Wednesday, 12.31.14
By Emma Starr
Wednesday morning started off with a traditional breakfast of cheeses and eggs etc. We all then walked to our color groups and were told to look for envelopes with our color sticker on it. At first I felt weird looking around Ben Gurion's grave site for envelopes but then when the groups found them all and we opened them I was very intrigued. Inside the envelopes were quotes that Ben-Gurion said and dates that were important in the state of Israel. We each read them aloud and discussed if we were inspired and if so why. My color group had a serious discussion about the conflict and people shared some very insightful opinions. The notion of a group of around twenty Jewish kids from nine cities coming together to discuss the future of Israel was such an interesting perspective on how different people from different places see the world. After we concluded with how we are going to affect change in our homes we continued our program on the "Journey of our People." We also had to think about the first Jew in North America and put on a play about it. Then the leader spread out a map and we were all told to place stickies with numbers one to ten written on the places that we think had the most Jews. My group started out with getting the first three stickies correct but then we got the rest wrong. It was so interesting to see how the places we think didn't have a lot of Jews are on the list and the places we thought had a lot of Jews were the top five on the list. Boston is the city with the 7th largest Jewish population.
The five legged table is a concept by Avraham Infeld. He says that a table stands on israel, memory, family, covenant, and language. He spoke so passionately that it was very hard to not be totally captivated with his words which he so eloquently spoke.
After we heard from Mr. Infeld we broke up into our color groups again and discussed the future of North American Jewry.
We concluded our evening with a maagal both silly and serious. We screamed our new year resolutions while cracking our glow sticks and ran towards each other ready to embark on accomplishing them together when we go back to the states. We put on hats and glasses and counted down with the other cohorts and thought about how lucky we were to be in this beautiful country with the most amazing people in the world. We are one family full of people that care about each other and will do anything for each other. We are so lucky to have embarked on this adventure together, our nineteen amazing fellows.
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