Nathan Kirshner, a grade six student at Brock Corydon School who is registered to attend the Gray Academy of Jewish Education next year recently hosted a member of Israel's hockey team when the team visited Winnipeg last month. Kirchner is a regular contributor to the Winnipeg Jewish Review and has has written about this experience below]

Tamir Carmeli is a twelve year old boy from Kibbutz Snir in Israel. Kibbutz Snir is a kibbutz in northern Israel 20 minutes away from Kiryat Shmona. When he came to Winnipeg it was his first time out of Israel and his first time on an airplane.

He arrived on a Tuesday and every morning he and his teammates did hockey training at the MTS iceplex. In the afternoon they would go to different places in Winnipeg so after training on Wednesday they had some pizza for lunch and then went to Gray Academy. That night we had lunch at home and I showed Tamir that I had a Wii and asked "Do you know how to play wii" he said "yes we have one in Israel."  Tamir and I played hockey on the Wii and it turned out that his favorite team was the Montreal Canadiens. Some nights we would watch Montreal play or we would watch the Jets play.

On Thursday after hockey training they came to my school which is Brock Corydon. They had Subway sandwiches for lunch and then we just talked to them and their coaches after that they went to the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature. My Hebrew teacher Morah Paula [Zimmerman] was the one giving a tour in Hebrew. When they came back to Brock Corydon it was time for the winter carnival so we brought out sleds and skis and some even just played in the snow.

We had four tickets to the Jets game that night so Tamir, my mom, my cousin Dov and I went. It was Tamir's first time watching pro hockey live and he found the atmosphere great. The Jets ended up winning the game so he was able to hear the crowd at its loudest.

The next day after hockey training both the billets and the childrne of the host families got to go curling so that the Israelis  could get a feeling for other sports in Canada. After on the bus back, Tamir said "It was a good experience but it's very hard".

On Saturday it was a free day until six thirty at night  when there was bowling. I wasn't actually part of Tamir's bowling lane but I was right beside it so I came over there a lot and he is probably one of the best bowlers I know. He was getting way higher scores than I was. It was actually a good experience to meet others too. The bowling went until nine o'clock and after that there was a party at my friend Sam's house.

One of the Israeli teams coaches is named Mike and Mike is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan and that night the Winnipeg Jets were playing the Maple Leafs. It was a shootout and all of us were cheering GO JETS GO whether it's because we were Jets fans or because they wanted Mike's favorite team to lose.

Sunday morning the Israeli hockey team played a game against the Corydon Comets peewee team. It was a close game until the third period when Corydon pulled away and won 5-2. For lunch we introduced the Israelis to chicken nuggets (Schnitzel) and they enjoyed it very much after we took a bus to the Rady JCC to play in the gym. Tamir said he wanted to try something different so he tried basketball and he is good.

The next day was goodbye. I think that it was a great experience.


- Nate the Great  --

Editor's note: Kibbutz Snir is located on the banks of the Baniyas River in the upper Galilee, between the Hermon Mountains, the Golan Heights and the Hahula Valley.  For those interested in visiting, there is a the Snir Kibbutz Country Inn http://www.zimmeril.com/site.asp?site_id=119.

Snir, which is  very close ot the Golan, was established on September 26 1967 as a Nahal settlement, just over three months after the Six Day War in what had formerly been demilitarized zone until the Six-Day War. It was converted to a civilian kibbutz in 1968.