You haven’t been on a road trip until you’ve been on a Jerusalem Center road trip. These folks pack in the fun! What could have been a six-hour drive was actually all day because we stopped at every site along the way. First was Beersheba, where Abraham dug the well, Isaac and Rachel first met and Jacob spoke with God. Then, a lookout overlooking the Wilderness of Zin, one of the deserts that the Israelites wandered through after the Exodus. In Exodus 16 the Israelites complain against Moses for taking them to the wilderness…now I know why. That desert is the most desolate thing I have ever seen.
My favorite thing today was the tour we had of a modern-day quibbuts. A quibbuts is a self-sustaining community, where each member is assigned work according to their skills and talents and the money is pooled, therefore providing for everyone’s living expenses and an allowance. It is basically the law of consecration meets full democracy. So fascinating! The woman giving us the tour was so fabulously granola and spiritual. There are a little over three hundred adult members of the quibbuts with a couple hundred children and over four hundred Darfur refugees that they have taken in for a few months. Their major resource is the food that they grow to eat and to sell. The dates they let us try are delicious. The dairy there is amazing as well! They are actually raising cows in the middle of the desert! They hose them down five times a day to keep them cool. It pays off though. The ice cream they fed to us was divine! Literally rivaled gelato…I know, I know. Impossible, right? No. This was a seriously heavenly frozen treat. They have a school, community center, concert hall, gym, and many other facilities. They have cars so that if you want to take a day trip off the Quibbuts you just sign up for one and take it. I could go on for hours; it was so intriguing to me. It is a very rigorous process to apply and be accepted as a member, but they do like internship programs for young adults who want to experience it for a limited time, which I am definitely interested in. Who knows if something like that would ever pan out for me, but I think there is so much to learn about humanity by living in that kind of environment. It has definitely planted a seed in my mind.
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