Meet Shula Knafo, who immigrated from Casablanca at age 6 and raised a family in Yeruham, hosts visitors with her sumptuous ethnic dishes.
The Culinary Queens encounter includes listening to the women’s individual stories.
Knafo tells us how she immigrated with her parents and grandmother from Casablanca as a six-year-old girl. The family had 10 children and she married young to escape the male-dominated restraints her father imposed.
She talks frankly about her difficult marriage and proudly about her children: about one son who is a commander of an elite IDF unit, about another son who is a diplomat, about her victory in getting proper treatment for her child with special needs who today has a full-time job at a supermarket.
And, of course, about her grandchildren.
Shula Knafo at the entrance to her Yeruham house. Photo by Or Alexenburg
When her husband died, she was left without any savings or pension, having worked for most of her life as a housecleaner. It was then that she was recruited for the Culinary Queens, and slowly she began reestablishing herself, she said.
She got her driver’s license, enlarged her patio and took a course in entrepreneurship.
But she didn’t stop there. When she could stand on her own two feet she established an organization which every year organizes a culinary charity event and with the proceeds takes children and families in the welfare system to an attraction or site they otherwise would never get to visit.
Marvel at the multitude of colours here at Colorful Sands in Ramon Crater, Israel, the world’s largest erosion crater. The colours are made from various minerals namely Copper, Iron and Sulfur.
Colourful Sands Park is a great stop while driving through the Israeli desert, situated in the Ramon Crater, the world’s largest erosion crater. You can see the wonder of all the minerals found in God’s holy land.
HaMakhtesh HaGadol (The Big Crater) is located near Yeruham in Israel’s desert Negev. Makhtesh is the Hebrew word for a mortar grinder (מַכְתֵּשׁ). The Big Crater got its misleading name in the days when the even larger Ramon Crater was still uncharted. Measuring 5 x 10 km, it’s the 2nd largest makhtesh in Israel.The Negev has five makhteshim out of seven in the world:-…
During our stay in Israel, we were recruited to many classes. The curriculum that we were involved in in Yeruham and Mitzpe Ramon was similar, yet different. In Yeruham, we were more involved with mentoring the Robotics students, but in Mitzpe Ramon we took on more of a teaching role.
In Yeruham, because it was the first time MIT students had come, I don’t think the teachers really knew what to expect from us. So, a large part of our time was spent at various places in Yeruham, such as MindCET and Robotics.
However, we did help out with physics and English lessons. In physics, we helped with circuits and optics. It was mostly coming into classrooms and helping students through their assigned problems and for English it was helping the students practice for their English Bagrut. We practiced English with the 5 point students who just took their exams, and then were recruited to help the 4 point students who had an exam coming up. In the next week, one of the students reported to us while we were walking to Robotics that he had received a 98/100, which was awesome because we spent a significant amount of time practicing for his exam because he was worried and needed help.
In Mitzpe Ramon, we took on more of a teaching role. We introduced ourselves to quite a few classes about ourselves and life at MIT. The purpose of these was to teach a short lesson and help broaden the students’ views. The principal of the school said that since Mitzpe was such a small town, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that there’s more to life outside. In addition, we also taught a bit of physics (magnetic fields and optics). We tried to make it interesting by talking about the applications of magnetic fields and optics to really engage the students.
We also did a lot of teaching for biology. We helped mentor some students in their biology research projects - most of the students were doing research related to the Negev. There was some pretty interesting topics ranging from plants and their essential oils and old irrigation systems. Finally, we also taught the circulatory system and the cell membrane. We included lots of videos, and even sparked discussion in the classroom and the students were really engaged because we tried to explain why certain things were important instead of just “and this happens in your body.” We also showed videos and silly cartoons to help increase and cement understanding. The students seem to really like it. We even found some rap songs about these topics and showed them to the class and the students really got into it by singing along and swaying/dancing. They were so pumped, they even showed us an enzyme song to the tune of Rebecca Black’s Friday!
Finally, we also helped students practice for their English Bagrut. One of the teachers always tried to recruit us. She said it was important to take advantage of us while we were still here, so we spent quite some time helping with English by practicing for their Bagruts as well as working through their English readings.
All in all, Israel was a pretty fun experience and we had fun reviewing biology and helping out with English and physics!
