Its the 1st day and here we go!

Today was the first full day of MBI Yud Tet 2010! The first few days are used an orientation period for the MBIers. During this time they will be meeting each other, starting to form friendships and will start to examine what being on MBI is all about. These next few days will be filled with games, discussions and a bit of traveling in the North.

In the morning the first thing they did was to split into buses and kvutzot. This year we have three full buses on MBI, with each split into two kvutzot. This is done in order to help build smaller and closer group relationships for the MBI-ers which will continue throughout the summer, almost all programs, peulot, and activities will be done in these smaller groups (kvutzot). The split was done through a fun game in which each person was given a piece of paper which had their character to play and also a character to look for. This then resulted in large circles of people looking for each other with a common characteristic between all of their pieces of paper (i.e. all vegetables), and these groups were their kvutzot.

They then all had a peula about values and what it means to live according to a value. They discussed which values they wanted to hold as important in their lives and how that relates to the kvutzah during the summer. As the first peula together of the summer the conversations were great.

The next stop was the historic city of Tzfat. This city has existed for hundreds of years on mountain tops in the upper Galilee and was the home for generations of scholars studying Jewish mysticism and kabbala. The MBI-ers got a chance to walk around the old city, through its stone walkways and corridors, and stopped for lunch in a park overlooking the beautiful view available from the city. They also went and visited a few of the old synagogues which are still there and are beautifully decorated by followers of different rabbi who lived there hundreds of years ago.

Tonight they will head to the hostel at Peki'in and after dinner will have another peula in their kvutzot building off of this mornings conversation. This evenings peula will focus on creating a safe and intimate environment for everyone in the kvutza to feel comfortable as they explore and get to know each other better over the rest of the summer.

It is certainly a packed and intense first day of the program that will start off a great summer.