Congress Day 1

July 17, 2017

Charlie Shapiro

P

We Arrived at congress and we were so excited to have our first day surrounded by friends and Jews from all over the world. We had an opening meeting. We were broken into random groups from all over the world for a lesson and conversation about where we are all from, and how that affects where we are now. We had a large map on the floor and we each put a sticker where we live. Then we put stickers with a different color where our parents are from, and all the way to grandparents.  We all discussed what connects us and said why our family moved from our past countries. 

We all tried our hardest to converse and make new friends during our lunch break. They played popular music from all the cultures. We each had a motivational speaker we were assigned to to help inspire our Judaism. For instance I, Charlie Shapiro, had the president of Tel Hai college. We then went back and had a Jewish journey discussion. We each had random groups were our job was to pretend to be a Jewish family and we had to answer real life questions about our family relating to our Jewish identity. We ended our day with a maagal at our kibbutz and free time with the other cohorts at our kibbutz.