Written by GIVEr: Ayelet Rosenwasser and Miri Rogoff
Hey everybody!!! It’s Ayelet Rosenwasser from Chicago, IL ? and Miri Rogoff from Five Towns, New York?! This past Weekend was AMAZINGGG- as usual! It all started on Friday when we decided to do a very special chessed of packaging hadlakat narot ??beautifully and handing them out in the mall, in Be’er Sheva, to strangers for Shabbat. When we arrived at the mall, it was so special to see how a few of the women we gave them to, didn’t usually light candles for Shabbat, accepted our candles and told us they would light this time just because WE gave it to them??. Afterwards, we arrived in Arad with surprise guests from a Mach Hach bus ?!! As soon as we got there we started getting ready for Shabbat and we couldn’t wait for it start. We were so excited for another amazing Shabbat with GIVE!! As soon as Shabbat started we welcomed it in with a beautiful kabbalat Shabbat ? in the desert. It was so amazing to see the sun setting ? as everyone davened to Hashem ?? . After we finished davening maariv we made our way to the chadar ochel for the Shabbat meal. It was mmmmmmm delicious ??????!!! We had the privilege to spend Shabbat with our Shabbos Abba and Ima, Dr. and Mrs. Luchins. Since we shared a dining room with Mach Hach #ACHDUS , we had a cheering battle and OBVIOUSLY GIVE won ?!!! Later in the meal we heard inspiring divrei Torah, sang beautiful zmirot ?, and bentched out loud together. After our meal, we had an awesome Tish with lots of snacks and singing, visited by the camp “Rabbi and Rebbetzin” (aka Zisse and Daphna!!) Who were hilarious! Shabbat day, we started off with Tefillah in the morning and an amazing speech by Mrs. Luchins. Then we had kiddish with yummy snacks and drinks. After we had kiddish, we had an amazing and inspiring Chabura with our AWESOME advisors!! In between our Chabura and lunch, we played a game with the whole camp where everyone was split up into groups and two people would be behind a sheet and once the sheet went down, the people behind the sheets would have to say the name? of who was opposite them behind the sheets . It was such a fun icebreaker! After our lunch and rest hour ?, we had Beit Midrash, where we were able to learn Torah ? with any of our AWESOME madrichot on any topic we wanted! I loved it! Then we had Seudat Shlishit with yummy food and great divrei Torah. While Shabbat was ebbing away, all the GIVErs got together in a circle and sang beautiful songs. Towards the end, Mach Hach joined us B’achdut and we sang ? the last song together while Shabbat ended! After that, all the GIVE girls got together and cheered ? and sang together. Our havdalah was sooo beautiful! As our night activity, I experienced something that I have never experienced in my entire life before. Instead of an ordinary night activity, we decided to take 15 min as time for hetbodidut, where we separated ourselves from everyone else while sitting in an open field with the stars right above us ? without any distractions, like our phones. It was just between me and Hashem, developing a stronger ?? relationship with ourselves and a stronger relationship with Hashem. It was so inspirational for me and it really made me think about how special it is to be a Jew . It was truly such an amazing weekend and I’m so happy I was able to spend it with NCSY GIVE 15′!!