By Alex Rubin
During a day off from school, the Nachshon fellows had the incredible opportunity to take a tour of Mount Herzl with Aviv Warshavsky, an educator for the IDF. This was my fourth trip to Har Herzl, so on the bus ride across Jerusalem I braced myself for the retold stories of early Israeli leaders and young soldiers. Har Herzl for me had always been something of a history lesson. I love studying history in school; I could listen to stories about leaders, and wars, and strategy, and decisions for hours on end. Har Herzl always kept a special place in my heart because it was a space where I would go to hear more stories and learn more about the incredible people who built Israel. But for a fourth visit, there are only so many stories to be told.
However, for this trip, I kept my ears wide open. Aviv guided us through the cemetery and memorials like no other tour I’ve taken. Inspired by his friends who had fallen in war, Aviv set out to take a tour of Har Herzl that did more than retell stories that one can find by googling “Levi Eshkol,” or “Golda Meir.” He told us of all the different tours that we could take: (tours of the graves of siblings who fought together, of teenagers, of pioneers, of religious soldiers, of best friends, of feminists, and the list kept going on and on and on), showing us that Har Herzl is more than a resting place for the famous, but a place for all those who gave their lives to Israel regardless of how many people know their story. Implicitly sharing more stories than otherwise would have been possible in the time we spent walking around Har Herzl, it was incredible and overwhelming to hear about just how many different ways we could spend a few hours listening to stories.
Aviv did more than just tell stories though, he taught us how to teach. Aviv wove his own personal love for Israel into each story he told and his passion for his country shined through each story. Using his experience teaching IDF commanders, Aviv was able to share with us methods to teach the story of Israel through its people. Usually after leaving Har Herzl, I am in awe of the stories and the lives of great, famous Israeli leaders. This time, though, I walked back to our bus with the understanding that there is so much more to Har Herzl than I could read in a history book.
