North American Kennes by Noah Adessky

Kennes Day 2- December 31st, 2014

Obviously with 200 North American Jews all staying at the same kibbutz, things were bound to get interesting. The second day of Kennes was no exception. We started the day with designing our own communities in our colour tribes, which consisted of a mix of Fellows from the nine North American cities represented at Kennes. There were many important factors to think of in this task, such as the layout of the town, whether it would be pluralistic or secular or religious and above all what was important for each group member. Groups were asked to choose five guiding principles to decide on what institutions would be apparent in our town centre. The great part about this activity was that every single town was completely different. The important qualities in each North American community were apparent in our ideal towns and thus they were all different as North American Jewry is different everywhere.

The next activity focused on the leadership of David Ben Gurion and everything he accomplished during his lifetime. This activity was very relevant as Sde Boker, where Kennes was held, is the burial place of the former Prime Minister.

The third activity of the day was a direct continuation of the Liat Cohen Raviv's lecture from the night before. We focused on the development and the differences of North American Jews. We looked at the biggest communities, how Jews first immigrated to America and the importance of having so many different communities in North America.

Avraham Infeld was the guest speaker of the North American Kennes. All cohorts had spent time learning about his theory of the five-legged table of Judaism. He concluded that if each Jew chooses the three legs that are most important to him/her then every Jew will be able to connect on some level as they will always have at least one thing in common. These five legs are Memory, Israel, Covenant (Brit), the Hebrew Language, and Family. He also spoke about Judaism in general. He stressed that Judaism was not a religion, but rather a peoplehood. He explained how one does not need to be religious to feel Jewish and one does not need to be Jewish to feel religious. This stresses the point that Judaism is not a religion but instead a peoplehood.

The last programming of Kennes was called Looking Kadima. We started the program with discussing what we would have to remind us if we forgot everything. We then discussed in smaller groups what the five main characteristics of North American Jewry are today. Each group chose the values and shared them with the entire group. From these 15 qualities, we had to narrow it down into five. My group actually had a lot of trouble narrowing down our values. This is because Jewry is different in each community. The conversation ranged from how each community engages with Israel, the importance of tikkun olam, the different levels of religion in North America. For example, San Francisco is more of a reform community while Miami is a very modern orthodox community. We also discussed the development of the "Judaism" movement, where people do not choose a sect of Judaism to be devoted to and rather would just be "Jewish" instead being labeled as "conservative" or "reform." In the end, I realized that while Judaism is based on the same books, the way that Judaism acts itself out in different communities is completely different.

Our last Maagal Laila focused on the end of diller. We sat outside in the dark overlooking the cliff in Sde Boker. Two questions were asked and in order to answer the question, you had to break a glow stick and hold it up. The two questions were "what would you tell your pre-diller self?" and "how do you feel about the whole diller journey?" Everyone answered each question and what was amazing to me is that everyone's answer was different. We all connected differently with Diller but everyone thought that it was an amazing journey. By the end of the answers, everyone was sitting surrounded by glow stick light. The next part of the maagal was something called "Last Will and Testaments." Before the trip, our JCs, Maxwell and Alizée, left each fellow with a gift based on a memory. These memories came from different experiences from the Diller journey. We also created a list of gifts based on Israel jokes and memories. It was a very nice way to end both our Israel and Diller journey, with laughs and revisited memories.

We ended the night with a New Year's Eve countdown overlooking the Sde Boker cliff with the other North American Diller communities. What a way to say goodbye to 2014!