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!