2nd Shabbaton: 50% Self-Management Part 1 by Hannah Bicher

Our 2nd shabbaton was super fun and chill. We went to camp Kinneret which is near Mont Tremblant. 

Once we arrived at the Y at 1:00pm, we went straight to camp. Once we got there, we unloaded our bags and supplies and prepared for Shabbat that was soon to arrive. 

The Rituals group hosted Shabbat candle lighting where girls and some of the boys lit some candles that were in a shape of a Magen David. Then we did Kabbalat Shabbat, which included services and some trivia questions, and ate dinner which was really good. 

We had a program run by the Partnership group later in the evening where we did many activities like testing our Israel knowledge. We were each given a year and the group in charge read an event in Israeli history. Then, the person from each team who had the correct date, had to go up and eat a licorice really fast in order to tell them the date. We also did activities about our pen pals, to see if we really knew our Israeli. One of the activities was where group two placed papers of fun facts about everyone's Israelis and we had to pick the paper that has the fun fact about our pen pal.  

We did Ma'agal Laila both nights to get us to connect with each other. The Friday night, we sat in a circle and closed our eyes and Sarah tapped someone on the head and asked questions like "who in the room makes you laugh a lot" and you had to tap someone who you thought made you laugh. Afterwards, we all hung out together before going to bed.

  

Saturday morning, we had breakfast and then we did a program led by Rebecca and Sarah about prayers. We started with small pairing discussions related to random materials, and when we brought them back to the group we learned that these were the materials mentioned in Parashat Terumah, for the construction of the ark. This led to a discussion about individual vs. group prayer. We ended off with a guided meditation and personal prayer.

Later on in the morning, the Leadership group ran their program. We had to put on a skit about any values related to leadership like honesty, communication, etc. Everyone enjoyed it very much and we discussed what type of leaders we are.

During our break, we ate lunch and played outside in the freezing cold for only 10-30 minutes because it was -35 out. Then we all chilled inside and played some cards for a little while. 

Later in the afternoon, Tair and Alon who are a shinshinit and shaliach from Israel hosted a dialogue program where we talked about the Women of the Wall and Israel. They also provided us with some guidelines to help us have meaningful discussions with each other and with our Israelis when they come. We would like to say thank you for talking to us about this interesting issue and we enjoyed listening to an Israeli's  perspective about the Women of the Wall.

Afterwards, we played games like  the apple game where we had to squish together in a tight circle and we had to pass around the apple from behind our backs while someone in the middle had to guess where the apple is. Some fellows even tried taking a bite out of the apple secretly. This was fun and it made everyone more awake. 

Right before supper, the Rituals group was in charge of havdallah. We sang a lot of songs like Baruch hagever and Ani maamin. We really connected. We even sang our national anthem.

To conclude, I am so happy I am in Diller because I got to meet so many nice people and it's so fun to hang out with all of them. 

By: Hannah Bicher