Kibbutz Ein Hashofet

This weekend I traveled up north with my friend Ali to go see one of my friends from when I lived in Haifa in 2008- Sierra. She is one of my favorite people in the whole world. We traveled up by bus and taxi to Ein Hashofet, a kibbutz in the north, just below Haifa. Seeing another Kibbutz was interesting in itself. Beautiful, small, and full of greenery, Ein Hashofet has a beautiful view of the mountains on one side, and the sea on the other. We arrived, caught up with life the past two years and then napped to get ready for the night.
After waking up from our nap we lit the Shabbat candles, broke the bread and headed over to the cafeteria to celebrate Shabbat. The differences between my Kibbutz and Ein Hashofet were definitely visible. Much smaller, the cafeteria was full of families, giggling, children running around with little pieces of challah and the elderly shuffling their plates of mashed potatoes and vegetables through the check out line. Unlike my Kibbutz, this one is more privatized. At my Kibbutz and in our grocery store people who do not live on the kibbutz can come and buy things. At Kibbutz Ein Hashofet it is still closed to the public. When I went with Sierra they had to pay for us because we couldn’t pay with shekels. The living situation in Ein Hashofet was smaller, more intimate. My Kibbutz is the second largest in Israel so obviously the intimacy factor may be less intense.
Tomer, a friend from two years ago came to visit with a couple of his friends. We all met up at the pub, with all Sierra’s friends from her Ulpan. The live band was awesome and we all were dancing together for a few hours. Seeing old friends is one of my favorite things. I met some unique people. There were Christian Japanese students there learning Hebrew in order to study the Hebrew versions of the Bible. There were Poles, Russians, Australians, Crotians, etc. So many students who make aliyah (move to Israel to become a citizen- it literally means ‘to go up’) participate in Ulpan programs. The diversity blows my mind. We danced till dawn, just about literally. I think we came home around 4:30 in the morning.

The next day was a challenge. Everyone woke up around noon. Indulging in copious amounts of tea, water, and coffee, we layed out in the sun and relived the last night. I laughed so hard I got a stomach ache; especially when everyone passed around the pictures. We made a huge Israeli salad, courtesy of my gracious friend Sierra of fresh avocado’s from the fields there, onions, tomatoes and cucumbers. Hummus was included of course! Relaxing, enjoying each others company, catching up on flashcards and basking in the suns rays on the grassy area in front of their Ulpan complex- I was enjoying life. Afterwords, me and my new friend Al went on a walk to this tent on the Kibbutz because he wanted to purchase some artwork from this artist who lived there. I was rather confused. Why a tent? Someone lives on a tent here? As in, a camping tent? For their home? Why? Turns out, this amazingly relaxed Israeli couple in their late 20’s built this Mongolian tent house thing. Circular like a Circus Tent, the house had tons of rugs on the floor, artwork decorating the curved canvas walls, incense burning all lit dimly by the wood burning stove. We sat down on a futon, drank tea and caught up on the Kibbutz gossip , though I had no idea whom they were talking about. Then we got down to business, Al purchased some amazing paintings. Ali and I began our journey back to Rehovot, rather uneventful except for the hitching. We are getting really good at it here, and especially from a Kibbutz it is pretty safe. Overall an amazing weekend.