Honeymoon Israel Trip ~ Day 9

On our first day in Tel Aviv, the first item on our agenda was to do a beach clean-up. I am not going to lie. When I woke up, cleaning a beach on my vacation was not at the top of my list. However, we all worked together and it didn't take us very long to clean-up a whole bunch of debris and trash from our assigned beach. It felt pretty good to give back to the world and reminded me that we should incorporate more tikkun olam (world repair) in our every day lives.

Our next stop of the day was to Independence Hall. It was a very robust history lesson of the creation of Israel as a country.

After Independence Hall, we walked down to Nachalat Binyamin market to shop for souvenirs and grab a bite to eat. The people watching was by far the most entertaining portion of this stop.

The day concluded with the lighting of the Shabbat candles at the hotel, a beautiful and meaningful Kabbalat Shabbat service led by Rabbi Ilana on the boardwalk of the beach, our final Shabbat dinner as a group in Israel, and some after dinner drinks with some of the group at a near by bar.