Last Thursday we had a Chessed day. It started off with a panel of three ladies that spoke about their interesting Chessed organizations. Rachel Nadel spoke about her founding of Anywhere in Israel which sets up Jews in Israel with a place to stay for Shabbat anywhere in Israel. Miriam Ballin spoke about her efforts in allowing women to volunteer in Hatzolah, and Reena Rosenblum spoke about how she set up a home for troubled young Jewish ladies to help them get back on track. Following that we visited a Chessed Organization in town called Crossroads, which offers free therapy and therapeutic activities for any teenager in need. After that we spent the afternoon at Si’ach Sod making Chanukah projects with  disabled children. All in all, it was an amazing opportunity and an inspiring day.

This year Chanukah was filled with many different special activities. On Sunday we had Midreshet Moriah's annual Chanukah Chagiga! This year’s theme was all around the world. Girls got split up into countries and came to the chagiga dressed up accordingly. We started the chagiga eating a delicious dinner in our beautifully decorated Beis. From there buses brought us to our chagiga venue where we danced away the night, ate nosh, and decorated doughnuts. At the end of the night, we were surprised by a funny video created by the Madrichot of the teachers. We can't wait until our next chagiga on Purim!!!

Monday and Tuesday nights were ‘faculty babayit’ dinners - which means that a group of girls receive a teacher to go to for dinner. Sam Friedman shared with us her experience….”I along with three other girls went to Neima Novetsky’s home for dinner. It started off with beautiful musical candle lighting followed by a delicious dinner with her family while we got to know each other. It’s extremely rare to ever find a teacher like Neima and so many others of our faculty who connect to every student. Neima, in just one dinner connected to us all. It was a unique and memorable experience of Chanukah that I and I hope many other girls will remember forever”.

On Wednesday, we went to greet a Nefesh b’nefesh flight of Olim…but more on that next week so stay tuned….

Chanukah Same’ach!

Laurene Dana, Esti Eckstein and Sam Friedman, Shana Alef