Thursday 18th: Battles Through History

Our day began at Latrun - the Armoured Tank Museum, where the whole group had tonnes of fun climbing on the different tanks from throughout Israel’s history and learning about the Israel Defence Forces. Latrun gave us an insight into what life must have been like when Jewish people were literally fighting for the ability to set up a Jewish homeland in Israel, as well as the constant military struggle since, for survival.
From there we visited some of the key historic sites featured in some of the most famous stories from Jewish history. The first was the famous Tel Azeka, the place where David – the young shepherd, battled with Goliath – the mighty warrior. We had a good laugh acting out the scene and admiring the magnificent views.

From one battle to another; our next stop was Hirbet Midras – the caves of the Bar Kochba rebellion. We learnt about the rebellion and the history of these caves, which was where the fighters hid from the Romans. The group really took interest in the history and enjoyed crawling through the tight spaces underground. It was great being able to see the places where these events took place, which really brought the Bible to life for us. Going from Latrun to the biblical sites, there was a great connection to be understood between the Israeli battles of old and modern.

HaShomer HaChadash – a project that has over 2000 volunteers protecting vulnerable communities and farmsteads across the Negev and the Galilee. Here we experienced a young leadership programme and picked grapes from the vine from one of the vineyards protected by the project. We then had a poike style dinner around a camp fire which is where you put lots of different things into a pot and cook it for around 2 hours to make a stew. In our poike there was meat, vegetable, rice and even some coca-cola.

Sophie Seaton said, “The tank museum was fascinating it was awesome climbing and going on the tanks. I didn’t know much about David and Goliath – it was interesting to learn about it. Crawling through caves was soooooo much fun. Dinner was definitely experienceable (my new word) – we picked grapes and ate them (not mentioning the grape fight) and then we sat around the camp fire and had our poike which was really good surprisingly and also sang songs.”

The Tribe Team