Then we went to the Poleg Mall and all put on our Israeli trousers, apart from Holly who put on her Israeli dress and Emily who was in shorts. When we were at the mall we had the most delicious shwarma EVER and then we went to the outside fitness park, which was such good fun. After that we went to Fox and bought some stuff.
We went to the community centre in Netanya for the Ethiopian Jews and joined in a girls’ Ethiopian dance class. Some parts were a bit like Irish dancing and some were like Hindi dancing. It was really hard. I got really into it and I’m sure I made a complete fool of myself (typist’s not: no you didn’t). It involves lots of shoulder movements.
We saw a plaque on the wall about the centre, which was written in English, Hebrew and Amharic, which is the Ethiopian language – it looks a bit like Russian or Georgian.
After that we went to a Bat Mitzvah party for us and 12 Ethiopian girls, organised by Esra. At first, it was very hard to talk to the girls as they didn’t speak much English. Even though they didn’t speak much English, we did manage to start a conversation later on in the night about One Direction.
But before this, we signed the Bat Mitzvah posters – each one had a name of a girl and their photo on and we took turns to sign each others’ posters. After this, we got together for the mums and daughters bit. First there was a slideshow about the mitzvah of lighting candles. Then we made some beautiful candlesticks out of soap stone using sandpaper and baby oil. At the beginning the candlesticks were really boring and dull but by the end they were all smooth and shiny.
They then showed us a slide show about the mitzvah of taking challah and then we made challah. They had prepared the dough already so we just had to shape the challah. Everyone did a plait apart from Holly who did a complicated round one. A lady took the challahs away to bake and we got them back at the end of the evening.
Next we had a delicious meal and we ate it with the Ethiopian girls. During this meal was when we started talking about One Direction. After the meal we did some dancing and gave the girls our presents. We also got presents from them and then the Esra ladies gave us all presents. Then after a bit more dancing and some speeches, we went home and had a well deserved rest.
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