Our good friend Yochanan from Aish HaTorah joined us today on the trail at Kibbutz Lahav. We found another great trail angel with proper beds and an ample supermarket where Bradley proceeded to actually return a second time to get another chocolate milk drink out of a bag.
Shock! chocolate milk has been one of the offical drinks of All for the Kids. The fact that I tell Bradley constantly that the bottles are the same price as the bags has proved to be no deterrent from his choice of purchase. "It's just more fun to drink it this way," Bradley probably said at some point.
Today was a hilarious comedy of errors from the get-go. No sooner than walking out the gate of the kibbutz did we realize that the trail was the opposite direction. Yonatan spotted a cactus with the sabra fruit emblematic of the Israeli spirit (prickly on the outside, sweet on the inside). Bradley dove into his sabra with unbridled enthusiasm only to get hundreds of hair-thin needles all over his mouth and hands. HILARIOUS.
We made it to Meitar (more on this later) and took a bus forward to Arad for Shabbat, where Brandon had hooked us up with a family he knew from a few months prior.
The six kids and several more guests had us entertained deep into the night and following day with stories and board games. We even got to attend a special "Seduat Moshiach" or "Meal of the Messiah" which is a Chassidic tradition dating from the Baal Shem Tov. Much wine was imbibed and matzah eaten as we sang tradition nigguns (anthems without words) for several hours in the manner of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Sinai, the head of the house, explained one niggun that sounded suspiciously like the French national anthem by saying that Napoleon was so enthralled with this hymn that he bought the rights from the Baal Shem Tov himself. Check snopes.com to see if the story is actually true. His story is actually quite special in itself. He moved with his family from Brooklyn about five years ago to Arad, but for the first few weeks his house wasn't ready yet, so they stayed in a Bedouin camp!
-Jeremy
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