Negev Day - Feb. 7 by Rosalie Whitehill

Shalom,
Monday started another exciting, interesting and wonderful week. After visiting Rishon LeZion Museum, a charming museum in the first Zionist community in Israel where our guide showed us the first school, pharmacy and so many little shops from the pioneer days. We saw an excellent film about the town and how they found water! After, we headed south to Beersheva, where we visited several sites connected to the JNF project of reclamation of the land around a dried up river bed, Nahal Beersheva - really amazing to see what has been done so far and how it has improved the community. Then we went to the Or Communities Center, where we learned about all the great work the people are doing to build and resettle in the Negev. The Center is not quite finished but it was quite impressive. Then we went to an established Or community...Givat Bar!! Then we visited the site of a new community, Carmit, that hopes to attract Anglos and will include a golf course....nothing really there yet....and I hope to see it again in a year.
Dinner was at Kibbutz Kramim, where we had a most interesting talk about the Kibbutz from Debbie Rulnick....a native Israeli of American parents.

Can't believe that this is my last week.

Rosalie