Life gets away from you...

Once again, a long time in between posts.  Sometimes when I use a bad excuse (or no excuse) to put things off (like schoolwork) I start putting everything else I want to do off as well, if that makes any sense.  So anyway, things have changed much since my last post.  My last post was a time of beginning for me, and now I find myself at another time of beginning.  But before I talk about that, let me try to talk about some things I mentioned in my last post.

First of all, I definitely feel more like a rosh eizor than I did last year, but I also definitely feel more of a partnership with the people I'm working with - we've learned to work well together, although we're not without our issues.  The ken is going really well - everything on the winter calendar was at least a conditional success (unlike some of the peulot we had last year), and the fact that we ran so many more peulot than last year, along with Kadima, really means that the eizor is alot more serious than it ever has been in the past.  I still wonder if we're doing all we can, but we're still figuring some things out and it's not like we've been gifted with overabundant resources.  We're doing damn good with what we've done.  Also, we divided up tasks and I am now the official parent liason for the Galil ken, a task which I quite enjoy doing and think I'm doing pretty well.

Anyway, that's that part of my life (although I might make a separate post soon about Veida).  The other half, my school half, has been having an interesting time.  First thing I'd like to say is that I really enjoyed studying education this past term.  I learned some interesting things - anyone interested in it should read up on Bloom's Taxonomy (which separates low level mental activities from high level ones, good for finding ways to create high level methods to further your chanichim's understanding of certain things) and Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences (kinda like book smarts vs. street smarts, but more detailed).  I learned about alot of flaws in the current education system as it stands, and some new techniques to make sure such things don't show up in the peulot I run for my kids.  Should be interesting trying to be a madrich with this new perspective.

Here's the thing though - I enjoyed what I was learning, I still couldn't stand school.  I mean, school as an overall experience wasn't too bad, but the things that you CAN do to make it better don't do anything to make the parts you HAVE to do suck any less.  I've been trying to find a way to deal with this fact since the beginning of high school if not before, and I haven't really succeeded in any meaningful way.  My grades have been going steadily down, and this past quarter I just couldn't make myself do most kinds of school work.   The result (as one might expect) is that I failed many of my classes.  And now I don't think I'll be going back to school for a while.

What am I going to do instead?  Well I'm working on a bunch of things, but I don't think I'm gonna talk about em here till I have something more solid than some ideas and a few leads.  I'll be sure to get back to you all about that.

Oh, and I almost forgot - Happy New Years!  May God help us to bring about peace on earth this year... or whenever we work hard enough to convince Him that we all really want it.

Fall Seminar 09

So Fall Seminar was awesome. I'm once again a Rosh Eizor along with Nora and Ronit Cohen, the new Shlicha, as well as Anna Yankelev and Alon Hafri who are running the Kadima Project which spans a few of the older age groups. That also looks like it's going well, but I don't feel the need to talk about that now.

What I want to talk about here is that when I arrived at Seminar I found myself in an odd position. Nora was on a paleontology field trip and as such wasn't there, and since Ronit still isn't as comfortable doing things like making hodaot (announcements) and even to some degree in dealing with tzevet I found myself basically as the Rosh Machaneh for a day and a half. Anna and Alon acted as mazkirut (exec committee, kinda), Josh Jacobs was the rosh mitbach, and Ronit was the shlicha. It felt strange because I really did feel like the seminar was predominantly MY responsibility, and this is the first time that's happened.

I kinda realized this gradually over the course of friday night, as I found myself trying to figure out who was sleeping in which tzrifim until I found out that noone was really organizing the mass of kids that had poured out of the 5 busses that had arrived from New York, the Kaiserman JCC, and Adath Jeshurun synagogue. It wasn't until I was making the opening hodaot about safety and the tzvatim on my own that I realized that the lack of people standing on either side of me was because there wasn't anyone who really thought that they had just as much responsibility over the seminar as I did. Anna then came up and helped me when it seemed like I might forget some hodaot, which was good both because it meant I didn't forget to tell kids some of the important rules but because it ensured that I realized that I had support, even if I didn't exactly have any equal partners in running the seminar.

I'm not gonna claim it wasn't fun and a little exciting after I got used to it. Don't know if I would want to do that all summer, but it's a long time before that's gonna happen anyway.

Ooh, and it's Erev Yom Kippur tonight. Gmar Chatima Tova, everyone!

Thoughts on Maapilim Seminar

So Ma'apilim seminar just ended, and it caused a whole slew of revelations. I think I'll go through them in order of my own emotional investment in them, from lowest to highest.

I realized, some time in the discussions of religion and long term habo plans at this seminar, that I want to eventually create a ken that mimics a synagogue. And that doesn't mean it hosts services. I mean that a synagogue is a center for the Jewish community. It hosts all kinds of events and it's a place that the whole community is welcome in (ideally). And yes, it is also a center for spiritual growth (again ideally) and religious education.

Some people are uncomfortable with religion and traditional blessings and prayers and things like that. When I say that there should be a habo synagogue I'm not ignoring these people - a synagogue should be a place for them as well. I firmly believe that they need to examine and learn more about religion, because it's where all our beliefs come from and everything good we learn from Judaism can be found reflected in the traditional beliefs and practices, it's just buried beneath lots of rhetoric and stupidity sometimes. But either way, my vision for the Ken is to do everything a Synagogue does, but better, and that includes bringing in people who feel alienated from Judaism and teaching them why it's actually pretty cool.

On a more personal level, it occurred to me that I will be probably the most experienced madrich on regular tzevet at Na'aleh this summer. I've worked at Machaneh as a madrich every summer I've been of age to, and the only person in my kvutza who will be there is Xander Fraum who has only spent one session as a madrich. Also, I'm the only one at machaneh, mazkirut or no, who has been participating in movement seminars. All this feels like alot of preassure for me to rep the movement. I'm actually slightly terrified. I'm sure it'll be fine though.

Finally, I've realized that I'm jealous of Workshop 56. Although a tad exclusive, their presence both as groups of individuals and as a kvutza are definitely felt in a very tangible way. And more importantly, there have been like 20 of them and like 5 of my kvutz at every national seminar I've attended and I wish there were more of us there so I could see my kvutz!!!

This last hurt the most to realize. I don't wanna be jealous of another kvutza, it's not productive. But I don't really know what to do about it - I don't really have any idea how I can change anything in my kvutz, especially because I'm not sure if anybody really wants to be changed. I feel like my kvutza is far more likely to drop me as a friend than they are to re-commit to any kind of kvutza process with me. And that sucks.

O hai thr... jeezus mary and joseph I've been reading too many lolcats

...But still the statement stands. Hey there folks, long time no musings. This quarter has sucked royally, and my silence is mostly due to that I think. No matter what though we're long overdue for an update.

So this past quarter has been horrible. It's basically convinced me that being an engineer is far too much work for the reward that I get from it. The only way I'm gonna survive 4 more years of this is by giving up everything important to me in my life, and that's just not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I think I would have realized this last quarter if it wasn't for the fact that linear algebra was a breeze when compared to Differential Equations. That one class really made the difference for me. This quarter my average is down and so is my self confidence - I thought I would always be able to do math. Guess not.

Anyway, I'm on break now so I don't really wanna talk about school. Instead I will discuss something I enjoy much more - dancing. Dancing is one of the things that started to fall to the wayside this past quarter but I don't intend to let that happen next quarter. This past weekend was spent at a dance weekend up in the catskills called Tamaron. I've been going there since forever and it's always really nice to see everyone there. I learned some great dances, including some that I am considering bringing both to my local community in Philadelphia and in Habonim. For the future I plan on going to a marathon that Mona Goldstein is hosting near DC and hopefully to Hora Aviv, a camp normally held in Philly that this year happens to be in Dover, Delaware. It will all hopefully be much laughs.

Aliya even wants me to write an article about the participation of Habonim members in Tamaron. I think I'ma do it, sounds like a good idea.

I think that's all I'll write for now. I have more to say, but I think I'll save some writing for all the time I'll spend traveling tomorrow. Toodles!

Xmas (Because I'm Jewish, so I feel weird saying the C word)

I know, I don't normally do holiday posts.  And it's not even time for the holiday yet.  But I just watched Steven Colbert's Chrismas Special (your welcome for the advertising Steve, won't even ask for any royalties) and it reminded me of where I spent Chrismas last year.  Poland looked like a winter wonderland for pretty much the whole time we were there, and the afternoon we spend at Cracow's Christmas Market in the market square (known in Cracow as the "Rynek") was amazing.  It didn't feel like the commercialized farce that I always assumed Chrismas was - there were actually carollers singing under a statue, they were selling hot cider and nuts and other Chrismas treats, and even though it was a market it didn't feel like a commercialized experience.  Which is strange but that's how it was, and I still feel good every time I think about that day.

So to all the goyim who read this (probably none, but you Jews can draw some relevance to your life as well):  This Chrismas you should use your traditions to create an authentic (and wonderful) holiday experience instead of just another excuse to have a big meal and give presents to people!