Second Workshop: Identity

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