Our long weekend of Tiyul began this morning! We put our bags on the bus and headed off to the old city. We met by the Kotel where I found out my teacher was not here again so Baruch taught our class. He took us to the Southern Wall excavations. There we learned about the stones used and the importance of Beit Hamikdash.
We walked up the steps that the Jews would walk down as they left the temple. We learned all about the mikvah and what it is used for. Baruch told us how Shavuot, Sukkot and Pesach are the three holidays that we are commanded to make a pilgrimage to the temple and Jerusalem was so crowded during these holidays even though Pesach was the most popular. On a side note, Baruch also informed us that the fax machine was invented in 1932.
After, Baruch let us climb through one of the excavations, which was like a maze. He didn’t come with us so it’s a good thing it opened on the other side. Then we walked to the Jewish quarters for lunch. I got a bagel and cream cheese, then some ice cream. It was all very good. After lunch the Tiyul continued. We went into a museum that displayed the basement of a house. We could see the mikvah. We also saw lots of pottery from the time period.
Then we sat down for about 45 minutes to discuss how each sect of Judaism felt about Hellenism. Baruch then left us so we waited about an hour for the other groups to be finished. Once the groups finished we got on the bus to start our 2 hour ride to Masada!
When we arrived we got new roommates and got to get settled into our rooms. We ate dinner quickly, spent some time outside, then went to bed extremely early to get ready to wake up at 4am for the sunrise hike!
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