Masa Israel Journey Blog

Turn Up the Music

Published : November 29, 2012

By Ariana Kamran, Bar Ilan University Israel Experience

“Excuse me!” I screamed from the back seat of the Dan bus heading to Hof Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Beach, in Tel Aviv. “Can you please turn up the music!?”

“Mah?” the bus driver asked.

Book bag latched onto my back, I ran to the front of the bus, and asked the driver—this time with hand motions and much more enunciation--to turn up the volume. The driver smiled and turned the knob, while my friends and I attempted to sing the Israeli song we’d heard millions of times—without knowing any of the lyrics.

From the second I stepped off the plane from Atlanta and into Ben Gurion Airport, ready to begin my gap year in Israel through Masa Israel’s...

Onion Peels

Published : November 27, 2012

By Ittai Eres, Young Judaea Year Course

I hate onions. I really do.

They sit on my tongue like coarse gravel, and biting down on them irks my teeth. Even handling them, with their crunchy brown shells on top of slimy white layers, gives me a teeny case of the shivers.

That’s why I couldn’t help but let out a groan when, on the first Tuesday of Year Course, our bus came to a stop at an onion farm. The volunteer coordinator got on the bus and then told us that we would spend our day picking onions for the underprivileged, so that they could have food for Rosh Hashana.

Charitable, but gross.

The coordinator from M’Shulchan L’Shulchan (Table to Table) told us that there were two things of utmost...