Workshop #6 By Ben and Steven

Diller Montreal, pretty excited to hear all about the great things that Auberge Shalom does for women

On Sunday March 9th at our Diller workshop, we started off watching all the Cribs videos of all our fellows, which was really fun. These were the videos that we sent to our Israeli partners to introduce them to our homes and tell them more about us.

Next we got into a program where we passed around controversial statements regarding Israel, and we had to put a green sticker on it if we agreed, or a red sticker if we disagreed. For example: You cannot be a Zionist unless you live in Israel or make aliyah. Anti-semitism sustains the Jewish people; without it, Jews assimilate. A Jew who visits Israel is just like any other tourist. And so on. We had a great dialogue afterwards where all the fellows shared their personnel ideas and debated whether they agreed or disagreed with each statement.

We also had a special guest who joined us on behalf of a women’s abuse and violence protection program, called Auberge Shalom. She told us about the services available to women and families in need, and shared some of her experiences there. We donated to her a box of melons in honour of International Women's Day, and Nutrition Month at the YM-YWHA. We posted this to Facebook as our #feedthedeed!

Finally, we deeply discussed the North American Seminar that is coming up from April 3rd-13th 2014. We received a booklet of all the rules and advice that were quite funny. This Saturday is White Night, a very cool evening where we sleep overnight at the Y. The social committee has organized a cool program for Pourim, first we put everyone’s name into a hat then the person’s name you pull out, you have to make them a Mishloach Manot! We'll be exchanging them this weekend.

All the committees and thoughts of each and every Diller member truly make Diller one big family!

Written by Ben and Steven