Ashkemore At Congress!

Today we woke up in our hostel got up and had breakfast all together. Then we walked to Tel Hai Campus, where we were inspired and helped set the mood for the day through multiple speeches, skits, and songs. We then broke up into our "tribe" groups and talked about what family meant to us. It was really cool to see people from all over the world come together in my tribe community and all share similar expectations of what a family is. We then compared our list of characteristics that go along with families to the Jewish community, both locally and as a whole. Talking about Judaism and the importance of a Jewish community is really interesting to hear from people who come from other Jewish communities, especially those from Israel. It seems to me that people from Israel, or at least those in my group, have similar views on how to act in different situations. Some of the Americans spoke of personal experiences with antisemitism, and I learned a lot just by watching the Israelis reactions in awe of how someone can get checked for horns in their own school in this day of age. They compared it to how Christian people sometimes get treated in Israel and that is such a 360 for me it's strange to think of. We then heard a talk from Avraham Infeild who inspired us by explaining his choice to move from South Africa to Israel when he was younger, and his struggles with his Jewish identity. He spoke of the potential five legs of a table in order to advocate for and to understand the Jewish people: family,  Hebrew, the land and state of Israel, the Covenant, and memories. We then proceeded to learn about the Hebrew language and the connections between roots in words to help symbolize the significance and deeper meanings within prayers and holy texts. We then learned about the covenant and analyzed a text not only connecting our prior knowledge of family and of Hebrew, but also by furthering our understanding of the significance of advocacy for the Jewish people according to Avraham Infeild. We had dinner back at our hostel after a nice walk back, and had a meaningful maagal Lilah, concluding our day with hugs and friendly faces that we had not seen all together all day.

Jennie