ShnUpdate - Perach 05.03.20

It’s official! It’s been a full month of Shnat Netzer and just over a month since the southerners arrived and over 2 months since the northerners started their shnat experience on Shnat Netzer. It feels somewhat insane how quickly we’ve acclimated to our new environment living communally and how quickly we have learnt to live our whole kvutzah.

This week has been especially interesting given the elections which was the major focus of this week. We started the week off with a roshei shavua led shacharit service before beginning full throttle with a somewhat overwhelming amount of information concerning Monday’s elections. Sunday was all about learning as much as possible as to understand the Israeli political climate and the contention of the THIRD election in the past year. We had guest speakers come discuss with us the Workings of the Israeli Knesset, the concerned parties, hot topics of the election and most significantly Bibi. We also engaged in an informative discussion on where we think Netzer as a collective sits in terms of the crucial topics of this election.

Election Day, given it is a public holiday, was a peer run day lead by our chinuch vaad. First off was an incredibly informative session on the history of Israel and Israeli politics lead by Avi, jack and Anna, after our lovely sleep in. Next up we had our kef program led by Mia H and Bella: a scavenger hunt around mamila and Jerusalem to learn more about the elections first hand and discovering local opinions on bibi netenyahu. Over dinner we had an interesting program led by safe and Ella as we discussed the differences between the social issues and their relevance to the Israeli population and that of our home countries. Finally, we went out to engage with the locals as the exit polls were released with some interesting results.

Tuesday we started off with lazuz (sport) in the form of a yoga session lead by Teya and then some rikkies dances lead by the LJYers. We then had our weekly havruta session followed by our sustainability session with 2016 aussie shnattie Nicky, our Netzer Olami mazkira. We finished the night off with a southerners and northerners check in, a much needed chat about our home away from home filled with wholesome conversations and lost of food and love!

Wednesday was a really nice day filled with lots of love and kef. We started with a beautiful shacharit service led by Avi and Dani and then went into our Hebrew classes, learning to count for some and talking about our Purim costumes in Hebrew! Next we had our gender and feminism session discussing the second wave of feminism as well as feminism as it pertains to Israeli women’s right to vote from the differing perspectives of two Israeli rabbis from the early 20th century. We all spent the afternoon under the sun in the park playing games, painting, playing guitars and enjoying each others company.

We finished this week of with a little gift exchange between as all as a nice little thank you for the lovely time we’ve had together thus far. 😊

Signing off! Leila and Teya xx