Reflection about the retreat from Robert Monfred!

This weekend, we participated in many enriching and fun activities that helped the group bond. These activities ranged from improv to just playing some pickup football. We all bonded as a group and learned about how to work together. This weekend set a high standard for what the rest of the year will bring. Everyone definitely seemed to have a very good time and brought a good attitude in everything we did. 

More photos!

More pictures from the Shabbaton

Pictures from our first Shabbaton....

Diller Baltimore 2nd Seminar!

The 2nd Diller Seminar Summary... written by Morgan Plant!

On this wonderful Sunday, the Diller Teen Fellows met at Eva Cohen's house for our second seminar. The goal of this seminar was to begin easing into our service projects. We arrived at 4:30 and began with an icebreaker in which we described an aspect of ourselves through our cell phones. We met Justin Hayet, one of our Junior Counselors, and began our first activity, a self-evaluation. I found it very impressive how focused we were and how quickly we got the evaluation done, you may not think the same. After completing the evaluation, we had dinner, in which we ate falafel pizza, and formally met Danielle Gelber, the other Junior Counselor. We then split up into groups to put together a puzzle. Discovering that there was one piece missing from all the puzzles, we discussed the challenges we have to face and that in order to succeed we must deal with that we are given and make the most out of every situation. We also discussed how this is related to our service projects and how we are helping to better the world. Upon the arrival of Cara Mazor and Neta Shwartz, two Diller alumni, we again split up into groups to discuss our service projects. We talked about each other's prospective projects, how to attract volunteers, how to overcome the troublesome time, and the grant process. In order to take a little break, we played the compliment game (please ask about what the game is all about- it's a lot of fun!). After getting off to a slow start, Leah and Reid proved to be the most worthy competitors, but Danielle lived up to expectations and was our champion. We ended the night by briefly discussing the upcoming Shabbaton and the Israeli seminar following it.

Diller Baltimore Teen Fellows 2011-2012 First Seminar!

First seminar update written by Eva Cohen!

On September 11th, we had our first Diller seminar (hosted by the Gold family)! We opened up the meeting on a sad note when we discussed 9/11 and our memories of that day. After, we played some fun mixers (such as The Way the Wind Blows) to get to know each other and make up for missing our opening retreat. During our dinner break, we did a quick community service project:  decorating cards to accompany hand made knit hats and gloves for future donations in the winter (the cards will be part of winter care packages that will be put together by community members on Mitzvah Day – on December 25th). We then listened and spoke with our guest speaker, Kathy Shapiro, who shared with us her story of community service, helping someone, and overcoming her fear. She taught us to "not always do the easy thing". After her moving story, we met with the Diller fellows from last year. We had a chance to talk to each one of them about different specific aspects of Diller. They all had great advice about what to do for this upcoming year and got us excited about everything that we get to look forward to (especially Israel!).