Tribe Israel Tour

Thursday 1st: An Emotional & Inspiring Day

Today was an extremely powerful day, as we visited Yad Vashem – Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and exhibition.

Yad Vashem is a unique museum as it really has transformed Holocaust memorial for the twenty-first century. Yad Vashem presents the story of the Holocaust from a unique Jewish perspective, emphasizing the experiences of the individual victims through original artifacts, survivor testimonies and personal possessions. It allows the individual victims the chance to become people in their own right with a story of their own, taking in past historical fact and enables us to truly feel what we lost as a people. We had an incredibly interesting and moving tour led by Rabbi Shaw around the museum. 

One of the last exhibits we went to is called the Hall of Names. This is the Jewish People’s memorial to each and every Jew who perished in the Holocaust; a place where they may be commemorated for generations to come. The powerful exhibit features images of faces and the sound of names as they’re read out. It was a moving moment for the group standing there together and Yad Vashem was an experience which we will be taking with us for the rest of our lives.

We moved on from the horrific deaths suffered in the Holocaust to Mt. Herzl, where those that have died defending the Jewish State, born from the ashes of the Holocaust, are buried. Mt. Herzl is not only the spot in which Theodore Herzl’s tomb is situated, the founder of modern Zionism and the most influential of all campaigners for a Jewish State, but also where Israel’s military cemetery and ‘the nation’s great’ are buried. Though a cemetery, Mt. Herzl is a testament to the strength and accomplishments of the State of Israel and is a life-affirming site as well as an emotional one. Here we saw the graves of Israel’s Prime Ministers and Presidents as well as many of the graves of soldiers killed in the line of battle. 

We went from learning about the disaster and destruction depicted in Yad Vashem to seeing the miracle of modern Israel and inspirational stories of Israel’s achievements in its mere 65 years at Mt. Herzl – it was a wonderful juxtaposition.

As the sun went down and the group thought the day was over, we announced a special surprise! We boarded the coach and went on a special late-night visit to the Kotel tunnels! The Kotel tunnels are underground tunnels that expose the full length of the Western Wall including the part of the wall said to be closest to what was the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple. It was a truly unique experience and the whole group loved it.

The Tribe Team