Cohort 7- 1st Shabbaton

Cohort 7- 1^st Shabbaton

By Deena Levitan

Leading up to our first shabbaton , I was very excited to spend a whole weekend with my fellow Diller Teen Fellows. We only had several meetings before this shabbaton, and I definitely believed that this gathering brought us a lot closer together as friends and fellows. 

We brought in Shabbat with a wonderful ceremony led by our own two Jordans. It was very special for me because I always celebrate Shabbat with my family so it was very different and also very nice to spend it with friends.

 The big question of the weekend was, "What does being a Jew mean to me?" Sami and our J.Cs thought up of ingenious ways for us to bring our Jewish beliefs and thoughts and to put them to work. On Saturday morning, we had the choice of taking a wonderful hike or taking time to pray. All of us went on the hike, and during the hike, we had time to chat amongst ourselves and get to know each other better. During the hike, we would take short breaks, and in that time Sami would give us a sheet filled with quotes. She then asked us to analyze the quotes and choose whichever one related to us the most, whichever one caught our eye and we would then have a small discussion about the quote that someone chose.

Giving the Dvar Torah was a wonderful experience for me because it was very nice to teach the fellows about that week's torah portion. It also felt good to be able to answer their questions about it and to hear their comments and what they thought the portion represented in correlation with our Dillar pillars and values.

After our beautiful hike, we then had the task to match values of Jewish people and  their denominations. I think we can all say that it was a bit challenging, but that in the end it was very interesting to find out which denomination believes in what, and to see which denominations we would fall under. I learned a lot from this exercise because now I can acknowledge why certain kinds of Judaism pray like they do and live the way they do.

Our bonding as a group was very fun! I think that the most fun thing that we did was the low ropes course. We brought together all of our ideas and finally figured out a way to jump over the obstacle that was keeping us from getting to the other side. We did a lot of fun things including our jelly bean activity, in which we got to learn a lot about each other and the way we view different issues in the world.

We also got initiated by our J.Cs, which was a very fun and interesting experience, to say the least. We learned a lot about each when we sat down and talked about what our goals were for the following year. Now knowing this about each other, we can always help one another when we see each other struggling or down. 

Other things include our campfire, crashing Camp Or Ami's song session, enjoying the very fun icebreakers brought by our fellow fellows, our very relaxing massage train, and last but not least Tour de Summer Camps. Even though we had to wake up at 6:00am, I think that I can speak for everyone when I say that it was a very gratifying and fulfilling experience to be able to send these hardworking bikers, who ride insane distances (up to 100 miles) to support and raise money for the Jewish Federation so we and kids like us can get sent to camp.

All in all, I had the most amazing time with all of the fellows and can not wait for us to become even closer and spend more time getting to know each other. This will be the most amazing benefit to Israel and the whole entire Diller Teen Fellows program. I hope everyone had the same amazing experience that I got out of this shabbaton and cannot wait to see everyone soon!