2014 North American Seminar!!!

For 11 days, fellows from Los Angeles hosted 20 fellows from Tel Aviv.  The following is a peak into the incredible experience of NAS TALA 2014!!!

Sunday Volunteering and Monday Fun Day

by Alana Entin and Shannon Rasson

After an amazing weekend full of laughter and bonding, the Los Angeles and Tel Aviv fellows arrived at the Los Angeles Jewish home for an afternoon filled with community service and learning. For many of us, it was our first time visiting an old age home, so nervousness and excitement filled the air. Each American fellow was paired with an Israeli fellow, and we split off to interact with different people. We started off stating our names and explaining about Diller, yet we quickly began to learn about each of the people we were talking to. Every person at the L.A. Jewish Home had a story or memory that related back to their Jewish life and identity. It was fascinating to hear these wise people discuss the unforgettable parts of their lives. Specifically, Sheer and I talked to an elderly woman who recounted the story of her moving to Los Angeles with her daughter and meeting her life-long friends at the temple she joined. The Israelis loved sharing their stories of home and discussing Israel with each person they interacted with. By the end of the afternoon, everyone was wishing that we could have had more time to spend there. Each and every person seemed touched by the service they did, but also by the stories and memories they heard and shared. 

The next afternoon we reunited as a whole group at the home of one of our junior counselors, Chava. The “Party in the USA” committee planned a fun night for us to all hang out and relax. We went swimming, played games, and had ice cream. It was a fun night to hang out with a group in a very relaxed setting. It was remarkable to see how close we had all gotten after just knowing each other for a couple of days. Everyone seemed very comfortable and happy around each other. For many of the Americans, it was the first day back at school, so the fun night provided a relief to all the stress and homework. Ultimately, both of the activities helped us grow as group. By Monday night, although we were all tired, we were looking forward to the rest of the upcoming week. 

Our Closing- Thursday

By Hannah Rapoport

Impactful, a word commonly used in our Diller vocabulary, however not exactly as strong or descriptive a word we sometimes would want to describe an experience that has truly changed and bettered us as individuals.  None of the fellows expected our second thursday night of NAS to really affect emotionally, but we were wrong.  As the Americans arrived to Vista Del Mar from their busy days at school, we found the Israelis jamming out to High School Musical.  Once everyone arrived at the location, we sat around tables in the gym and greeted the kids, inviting them to sit at our tables.  We met a particular boy named Daniel, who seemed quiet at first, but really got into the program and was more than excited to play Matzah Matzah Matzah, Mania Mania Mania with the whole group.  The  Rabbi at Vista Del Mar led the seder while we were able to help teach the kids the meaning and origins of Passover.  One of our favorite parts of the seder was seeing the kids try matzah for the first time.  We all especially loved the wafer cookies!  After dinner, Sami led us in a circle of Israeli dancing.  We all got really into it and had a great time.  We had fun being able to experience the seder with the kids of Vista Del Mar, and  the Israelis gained a new perspective of judaism in LA while talking to the kids, and helped teach them about their lives in Israel. 

 After the program, we headed over to the sanctuary at Vista Del Mar for a performance of Freedom Song.  Freedom Song was performed by the residents of Beit T’Shuvah, a residential Jewish rehabilitation center in Los Angeles. The play took place during a Passover seder and revealed to us the struggles of individuals who struggled with addiction.   We learned from the stories of the people affected by addiction along with their families.  What we came to learn was that the “actors” were telling their personal stories during the play, and acting was a part of their process of healing.  We were deeply affected by the stories of the struggles of the kids our own age at Vista del mar, and found a way to connect with them.  We learned the importance of support, our jewish roots, and connected with kids of LA who we would’ve never gotten to meet without this experience.  After the emotional play and q&a with the “actors,”  we gathered together for our closing ma’agal (circle) of NAS.  We went around saying our favorite part of NAS including funny stories, experiences, and what we learned.  We also had a short program where we picked an emoji to describe how we would sum up or NAS experience.  We then wrote a future letter to ourselves that we are going to open once we reunite with one another in Israel.  From bonding with each other, to socializing with the kids of Vista Del Mar, to watching a powerful play about addiction, to our closing ma’agal, we all became closer as a group of Diller Teen Fellows from different parts of the world, and found it sad to be leaving eachother in just a couple of days.  

A Video Recap

by Michelle Banayan, Junior Counselor: CLICK HERE

Pictures:

The Journey of Milk and Cookies

By Mateen Zar

We got together for the first time in 2014 on Sunday, January 12. This meeting was different than most because, instead of going to the Westside JCC, we met up at Temple Judea in Tarzana. During this time we discussed time management and “The Journey of Milk and Cookies,” which is having missions, visions, goals, and objectives. The purpose was for us to learn how to manage our time better and think about, when having a mission, what we want the outcome to be and what expectations we have.

In order to explore this “Journey” our junior counselors placed Lego’s on the floor and told us to start building until they told us to stop. Of course, with such vague instructions, we were all aimlessly building wondering what the point of this all was. The irony is that that was the point of the exercise. They didn’t give us any specific instructions to show us how difficult it is to work on something without having a mission, vision, goal, and objective. 

building for no reason at all??

However, I learned that overtime while ones vision changes, their goal and objective may change as well. For example: let’s say you are driving in your car to get to a destination, and the destination changes, the route you take therefore changes too. It was very interesting to me to learn that Sony's vision, originally, was to repair Japan and the Japanese culture and is now to create exciting new digital entertainment experiences for consumers.

After learning about “The Journey of Milk and Cookies” we formed groups and each group had a task to fulfill for our upcoming Shabbaton. My group and I were given Shabbat. We decided to put all our Shabbat experiences into one so that everyone would experience something new on this very special Shabbat. It was challenging at first because some of us didn’t really do anything special for Shabbat, but we came up with good ideas, such as fun Shabbat songs (without instruments of course). I am very excited to hang out with my Diller Fellows and have another amazing Shabbaton! 

A favorite moment from out 1st shabbaton!

Jews in the LA Mosaic Exhibition

By: Leora Tofler

On December 15, we went to the LA Mosaic at the Autry Museum. The location is beautiful and I reminisced about personal experiences as a child going to the museum and surrounding parkland. At the museum, we were taken to a room where we worked in groups to gain a rounded idea of Community and a better picture what it meant to us. Through various activities and conversations about community, our community began taking shape.

My favorite activity, “Jews on an Island,” introduced the difficulty of creating a utopian society made up of Jews. First there were many logistical questions: would there be weapons? What could we build? What supplies did we have? How could we each practice Judaism without rabbis or the Torah? Since each of us is of varying degrees of religiosity, what would then happen? We saw that the creation of a society was no simple thing; diversity, conflict, and adversity would have to be accepted as the norm, and perhaps our society would survive a year abandoned on an island.

Our communities were imperfect, but we brought our varied views together and put them in perspective: what does each person want from a community? Usually it includes fellowship, safety, responsibilities, common goals, and interests. We found an answer of sorts in our own Los Angeles community. After a delicious lunch from Got Kosher we were taken to the LA Mosaic exhibit and given a personalized tour.

The tour took us back in time to the mid-nineteenth century when California was bought by the United States from Mexico after the Mexican war. Our history lesson brought us a host of characters.  Cowboys, gold miners, and movie stars were all part of the cast that made up the California and Los Angeles that we know today. We learned of the loose social structure that California began with, which contrasted with the stratified east coast. Los Angeles was painted as a haven of acceptance for the Jews, who flourished as merchants, doctors, bankers, movie stars, and more. We saw the growth and spread of the Jewish community from neighborhoods like Boyle Heights and Fairfax. The legacy of the Jewish community is in its influence over culture, economy, and industry that shaped the Los Angeles area, giving it its unique flavor that draws tourists from all over the world to this day.

While the exhibit was at once engaging and interesting, our docent seemed less than well informed about many Jewish cultural traditions, and many times during the tour gave trivial comments about Judaism, distracting from the otherwise brilliant exhibit.

As a history fanatic, I enjoyed myself immensely and I hope we visit more museums in the future. As a Jew, I learned surprising facts about the Jewish communities’ contributions to LA’s development. I hope everyone enjoyed our day as much as I did.

Have a happy new year; we’ll see each other next in 2014. 

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!

If I have seen further....

One of our cohort 7 fellows, Becca Speyer, reflects on workshop two.  Both cohorts came together and we focused on Leadership...

Last Sunday Diller cohort 7 met again for a magnificent meeting. The first thing we did was met the fellows from cohort 6. Then Sami gave us the obstacle of getting into two pyramids by using the cohort six people as our base and cohort 7 on top. After much difficulty and laughter, we all sat down and talked about different topics relating to our pyramid and what it means. One of the topics was why Sami only had cohort 6 on the bottom of the pyramid. I realized it was because we are going off of what they have laid down for us already and we are keeping the legacy of the Diller program.

 After the pyramid, Hannah and I ran a program having to do with 2 of our Values (from our values chamsa): friendship and community. I was nervous to get in front of the whole group and explain the game called physiatrist, but everyone seemed to really get into it and had fun. Hannah and I achieved our goal of creating an exciting program that helps build community through laughing and having fun. Then we discussed the different leaders we know in our lives and had to come up with lists of their names and what qualities about them that shows leadership. I added my parents because if they set their mind to a goal, they will achieve it no matter what. We also created a list of traits in a great leader. The traits I added to the list were respect and being a good speaker.

Then we evaluated ourselves using the leadership compass. When Sami was reading what each direction meant, I thought I was a teacher (West), but then after getting a packet with details, I learned I am a warrior (North). Through this activity, I learned a lot about my peers and the way they learn and do their work. Although we have different views of how to do group activities, I know we can come together as a whole to get tasks done. 

After this we learned about emotional intelligence, what we see and what we do personally and socially. A great leader has to be much more than book smart, they have to be able to read people and situations in order to get their point across. It opened my mind to the approach I take to be a leader where I now look at the whole picture, not just what I want and feel.

 Finally we ended with creating our Shabbat Manifesto in preparation for spending Shabbat together in a few weeks. I am very excited to spend the holiday with my Diller cohort because we are all so different but we are brought together through Judaism and spending Shabbat together will bring us even closer. 

Welcome to Diller Cohort 7!

Welcome to our newest cohort of Fellows!

To start the year off strong, we have a first post from one of our new fellows, Hannah Rapoport!

We began this 15-month long journey on Sunday by walking into a room filled with people we had never met before.  Sami led us through a multitude of activities the entire day that helped us meet new people, and start to get to know each other.  We started off with a name game where we told the group what we did over vacation, then repeated everyone else’s name and what they did. Although we all had amazing summers, we are all excited to start Diller.  

We also went around and filled peoples names into time slots in 'meeting clock'.  When a time was called, we met with the scheduled person and talked about things like our most embarrassing moment and our favorite food.  We also got to know somethings we had in common with people when we created a human knot and crossed arms with someone we had something in common with. 

Then, we went around the room and put our initials on five pages with Values we most connected with. We then met with bigger groups, and eventually came to an agreement (or Brit) that on our five values of our Cohort were leadership, friendship, Jewish identity, community, and Tikkun Olam.  Coincidentally, three of the five words we chose are all pillars of Diller! 

We then had a meeting with our parents where we discussed in small groups a midrash about names and identity.  After the welcome meeting with parents, we went back into the room where our incredible junior counselors Michelle and Shana answered questions we had about Israel, and the program in general.  We then played a competitive game of Categories.  Overall, between our monthly meetings, weekend retreats, North American Seminar, and Israel, we are all really excited about the new experiences and memories that lay in the coming year!

2013 International congress!

Finally! After touring, Community Week, and two days of Kenness, we have reached Congress 2013! 

We were initially divided up into tribes solely with other North American Dillers for Kenness. I was a member of the Issachar tribe (pronounced is-his-car), in which my JC gave a handy piece of advice to carry on with us for the remainder of Congress: #YOCO - you only congress once. 

Okay, so I know this hash tag sounds a little cheesy, but believe it or not, it actually sums up my Congress experience. What are the odds that I will ever again learn and socialize with 400 other motivated teens my age from all over North America and Israel and build connections with so many leaders in my Jewish community? Exactly. The odds are quite slim, so why not make the most of it?

Yes, at first Congress was difficult. I mean, we were finally getting situated as a group of North Americans, making new friends and gaining knowledge about our Jewish identity. And just after two activity-filled days, buses loaded with energetic and loud Israelis changed the whole dynamic.

Our tribes doubled in size, debates and discussions now were held in both English and Hebrew translations, navigating the Dining Hall during lunch was a feat to be proud of, and the various types of personalities to meet and work with were infinite. 

And to be honest, it was overwhelming to try to meet so many different people and attempt to learn a handful of names ( I use the term "learn" lightly). But that paled in comparison to the feeling of talking with Israelis in broken English, only to find out that you have a friend in common or that your grandparents are related.  And as the week progressed, I became more comfortable speaking with and having meaningful conversations with diverse teens from across the world.  

I remember one day during our tribe meetings, I took a trip to the restroom to freshen up a bit after what was an extremely long day. There, I stumbled upon about six other fellows, all in the restroom for the same reason as I. Except rather than sit and complain about how hot it was (a common complaint) or how we only got four hours of sleep, we continued the discussion that we were each having in our respective rooms. So there we were, teens from all different walks of life, initially leaving our tribe meetings to take a break, only to find ourselves holding a completely self-motivated discussion of our own about the significance of North American Jewry on the state of Israel. 

Furthermore, not only did I grow as a Jew and leader from the knowledge I gained through meeting others and participating in discussions, but Cohort 6 grew into one big family. It's crazy to think how far we have come as a cohort on this trip and how all twenty of us are finally one tight knit group. Be it the funky juice in the cafeteria or the fact that by spending so much time with other teens we have grown to miss the fellows we have known for almost a year, I can honestly say that Congress has brought each and every one of us closer than we could have ever imagined. It's incredibly fun to socialize with so many different kinds of people and meet teens that you have so much in common with, but sometimes you just want to hang out with a familiar face and talk about anything and everything.

As we conclude Congress 2013 and embark on the next few days of touring, I will make sure not to forget about any of the lessons I learned, experiences I gained, and people I met. For,  although this part of my Diller experience may be coming to a close, the memories will last a lifetime and I look forward to seeing the rest that Diller Teen Fellows has to offer!

-Michelle Banayan