Today was Lehava’s JNF day, with a lot of things planned for the group. This meant another 6:00am wake up, which isn’t easy, believe it or not. After getting on the buses, it was an hour and a half drive down south to Be’er Sheva, where our first stop was the ANZAC Memorial Center next to the soldiers cemetery in the city. The main exhibition on display was a 25-30 minute room designed like WW1 trenches. We all gathered into the room, and sat down to start watching a movie about the battle of Be’er Sheva. This room we were in, though, also doubled as a large elevator, with three levels of a display, which was accompanied by a veteran’s testimony of the events at Be’er Sheva.
After our informative experience in the ANZAC memorial center, we drove to some JNF-funded reservoirs, which our tour guide for the day, Noam, explained that the reservoirs were mostly funded by JNF Australia, which made it extra special for me to see what our donations in Sydney are doing for the people of Israel.
Our last stop for today was a moshav called Talmei Yosef, on a tour called Shvil Hasalat, ‘The Salad Trail'.The tour consisted of one of the tour guides at the moshav taking us around to look at how the moshav grows it’s fruits and vegetables. We also got to pick our own food off the vines and plants ourselves, and taste what we pick. There was a selection of fruits and vegetables that we could choose from that we were shown. There were Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Lemons, Kumquats, Oranges, Carrots, Strawberries, and all of the seven species (Wheat, Barley, Olives, Figs, Pomegranate, Dates and Grapes). The tour left everyone with a lot of healthy and delicious food in their bellies. The Salad Trail was the perfect way to end off a very enjoyable day in the south of Israel!