Hi, my name is Tali Rabkin and I’m a junior at solon high school. I’ve been to Israel once before, and that trip was very different because it was with family. I want to thank you for allowing
me the opportunity to speak about this trip, which has impacted me in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
Each day of our trip, individual participants were given the assignment to write a blog about their different experiences. These daily blogs of our trip allowed us to put forward our own opinions on different activities that we did throughout our time in Israel. This blogging assignment is not something that other Israel trips do, and it made me pay more attention to the details of what we were discussing at a particular point. my first time blogging was when we went to Yad Vashem. truthfully, I felt nervous to blog about such an important topic with high expectations for the blog. I wanted to be able to capture the meaningful experience I had of the tour and how I learned from it enough to teach others about the Holocaust. our tour guide inspired me to write about the deliberate architectural design of the building and exhibits. In my blog, I wrote: “Moshe Safdie (the museum's architect) doesn’t explain the reasons for the details, leaving it up to the viewer’s interpretation. This allows each person to have their own religious experience and to reflect on a personal level. “
Similar to this, we had our very own reflection journals to write in every night of our trip. We were given guided questions that allowed us to look back on our days and think of what we enjoyed, how involved we were, and how our perspectives could’ve changed from what we thought we knew before vs after a speaker or activity. we got to rate our own participation on a scale of 1-10, 10 being a leader. some days I rated myself around a 6 or 7, knowing I could’ve asked more questions or could’ve been more involved while listening to different speakers. i rated myself a 10/10 when we went to Yad Vashem. I definitely felt that I learned more when i blogged because it compelled me to ask and answer more questions and follow along on the tour.
i was also asked to blog about interviewing Matti Friedman, the author of Who By Fire, a book about Leonard Cohen’s impactful concert tour during the Yom Kippur War. during our pre-sessions, we had an assignment to read excerpts from the book and answer guided questions. at the end of the assignment, the directions said to come up with one question per chapter that we read to ask the author. in person, I asked: what emotions, ideas, or lessons were you aiming for the reader to feel after reading?
Friedman replied that he wanted to capture the shock of war as experienced by young soldiers to gain a different perspective for the reader.
it was helpful to be familiar with the book before meeting him because it made the interview feel more personal.
I got to ask him questions and take notes while he spoke, and later rated my participation highly.
the writing portion of ic next allowed all of us to connect deeper with what we were learning and pushed us to think about the next step of our theme of becoming a leader.