Rachel Goodman (Needham): As I boarded the
bus to go to Camp Ramah I felt a bit nervous.
Although I had met the fellows twice before, I was still unfamiliar with
everyone’s names. I hoped to learn a
bit more each fellow and their personalities throughout the weekend. Luckily, the wonderful staff was able to put
together some programs that helped me to get to know everyone. Our first program was called “The Jelly Bean
Activity” which was lead by the JCs.
This exercise focused on our views and beliefs on personal, social,
political, and religious issues. Each
fellow was given a bag containing three different colors of jellybeans and a plastic
cup with a prompt. Under the prompt, there
were three possible answers to the question, which were color-coded based upon
the jellybeans. Fellows read aloud their
prompts, which included: “What are your study habits?” and “How often do you go
to synagogue” and even “what are your thoughts on gay marriage?” As the cup was passed around each person put
a jellybean in which corresponded with his or her answer. After, we assessed the results and had a
discussion. It was interesting to hear
what the other fellows had to say about their opinions, as well as how they
defended their statement. One discussion
that stood out to me was about how often we attended synagogue. The answers ranged from “only on high
holidays” to “every Shabbat.” This made
me realize what a diverse group of Jews we have in our cohort. This also excited me because I was eager to
learn about my peers’ ways of observing Judaism.
Our next program
was “The Diller Lens” and was lead by Liana.
We were handed two pictures: one with two older people holding an
Israeli Flag on an airplane, and the other that illustrated a woman and two
boys laying flat on the ground looking petrified. The fellows were asked to list the objective
and subjective qualities of the pictures.
While writing my observations down, I realized how quickly people could
draw conclusions. I looked at the
picture of the older couple, and saw that they were smiling. I immediately thought: “Oh, they’re happy,”
but then realized that was a subjective quality of the picture; although they
were smiling, I did not have the information to conclude that these people were
truly happy. The group reconvened and
discussed our observations of the photos.
We noticed that many of our notes were the same, in which we used our
prior knowledge about Israel and Judaism.
We then talked about how a non-Jewish person would look at them, and
wondered what conclusions they might draw.
We then transitioned into the next part of “The Lens.” We watched an award-winning short film called
The Tribe which described the making
of Barbie and then the modern Jewish culture and people. After the movie, all of the fellows were
speechless and confused: we had no idea what we had just watched! The movie seemed to jump from theme to theme,
having no concrete plot. We tried to
decode the message of the film, but were still confused. Eventually, we concluded that the maker of
the film was trying to get the point across that the Jewish people have changed
and adapted to modern day.
Our final program
was led by the Leaders of the Day, Hannah and Hillel. They educated us on Haifa, and taught us
about the famous sights, places, and culture of the city. The reason they focused on Haifa was because
our sister cohort is located there.
After the lesson, we played a trivia game and used all of the knowledge
we had just learned about the city to answer the questions. This program was extremely helpful for me
because I have never been to Haifa, and was curious about the places and
culture in the area. After, we made a
video for our sister cohort to introduce ourselves. In our movie, we creatively introduced
ourselves through a silly song. We all had a fantastic time making the video,
and all agreed that we are super excited to meet our friends in Haifa. All in all, I feel that these programs helped
us to get to know each other and bond as a group. From sharing our opinions to singing about
our names and qualities, this weekend could not have been any better. I am looking forward to seeing the rest of
the fellows at our next workshop, and cannot wait until the next Shabbaton in
February!
David Grossman (Nashua): Although all of us are Jewish, our levels of commitment and
ideologies differ greatly. So, it was very interesting to celebrate a Shabbat together.
Shabbos began right as we got to Camp Ramah and we quickly changed into our
Shabbos clothes to light candles. With us during this Shabbaton was the
wonderful and “rad” Rabbi Shmaya Friedman and his wife Aleza and two daughters. Shmaya and the
staff then lead a reflective Kabbalat Shabbat where we took time to think about
our past week and think about the Jewish aspects of our lives. After dinner, we
got our Parsha on and learned about that week’s Parsha in style. We split into
groups and adapted parts of the Parsha to modern day stories. Not to reveal
everything, but the results were hilarious. #ParshaVa'yeitzi.
After a rejuvenating night’s sleep, we were all in Shabbos
Mode and ready to Daven. Shmaya led an open and upbeat service, including
everyone and allowing time for personal meditation. There was a mechitza because it was a traditional service, so Shmaya explained the origins of its meaning. This made us think about the ways in which gender seperation still does and does not apply to different groups of Jews today, according to their beliefs. At the end, we broke out in
song and dance, chanting David Melech Yisrael. To conclude Shabbat, we broke
into small groups to meditate and then grouped together again for Havdalah. No
matter what our Jewish upbringings were, our commonalities and Jewish cores
united us all during this Shabbaton. It was a lot of fun and especially unique
with the presence of Shmaya and his family. Thanks Rabbi Shmaya!
Sarah Gladstone (Brookline): Time flies when you are having
fun. Never once has that saying meant
more to me than this past weekend on our first Diller retreat. Who would have thought that one could say “bunny”
so many times when playing a silly game, or that we would watch a crazy movie
that challenged us to think outside the box just to decipher its meaning all in
just one night? And that was only a
small portion of the crazy weekend that we had together.
On Saturday night, our wonderful
leaders of the trip, Hannah and Hillel, led an activity. We were to send a video to our Sister City
Haifa to welcome them and to introduce ourselves. After learning a little bit about Haifa, we
decided to do a role call chant. Each one of us found a way to introduce
ourselves in a rhyme (with a little bit of poetic license, of course). It was filled with clapping and fun. After that role call, we all chose an animal
noise so that we could enact the video “what does the fox say?” We had elephant noises and monkeys, wolves,
snakes, and even a human noise. Even the
staff joined the fun by making the crazy noises of the fox along with the crazy
dance moves. It was a blast -- hopefully
our fellows in Haifa enjoy watching it just as much as we enjoyed filming it!
But this weekend was about more than
just having fun and going crazy. It was
about learning about each other and breaking down boundaries. An activity on the last night commenced with each
of us reflecting individually on all that we had done leading up to that night
and what we hoped to keep gaining from it. Following our reflections, we were
given blindfolds and were led in a line holding hands through the woods. The fear of bumping into a tree or tripping
over a root was overpowered by the sense of trust I had for the two people on
either side of me who caught me when I stumbled. We were then led to a dark
stage, and were told we should say one of our fears. I do not know who the brave one was who spoke
first, but after one person said their fear, we all dug deep down and threw out
one of those fears that keep us up at night.
And they were all so genuine -- fear of one’s self or expectations or
failure or sick loved ones. We were then
told to shout out something important and positive about ourselves while
breaking a glow stick. We ended that activity with everyone giving each other a
hug. We had just made ourselves
vulnerable, and we were now lending each other our support.
