August Workshop, Cohort 7

By Goldie Fields

On August 24, 2014 Cohort 7 of Diller teen fellows met at the Westside JCC for our monthly meeting. We started with Sami, our coordinator checking in with all us to see how we were doing. We went around the table and said what we had been up to the last couple of weeks and whether we had started school or not, which most us had. This meeting did not include our Junior Counselors because both had left for college.  Chava is at Pitzer, and Michelle is at Brandeis. We expressed our appreciation to both by making them cards, thanking them for all they had done, and wishing them luck at college!  We also made cards for our very generous donors who enabled us to go to Camp Max Strauss at the last minute for an overnight after our Israel trip unfortunately had been cancelled.  After making our cards, Sami gave us an updated calendar of our schedule for approximately the next month.

            

Next, we performed a silent exercise, where we answered the question, “Why are you inspired to do tikkun olam?” through writing our answers on the board. This prompt was a great segue into our tikkun olam projects, and we discussed the three values upon which the world stands: avodah, torah, and gimilut chasidim. After, we split up into small groups to discuss our individual undertakings.  We worked on defining the mission and vision of our particular project.

            

After working on our tikkun olam tasks we heard from a representative of the JewishNational Fund. He told us that the Jewish National Fund does more than just plant trees in Israel.  Recently, the JNF funded bomb shelters in Sderot, Israel to help the residents there avoid rocket attacks.  The JNF has an amazingly large impact on Israel.  Following the speech we wrapped up our meeting, and we are looking forward to seeing each other soon on our overnight!