BPY students had an excellent Yom Ha’atzmaut experience, celebrating Israel through the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. After a moving school-wide Hallel followed by singing and dancing, students took a flight to Israel and saw stunning visual representations of landmark sites like the Hermon, Eilat, the Kotel, Me’arat HaMachpela and Tel Aviv as they walked through historic and contemporary Israel. They smelled the delicious spices commingling in the Machane Yehuda shuk, heard Hebrew everywhere and Ivrit b’Ivrit explanations of Israel’s most important monuments and cities, tasted freshly-baked pita bread from the Bedouin tent and some of Israel’s tastiest snacks from the shuk and touched the snow, sand and water that compose much of Israel’s land and sea.

Everyone enjoyed a delicious falafel lunch to fuel up for the rest of the day. In the evening, a fabulous family chagiga took place where students performed an intricate daglanut ceremony.