Welcome Los Angeles Diller Cohort 5/2012

A new year, a new cohort, a new journey:  Welcome Fellows of the Los Angeles Diller Teen Fellows Cohort 5/2012!

Check back often to this blog to read about how the L.A. 2012 Diller Teen Fellows describe their experiences and their new journey!

Tekkes Siyyum for LA Cohort 4

It's amazing how quickly a year can pass! 

Our 2011 LA Diller Cohort planned and executed an incredible Tekkes Siyyum, while continuing with a myriad of very special Diller Community Service Projects ranging from fighting against human rights violations to mentoring incoming high school freshmen; promoting pet adoptions from shelters to organizing bone marrow registry drives; creating recordings of children's books or collecting new DVDs for kids in hospitals to creating websites for teens to find a place of peer support; fundraising to provide mosquito nets to protect African children from malaria or advocating for the release of Gilad Shalit; or "greening" Milken High School by creating a rooftop garden!


Cohort 4 is a very special, very gifted group of young men and women who will continue in their roles as leaders in the community as they finish high school and go on to college.  Mazel tov and Yashir Koach!!!!

Shoshana

The graduating class of 2011

What's an event without food?



Playing to a full audience....





Visiting Holocaust Survivors in Tel Aviv

Israeli and US Teens Support and Learn From Holocaust Survivors

The International Diller Teen Fellows Israel Summer Seminar brought 120 teens from North America to visit teens in Israel.

By Elad Benari & Yoni Kempinski

First Publish: 8/8/2011, 3:15 AM

The 2011 International Diller Teen Fellows Israel Summer Seminar, sponsored by the Helen Diller Family Foundation and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, recently brought 120 teenagers from North America to visit their sister-communities in Israel, for 21 days of leadership programming and cultural exploration.
As part of the varied activities on the trip, the teens also met with Holocaust survivors to hear their stories and bridge the gaps between the generations. Arutz Sheva was there during the exciting meeting.

“We’re understanding more about how [the survivors] live their lives here in Israel, why they’ve come here, what they’re doing, and how we can take the messages that we’re learning here back home,” said Jake Speyer from Los Angeles, California.
Nicole Miller, Executive Director of International Diller Teen Initiatives, said that meeting with survivors is “very much connected with the story of modern Israel and modern Jewish history and part of the reason why we are here today.”
“Certainly, as this population is dying out, it’s much more important and these teens are very much aware of how important it is to meet with and hear these stories firsthand,” she added.
Miller explained that the Israel visit is part of a year-long program in which the teens, who are carefully selected from the U.S., Canada, and Israel, work on their leadership skills, community service, Jewish identity and their connection to Israel.
“The Israelis come to their partnership community in North America in the spring for a couple of weeks, and now during the summer all of the North American groups came to Israel for three weeks,” she said.
The participants, said Miller, range from secular to modern Orthodox. They learn from one another and are strengthened by their diversity.
Aviad Turm, an Israeli teen from Beit Shemesh who is taking part in the program, said that he can learn from the Americans about their great love for Israel.
“Many Americans have strong feelings for Israel and want to visit Israel, donate money, and help any way they can,” he said.

Omer's Video Tribute to TeL. A.viv Diller 2011

Diller 2011 LA-TA ♥ [HQ]

By Omer Ben Davidhttp://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150275050953482&comments#!/video/video.php?v=10150275050953482&subj=772823481

Israeli Culture!?

Thursday, July 28

**MORE INFO ON THE ETHIOPIAN TRIP**

As per usual, today was packed with multiple activities as we are trying to see as much of Tel Aviv as we can before Sunday night. The topic of the day was "Israeli Culture" - its existence, its definition, etc. We started off the morning at "Beit Ariella", the city's main library. Unlike most other libraries, Beit Ariella offers a wide range of cultural events for the community and houses multiple unique library collections on different subjects in addition to its regular circulation library.

We began our visit at Beit Ariella with an introduction from one of the librarians. An ex-New Yorker, she has been a librarian at Beit Ariella for the last thirteen years. She described how the library was founded in the late 1800s by a variety of immigrant intellectuals who made up Israel's literary elite. She also explained the different sections of the library before sending us on a fast-paced scavenger hunt around the entire building. It gave us a wonderful tour of the circulation library, the resource library, the children's library, the dance library, the art library, the Jewish law and tradition library, the periodical library, and the rare books library. We saw original copies of diaries in early Palestine as well as a copy of The Old Man and the Sea signed by Hemingway himself.

The group continued across the square to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The Israelis and Americans each had their own tour of three different exhibits. The following discussion used the art as a basis for locating and describing Israeli culture. After we each formed our own ideas about Israeli culture, we went out onto the streets to see what other people thought... Some of the answers were pretty funny!

We returned to the library for a delicious lunch of shwarma sandwiches and Israeli salads. The group then made its way to "Bikurei Haitim", a performing arts center. They offer classes of all sorts and frequently host performances. We settled ourselves into one of the smaller rooms and were led through a relaxing meditation by the day's staff.
hotos from our awesome talent show!
The mood then rotated 180 degrees as we began our TALENT SHOW! In the spirit of the day's theme, Israeli culture, each entry had to connect to Israel. The performances varied in ethnic style, ethnicty of the singer, etc. It was a wonderful hour of singing along, clapping hands, and laughing. The winners by far were our Middle Eastern, belly-dancing JCs!

A bus then took us to the Ethiopian Center in Yaffo (Jaffa). The center offers everything from dance classes to tutoring with lots in between. Our group was escorted by Getnet, himself a Diller fellow as well as a member of the Ethiopian community. We were treated to an interactive performance of a variety of Ethiopian dances including, but not limited to, Amharic and Tigrit dances. Some of the Diller Teens even tried on some traditional Ethiopian outfits to complete the picture! Then some teens gave us a preview of show they will be doing next week. A young woman then described the story of Ethiopian Jews beginning prior to their aliyah and continuing today. The audience was able to ask her questions about changes in Ethiopian tradition and etiquette here in Israel. The afternoon was concluded with a traditional Ethiopian snack of ingira (pancake), hummus (chickpeas), and a spicy salad.

That evening, we went to Na Laga'at (Please Touch). A restaurant and theater run by the deaf, mute, and blind, Na Laga'at is a fascinating place. After a quick dinner of pizza, we watched a show called "Lo Al Ha'lechem Levado" - "Not On Bread Alone". It was a mixture of the touching stories of about twenty blind, deaf, and/or mute men and women. It began with each member of the cast kneading and shaping their own loaf.


Then through sign language, some dialogue, music, and body language, they described to the audience that they live "not on bread alone." They have dreams and goals, they laugh and cry, they have friends and family, and they live and love. The show ended with the audience tasting the freshly baked bread and taking away the lesson that man lives - not on bread alone...

Racheli Schuraytz

Birthday Bash-- July 21

It has been said for a while that our cohort was like one big family. But, it wasn’t really true. We barely saw each other and had no knowledge of each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. Now, however, we can honestly say we get along just as well as your average family (a.ka. really well). J We have gotten sick and tired of seeing each other all day and then cried after being separated for a two hour activity. We have complained about what was served for dinner, fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders, and “borrowed” each other’s everything (shirts, dresses, food, towels, etc.)

But what truly makes a family close is celebrating together. Lucky for us, we have had three opportunities on this trip to really become “family”, both in the form of birthdays. Jessica’s birthday was on Sunday, July 17! She was serenaded multiple times throughout the day (in English) by her Los Angeles family before being surprised with a cake and congratulated by her Tel Aviv family (in Hebrew) as well. The celebration spanned about a third of the length of Israel as we started in Jerusalem that morning and then made our way down to camp out in the desert that night.

The second celebration was yesterday, Tuesday, July 20, when our amazingly talented medic, Shaylee, turned twenty-one! She was visited by many of the fellows as well as some “real” family later in the day. The third family party was the birthday of our fantastic JC, Emmanuelle! In honor of her eighteenth birthday, we surprised her with singing and cheering at every possible moment. At our evening circle, we celebrated with a yummy, Israeli cake, and presented her with a huge poster of our best wishes. We miss you all, but it is just so great to have birthday cake and sibling rivalry away from home…

Racheli Schuraytz

Ethiopian Experience

Here are only a few pictures from the cohorts' visit to the Ethiopian CommunityCenter in Yafo. The group had a great time learning 6 different Ethiopian traditional dances, listening to a women describe her family's exodus to the promised land, and eating authentic Ethiopian food made by the mother of one of the Tel Aviv Fellows, Getnet. It was so eye-opening to hear about the struggles the Ethiopians endured getting to Israel, and the ones they endure living here now.

Elyse Werksman