local school collected paperclips to quantify the number of people who had perished during the holocaust.\u00a0 These students were aided by a holocaust survivor who helped them get a train car that had been used to transport Jews to the camps and use it as a museum for the paperclips.<\/p>\n

The whole group had differing stories as well all came from different places, from Idaho, Kansas, and New York.\u00a0 We talked about how anti-Semitism still exists and the ways that it had impacted our lives.\u00a0 I thought about being yelled at in Paris with just the word Jew and holding on to my Star of David.<\/p>\n

We talked about what exactly we\u2019d be seeing at the museum.\u00a0 Ten years ago, we would have almost certainly have heard the testimony of a holocaust survivor.\u00a0 Since many have passed away over recent years, we watched part of a taped one of a Greek man, but the DVD didn\u2019t work properly, so we didn\u2019t get to watch much of it.\u00a0 From what I was able to gather from the part were able to see, the man had lost his sister to the holocaust as well as most of his family.<\/p>\n

The tour of the museum itself began with a section just about the children.\u00a0 One of the hardest things for me to imagine is a child being put to death.\u00a0 They were innocent and had no way to fight back.<\/p>\n

This section was followed by a part where we discussed righteous gentiles.\u00a0 To be considered a righteous gentile, there were certain criteria established:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They must be nominated by a Jew or \u201cJewish Party\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. They can\u2019t have helped by converting someone to Christianity.<\/li>\n
  3. Assistance must be repeated and\/or substantial<\/li>\n
  4. Assistance has to be given without financial gain expected in return.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Based on these criteria, Oskar Schindler never lived to be named a righteous gentile.\u00a0 Although he is one of the most famous of the righteous gentiles you\u2019ve probably ever heard of, it wasn\u2019t until recently Yad Vashem started to consider him one.\u00a0 One of the others you may have heard of that our group mentioned when asked to name righteous gentiles was Miep Gies.<\/p>\n

    After completing our conversation about righteous gentiles, we started our walk towards the actual museum itself.\u00a0 The museum is built into the some of the lowest portions of Mount Herzl<\/strong>.\u00a0 Remember the name of that mountain, because I\u2019ll mention it again in another entry later.<\/p>\n

    Inside the museum, the further you go into the building down the middle, the thinner it got as if you were being trapped.\u00a0 The symbolism of everything in the building gave even more power to the meaning of the place than I thought was imaginable.<\/p>\n

    The museum told the story of the holocaust from start to finish in a way that I cannot fairly describe to you, especially because cameras weren\u2019t allowed on tours.\u00a0 Our guide spoke of the early ghettos, the early methods of killing the Jews, and the decision that using bullets was too expensive of a method to kill Jews.\u00a0 This part brought me to a very frustrated place.<\/p>\n

    The Nazis employed doctors to find a way to kill the Jews inexpensively, which is what led to the gas chambers.\u00a0 Living in the US, it is hard to believe anything like this.\u00a0 When I think of doctors, I always think of people who are going to make sure I am healthy.\u00a0 I think of people who are bound to their profession by the Hippocratic oath, something those in Nazi Germany were not bound by.<\/p>\n

    For the first time in the museum, I saw of the artwork that survived Nazi death camps.\u00a0 Jews drew, painted, and wrote poetry with very limited supplies to tell their stories so that people would know what happened to them.\u00a0 Not much remained, but what was left was incredibly powerful to me and beautiful.<\/p>\n

    Towards the end of the tour was a clear box that was on floor level.\u00a0 Inside of it, it contained hundreds of pairs of shoes of those from the camps.\u00a0 The shoes looked as though they were made of leather or something similar.\u00a0 They ranged in size from shoes that were obviously for children to those for adults.\u00a0 Some shoes had heels while others were flats.\u00a0 It was as though I was looking at the story of the feet of the Jewish people of the holocaust at this point of the tour.<\/p>\n

    The last part of the tour was into the library area.\u00a0 It was a balcony of sorts that was surrounded on all sides in a circle with large binders.\u00a0 Our tour guide asked us to look down into a reflecting pool below us where we could see our own faces as well as the faces of holocaust victims pictures above our heads.\u00a0 She explained that the binders around the room were the stories of those we lost during the holocaust, but many stories were still lost.\u00a0 Full villages of people died, so some stories may never be able to be told.\u00a0 She encouraged all of us to check the online database to make sure that anyone we may have known of was listed.\u00a0 She talked about the generation of scientists, doctors, lawyers, accountants, politicians, and so many other things we lost.<\/p>\n

    She mentioned grandparents and that is right when I lost it.\u00a0 Grandparents.\u00a0 As much as I don\u2019t talk about them that often, my grandmother and grandfather meant an awful lot to me.\u00a0 They are in the end a big reason why my trip to Israel was so important to me.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t realize that they were part of the reason until that moment.<\/p>\n

    I thought about the stories that were contained on the shelves around the walls and thought about how important a story can be.\u00a0 A room like the one I stood in is the ultimate tool to use against someone like Ahmadinejad, well, if he wasn\u2019t insane.<\/p>\n

    All of this made me think about how important stories can be to understanding our world, stories of those who were good and those who were evil, those powerful, and those not as powerful.\u00a0 Despite the fact that we study history, we seem to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.\u00a0 We need to remember this and learn that terrible tragedies must lead us to fight with love rather than hate, because hate will never change the mind of your opponent, but rather reinvigorate them.\u00a0 There is a famous saying that that the best revenge is living well, and I advise all of you to do just that.<\/p>\n

    When we exited Yad Vashem, it was cloudy and drizzling, which pretty much described the mood of all of us as we left the museum.\u00a0 We were all struggling, either crying or pretty damn close.<\/p>\n

    We left to have lunch at a nearby shopping mall.\u00a0 A bunch of our group went again for falafel, while others went to McDonalds.\u00a0 I slipped in to McDonalds to eat at a table and bought fries to split with Emily as we both ate our falafel.\u00a0 It was entertaining to see others in our group with their giant kosher McDonald\u2019s hamburgers.\u00a0 They were so much bigger than American McDonald\u2019s burgers.<\/p>\n

    Following lunch, I rounded up Hillary to come with Emily and I to go grab some candy, since I finished my Starburst Jelly Beans the night before.\u00a0 I bought a giant bag of Sour Gummy Worms (made me think of my college buddy Andrew Edahl).\u00a0 Later in the week, the Israelis informed me that they were sour snakes, not worms, but who knows?<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    At the same store I bought an ice cream bar my little sister had told me about called Magnum.\u00a0 Word for the wise, just because your sister tells you that you should have ice cream, doesn\u2019t mean you should eat it outside when the weather is low 50s.\u00a0 Our security guard laughed at me as my hands shook, enjoying my frozen treat.<\/p>\n

    We walked further up the shopping complex and happened upon a bookstore.\u00a0 It was one of the big Israeli bookstore chains, but a fairly small store.\u00a0 I looked around for a while with Emily and Hillary.\u00a0 Emily found some of the children\u2019s books.\u00a0 I was so excited to see a copy of the Cat in the Hat that I made Hillary hold the book up for a picture.\u00a0 Emily found 3 books on sale and was excited to find such a bargain.\u00a0 She bragged about it outside the store and I joked to her that she did the most stereotypical Jewish thing possible, finding a bargain, in the most Jewish place in the world, Israel.<\/p>\n

    After eating and shopping was done, we all got onto the bus for a long ride to the biblical farm.\u00a0 So at some point, the Israeli government gave a ton of land where they didn\u2019t think anything would grow so this could be developed.\u00a0 Instead of desert, everything was green.<\/p>\n

    We were supposed to walk around, but since it was raining, we did less of the activities.\u00a0 Our guide was a man in his late 50s-early 60s who spoke great English.\u00a0 He talked about the sustainable water practices of Israel.\u00a0 Israel knows how to use their water and does it more effectively than just about any other country in the world.\u00a0 One of the big keys to this that he talked about was that water was that Israelis reused water for many different purposes.\u00a0 While under a tent, he showed us how to grind up our own oregano, which we all did and put in tiny bags.\u00a0 The bags looked like something else, so we all walked around jokingly trying to sell our bags for 200 shekels.<\/p>\n

    One of the coolest things our guide told us was that he used to be a computer engineer of some sort.\u00a0 He told us that his job as a guide paid only 1\/5th<\/sup> of what he used to make, but there was a big difference for him.\u00a0 He said that as a guide he was much happier.\u00a0 He showed us his cell phone, a candy bar style phone that reminded me of the Nokia phones my next-door neighbors had back in 2002 or 2003.\u00a0 He said he was happy with it and didn\u2019t want an iPhone.\u00a0 He joked a museum would be coming soon to ask for his phone.<\/p>\n

    From that area, we went to another area where he talked about acorns and he left us plant acorns in some soil that he said he\u2019d be putting in a greenhouse.\u00a0 One of the last things he said to us before we started our long journey back to our hotel was one that he was repeating from others before him on my trip.\u00a0 He said welcome home and to me, Israel was starting to really feel that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yad V\u2019shem and the Biblical Farm Yesterday I left out a little bit of what happened after being in Jerusalem, because I thought it would better fit into my story for today. After returning from a long day in Jerusalem, we were all tried.\u00a0 I took a quick nap before heading off for dinner.\u00a0 We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosskressel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}