Saturday began on a super high note due to the fact that we could all sleep until 10:30am. We arrived downstairs to read/discuss the weekly Torah portion about Balak (the king) and Bil'am. Balak hired Bil'am to curse out the Jews because he had the power of words. However, every time that Bil'am went to curse out the Jews, instead of curse words coming out...a blessing came out instead. This occured three times until Bil'am decided that giving Balack advice on how to defeat the Jews would be easier. So, Bil'am told Balak to send a bunch of hookers to the Jewish camp in hopes that this would cause disease and kill all the Jews. Balack took the advice and sent a bunch of hookers to the Jewish camp and no one accepted sex except for one man...and because of this, the whole camp was overcome with plague; that man was having sexy time with the hooker when Balack came in and, with very good aim, speared him and the woman right through their genitals. After this teaching of that particular Torah portion, we had a very nice Shabbat lunch followed by some free time in which everyone decided to relax and take some naps! Waking up from the nap was torture because we were all extremely exhausted...but we had to go downstairs to discuss the laws and regulations of accepting new citizens into Israel and what it really means to be a Jew. We broke off into groups and some groups had very heated converstations whereas others had a more mild/open approach. We came to a general concensus that a Jew is someone that has a Jewish mother and if someone were to convert to Judaism they would need to go through all the proper steps/paperwork in order to be called a Jew and show those documents as proof. After that serious discussion, we had about an hour of free time and then had to meet again downstairs to play a "moral" cardgame. This was the toughest part of the day for me because the deck was divided into categories like: electronics, values, Judaism, senses...etc. It was very surprising to see how easy it was for people to get rid of their electronics in order to keep things like smell, touch, taste, family, jobs, children...things like that. Then we had a little bit of time for an Oneg...and then we went outside where we sang the Havdalah and ended Shabbat.
After our morning of activities, we all got ready for dinner out on the town. We all walked to dinner in the market place and we all had independent dinner!!! Nothing better than being able to find great schwarma and falafel on every corner and not having to find a good place in Chi-town! :) After we ate we were able to walk around the shops and find gifts for our family and friends to bring home. The best part of the shopping is learning to haggle with the owners of the shops. We all had a lot of fun and bought some really nice things for ourselves as well.
Submitted by Mackenzie Stanton and Rebecca Jacobs
