The second Diller workshop went quite well,
if I do say so myself. The awkward tension that loomed over us all in the first
meeting was long gone, and it was a whole lot easier to get to know each other
now that the “name” phase had come to a close. In my last blog entry, I spoke
about how getting to know someone’s name is not only useful for, well, talking
to them, but also for learning things about their lives, cultures, and what
have you. This blog is going to be more about the second phase of connecting
with people: learning about their identity. Obviously, this wasn’t to be an
easy task, but we had an entire workshop to try and make heads or tails of the
concept of identity.
The paradoxical thing about identities is that they’re so essential for knowing people, yet no one can really say that they have a concrete understanding their own. Throughout the workshop, it was clear that our JCs, and our coordinator, Yamit, were helping us establish our own identities in our cohort. We started off with a few icebreakers that encouraged the members of our group to go beyond what they’re comfortable doing. Most notably, the game “Bus Stop” required one participant to make an unfortunate bus-taker so uncomfortable that they were forced to leave their seat out of sheer disgust. Some people were reluctant to participate at first, but it was good fun once everyone started to view it as a means of establishing ourselves in the group.
To further encourage the pursuit of our
identities, we were all given blank white T-shirts upon which we had to write
aspects of what we thought to be our internal and external identities.
Naturally, since our cohort is wonderfully diverse, there was a lot of
variation and creativity in the designs and aspects that were written.
Interestingly, everyone in the group was encouraged to write down the qualities
of their identity that aren’t positive—ones that they wish they didn’t possess.
In writing both the positives and negatives of our identities, the scope
through which we view ourselves becomes much broader, and, as a result, we’re
much more open to change. That was what I found really hit the hardest for this
workshop: our identities aren’t set in stone. We are all unique people, but
who’s to say that we’ll be the same person in a year from now, or even
tomorrow? To understand identity is to understand that it’s always in flux. To
know someone isn’t just to accept them as who they are, rather, it’s accepting
who they can become.
This was our first official meeting with
our JC’s, Max and Alizée, and I think we can all agree that they were pretty
great! To further our discussion of identity, they showed us a presentation
with numerous examples of characters (real and fictional) that either overcame
adversity and established a new identity, or realized the negative implications
of their old identities and decided to change. They also presented the idea of
an identity from a more theological approach, and gave each member of the cohort
a sheet of paper (essentially a questionnaire) asking us whether or not we
believed in God, kept kosher, etc. The answers, again, varied greatly, but that
was exactly what we expected. It’s wrong to cast judgment onto others because
they’re more or less strict about certain customs than you are, and, if we were
all a homogenous group with no variation in background whatsoever, then trying
to find our unique identities would be kind of pointless. If anything, these
discussions were proof that, despite our similar backgrounds and beliefs, there
is an extreme amount of variety in our cohort.
So, to conclude, I’d say that the two
overarching themes of this workshop were that identity is constantly in flux,
and that even among similar groups, identity varies greatly. What can we learn
from this? Well, all we can really learn is that pinpointing one’s identity is
an incredibly difficult, arguably impossible, task. This might sound
discouraging, but don’t despair—the fact that we can never really know someone
else’s exact identity is kind of great. It means that every bond we make is
made with some degree of trust. We have to trust that, even though people
change, they’ll change for the better.
By: Sol Azrieli
