We started the day with a pancake breakfast and a musical Shabbat morning service. After the service the students participated in a lobbying simulation involving campaign finance reform and mountain top removal valley fill mining. Kids divided into different lobby groups to persuade senators to vote for their group through fundraising wealthy donors, media campaigns, phone calling campaigns, creative TV commercials. and letter writing. A good warm up to our real advocacy trip to the Hill on Monday morning.
After lunch we headed into the sunshine to visit the Martin Luther King Memorial. The sunlight was stunning against the stone as was the excitement of the international tourist crowd surrounding the statue. Following, we spent a very intense two hours in the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Rabbi Cahana led a debrief session after the visit for our students and other school groups from our bus to help everyone decompress and transition into a lighter mood as we we headed over to Georgetown for free time and dinner. Good food in Georgetown!
After dinner we were 450 people strong at a lovely candlelight Havdallah service at the Jefferson Memorial. We exercised our religious freedom with military helicopters above our heads, recognizing that Jefferson's commitment to the separation of church and state forged so long ago helped make our prayer service a reality today. We celebrated our religious freedom in the heart of our nation's capitol-a powerful feeling. Arriving back at the hotel, the kids attended workshops on areas of interest from climate change to reproductive rights, from ending the spread of malaria to the challenge of ending torture and indefinite detention....whew...after that we just had to make ice cream sundaes and lighten up!
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