Workshop 5: Tu B'shevat By Gita Margolese

This past Sunday we had another fun and educational wokshop. The theme of this workshop was Tu B’shevat. We discussed what trees symbolize and the importance of appreciating nature.

The workshop began with each fellow describing their roses, thorns and buds of the week. Roses represent something good that happened during the week, thorns represent something bad that happened and buds represent something we are looking forward to in the near future. Many of us said that our bud was the upcoming Shabbaton which I know I can’t wait for!

Next, we had a Tu B’shevat Seder led by our amazing JCs, Rebecca Gotteiner and Spencer Albert. In the Tu B’shevat seder we drank four glasses of grape juice, each glass darker than the previous one, starting with white grape juice and ending with red grape juice. We also ate three different fruits, the first one with a hard outer shell (oranges or grapefruit), the next one with a hard middle or pit (olives or dates) and finally, the last one being completely edible throughout (raisins and blueberries). Each of these represent different level of purity, holiness and potential. During the seder, we also had a five minute meditation session where we were able to relax and unwind and simply focus on our breathing which really helped refresh us after a tiring and long week.

After the Seder, we acted out a story as a group about Honi ha-M'agel who was once walking and saw an old man planting a carob tree, a tree that takes 70 years to grow. He asked the man why he was planting the tree and the man told him that he was planting the tree, not for himself but for future generations. The old man then fell asleep and when he woke up, 70 years had passed and he was able to benefit from the carob tree that he had planted many years earlier. We reflected on being grateful for what nature provides for us, as well as the importance of ensuring that future generations get to benefit as well.

We then were each given a picture of a tree to personalize. The tree represented who we are as a person where the roots represented where each person comes from, the trunk represented our core, our beliefs and our morals and the branches and leaves represented our aspirations and goals for the future.

After our creative work we had a short break for lunch where we made delicious falafel.

After lunch, we had an amazing program run by Avital Beller, our shinshinit. The group was split into two teams. Each team wrote down words related to Tu B’shevat on individul pieces of paper and put them on a plate. Each team then acted out charades with the words written by the other team. The next part of Avital’s program involved spliting into four groups. Each group was given an article relating to either Tu B’shevat or trees and we discusses our articles in our groups.

We then broke off into our committees for the Shabbaton and finalized our programs.

Finally, Sarah, our awesome coordinator explained what the Jewish Community Mifgash with the Israelis would be like. We brainstormed as a group some fun activities that we could do when our fellows from Be’er Sheva arrive. We all had an amazing time at the workshop and can’t wait to see each other again soon at our Shabbaton! I would lastly like to thank Sarah, Rebecca, Spencer and the whole Diller team for all the time and devotion that they put into making each aspect of Diller run smoothly. We really appreciate you!

By Gita Margolese