![]() |
Expulsion from Gush Katif, August 2005 |
Israeli tenth graders were only six
years old in 2005, when Israel dismantled the Gush Katif block of settlements in
the southern Gaza Strip. They never stepped foot in the Gush Katif region, and
few have any recollection at all of the traumatic events surrounding that
historic evacuation.
Last week, over 2,700 tenth grade
students set out on the fourth annual YBA “Masa Kisufim” (Trek of Yearning)
march, to learn about the rise and fall of Jewish settlement in that unique
region on the Egyptian border, where greenhouse-based agriculture flourished
and prospered for over 35 years. The students toured greenhouses similar to
those that were left behind in the Gaza Strip, and heard personal stories from
former Gush Katif residents about their lives there and the traumatic expulsion
from their homes.
Masa Kisufim March, January 2015 |
The annual Masa Kisufim march joined two
other well-established all-night hikes in YBA’s tradition: to the Galilee
village of Beria during the eighth grade to learn about the early years of Zionist
settlement in Eretz Yisrael; and to Kibbutz Kfar Etzion during the ninth grade,
to learn about Israel’s War of Independence.
Rabbi Beni Nachtailer, Director General of the YBA Educational Network, explained
that "the Idea is to teach our students about the history of settlement in
Gush Katif in an experiential way - through an all-night hike in the western Negev,
near to where those settlements were located. Knowledge gained through experiential
learning is hard-wired in our memories, much more than through classroom
learning.”
The YBA network regards experiential
education activities to be just as valuable as formal classroom education in Training
Israel’s Future.™
No comments:
Post a Comment