San Fransico flight has been delayed an hour as well

LA flight has been delayed an hour

Chicago flight has been delayed an hour

Toronto flight landed safe

JFK flight has arrived

The JFK flight arrived. Everyone has checked into their connecting flights and should be arriving on time. The Philly/DC bus has left and should be in Philadelphia around 8:00 and in DC around 10:00.

Please call Brianna at 917-822-2330 if you have any questions about the JFK flight.

The Toronto flight should be arriving in about 40 minutes and Elliot is at International arrivals waiting for the flight to arrive. We will send out a full update once the flight has arrived and everyone has made their connections.

Please call Elliot at 347-257-2889 if you have any questions about the Toronto flight.

Tiyul: Nachal Poleg Beach

In the next part of the day MBI went to an amazing museum called Machon Ayalon, which used to be an underground ammunition factory before the independence war. The Hagganah (defense force) asked a group of people who wanted to build a kibbutz to build and operate an ammunition factory underneath. The group dug out an enormous underground hole in just weeks, while the British thought they were building a kibbutz. 40 people would go underground daily just to make bullets. The kibbutz took in laundry as its source of income, and the access to the ammunition factory was under a washing machine that slides to the side to reveal a ladder. All 40 of the original workers were trained to climb down the ladder in record time. They made 250,000 bullets without a single mishap, and bullets were the one thing the Israelis did not run out of during the war of Independence. Visitors today can still walk down the ladder and view the machinery while listening to the story.

After touring the kibbutz/museum they came back and had dinner before their first sikkum peula. Sikkum means summary or wrap-up, and is the term used for the part of the program which will aim to help the MBIers process all that they have done this summer. The first sikkum peula was about looking at MBI and the Habonim Dror movement as a whole and understanding how structures and specific goals sometimes change over time in order to better implement the values that you hold. The feedback from most of the kvutzot afterwards said that the discussions each kvutza had about this went very well.

August 1

Carmel

Then the MBI-ers drove down to Haifa to explore one of Israel's most unique cities. Haifa,
Israel's third largest city is built into the Carmel Mountain on the Northern part of the coast.
Haifa is well known as being a multi-ethnic city where Arabs and Jews have lived and worked
together for years. To begin the siyur (tour) the chanichim gathered on a promenade above the
Bahai Gardens. The Gardens are holy center for the Bahai religion. This is where people of the
Bahai faith come to complete their pilgrimage. From this promenade you can see the gardens
as well as the whole downtown area of Haifa.

Here the MBIers learned a bit about the history of Haifa and the demographics of the city.
Then they ventured down into the city and saw first-hand the different elements of Haifa.
Throughout the tour they witnessed examples of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian presences in
Haifa. For part of the tour, they visited the neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas. Because Haifa is on a
mountain there are neighborhoods located in different natural formations. A wadi is a dried up
river bed and this is evident when walking in this particular neighborhood. You have to descend
into it and it is very narrow. The buildings are also small and close together. During the walk
through the neighborhood the chanichim discussed the architecture of Wadi Nisnas as well as
the layout of the city as a whole. Another interesting aspect of Wadi Nisnas is that every year
local artists are asked to create murals and art installations to be featured in the neighborhood
as part of a coexistence project. This is meant to bring beauty to the city as well as Arab and
Jewish artists together. The trip to Haifa was meant to showcase Haifa as a multi-ethnic town
and to learn a bit about what some of the interactions that causes.