BFL

Oh my God, I haven't written for almost a month! Okay, I'm getting back into it, this is ridiculous. So here's an update:

MASA's Building Future Leadership conference was something else. People from my program who went included: me, Alex, Cory, Naum, Aline, Jess, Anna, Sam, and Simon. The nine of us got a chance only 400 out of 10,000 current MASA participants got to do. We stayed at Beit Yehuda, a large and luxurious hostel in the southern end of Jerusalem. During registration, after they couldn't find my name in the system, I had to get alternatively placed in a room with Gap Year students, post high school programs. Gap Year and Post-College programs were, for the most part, separated during the program because, given the age difference, we are obviously at different points in our lives. I went to my room and met the kids with whom I was rooming for the week. We had a nice conversation about college, my experiences, and what they were looking forward to in the next four years of their lives. I felt good and strong, acting as a mentor to them for a few days.

Obstacle course

We then got placed in our groups. I was in Group 18, which consisted of people from Connecticut, Boston, and Toronto (and one guy from Montreal). We all got to know each other over te course of the week, and I feel like I made a lot of friends from this conference. Most people are on MASA programs living in Tel aviv, so I have the opportunity to hang out with them anytime I want. It's not like Birthright, where about 40 people travel around together learning about Israel for 10 days then typically never see each other again. After that, we had an opening session where Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, answered a few questions from MASA participants. Mr. Peres is a very influential politician. He was born in Belarus in 1923 and made Aliyah when he was 11 years old. He worked closely with David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister while in the Working Party (Mapay). Since then, he has served as PM twice and as a Minister in 12 different government offices. At night, we went to this Gala event where we had great appetizers, a sub-par dinner, and great music by this Israeli rapper, SHI 360.

My group's sad excuse
for an arch

On March 19th (Day 2 of BFL), the post college participants went to Neot Kedumim, an artificial nature reserve at which we performed a bunch of team building and leadership training exercises. Group 18 got into a circle and held hands. We had to put all people through a hula hoop without the human chain coming apart. We came up with a good strategy and executed it in 55 seconds. Then we did it again, and quickened our pace to 40 seconds. That's probably a record. We then split into three groups to build arches. My group tried the best we could, the others did better but they were all arches (in some fashion). After that, we did a trust exercise in which we had partners helping each other across a wooden obstacle course blindfolded. My partner, Jen, and I finished the quickest (even though it wasn't a race). Then we had the time to help another person, Melissa, through the course. Lastly, we had to stand on long skis as a group of 7 each and move down a small dirt road toward a tree, like a race. We all had to move our feet together, and we often fell down, but a couple groups did well in harmony. After lunch, we went back to the hostel and did a workshop and had dinner. Instead of going to a discussion group and a panel afterwards, my friend, Yuliya, and I skipped them and went into the city of Jerusalem to chill and meet up with a friend of hers. We walked around and had some pizza.

Another group's PERFECT arch

On Day 3, our tracks started. I chose to do the Intrapreneuship track, in which we would learn about change from within. It basically was an introductory college communication class, so I didn't really learn anything new. However, it was interesting to listen to this guy talk and have us do activities. The guy we had, Ran, taught us "Variables used to persuade others". They include: message vs. messenger, verbal comm vs. nonverbal comm, overt vs. covert, information vs. knowledge, and being irrational vs. rational. We learned that Fact + Value = Argument. An elevator pitch includes four parts: a teaser (or what I called in the seminar an attention getter), a subject, a benefit, and then explaining "why you?". I could have taught this seminar; being a comm major in college helped. After our tracks, we had discussion and dinner, then a participant-run event called, "Open Space with ROI". An open space forum is an event in which the attendees determine the agenda; we could talk about whatever topics we wanted, however smart or dumb the question or topic was. It was definitely fun and a different thing to do. The great thing about this event was that you could use the Law of Two Feet at any time; if you find yourself not learning or contributing to the conversation, you can simply take your two feet and walk away. After that, we had a short, random dance party set up by Nina from my group. That night, many people took part in either helping to write the BFL Charter or participating in the Lipdub event, which the video was awesome!

All those papers had topics for the
Open Space discussion

Day 4 proved to be much better; my track took a field trip to the Knesset! We took a short tour of the building in which we saw some paintings done by Marc Chagall, one in particular spoke volumes to me. It displayed the past, present, and future of the Jewish people in terms of people from the Torah and what could happen in the future. It showed Moses, Abraham and Isaac, and so many different events and people in Jewish history that basically would be good at summing up how far the Jews have come in almost 6000 years. We then listened to a few different diplomats talk.

First was Einat Wilf, an MK in the Independence Party. She originally ran in 2009, won 14th place on the party's list with only 13 seats, so she had to sit out for a while. Once someone retired in 2010, though, she rejoined the Knesset. She was fluent in English, given spending 4th and 5th grade living in Maryland with her family. She even answered my question, "What did you do while you were unemployed from the Knesset?" with a straightforward answer in great detail. The second guy was an MK who did not know English and we listened through a translator, which I unfortunately fell asleep for. But the last guy was interesting. He is the personal assistant for another Knesset member, and spent his previous career in journalism. He's only 29 and still learning the ways of Israeli politics, but when it came time to do Q&A, he answered some questions in detail and others vaguely. One I asked was answered fine, but when another person asked a question, I could tell his answer was wrong because my education in Communication told me so. He was still interesting to listen to. Afterwards, we sat in to watch a bill on higher education get passed. It was weird, though, because it looked like no MK was paying attention. Very few were even there because of vacation, but some voted and some ran to vote and missed the vote.

Once we got back to the hostel, we finished our track by going over how to write a good convincing paper. The opening manages expectations, the body discusses the 3 main points, and the conclusion summarizes everything. Cory and I pretended he was the next undertaker of Israel, and he played The Undertaker, a former American Wrestling Association champion. We played games saying he was the "Minister of FuneREAL Affairs" and knew the proper traditions and values for funerals of all different types of people living in Israel, including Jews, Druze, and Arabs. It was so funny! Lastly, we had a discussion group, dinner, and another performance by SHI 360. Very funny stand-up comedian, Benji Lovitt, closed out our night with some great jokes.

Day 5, the last day of BFL, was one of my favorites. Ilan Wagner from the Jewish Agency came to talk to the Post-College participants about the challenges facing Judaism today. He discussed the crisis of non-Orthodox denominations, specifically the Reform and Conservative movements, regarding their economic and identity crises. People like to find their own identity and not necessarily through a collective, especially by being religious and going to synagogue. That's partially why synagogues are losing membership every year. Jewish organizations are also beginning to focus on prioritization of money and on individual work. So, Jewish communities are declining because Jews are giving less and less money to their communities, due to intermarriage and assimilation. About 5-10 years ago, 45% of Jewish college students had only ONE Jewish parent, and it seems like a lost cause that kids in non-Jewish homes will have very weak Jewish identities. But defining yourself as Jewish is really a sense of belonging, not necessarily of being religious (then again, that does help people become more of a community). What needs to happen is that fundraising needs to increase from Jewish and intermarried families, and significant groups of people who come to North America need to join synagogues because religion is a big thing in the United States and Canada. Also, among wider environments (i.e., Judeo-Christian culture), Jews need to separate themselves from the Christians because their values are being dissolved by Christian culture and separation of church and state are sometimes having a weaker effect nowadays. Lastly, the assault on Israel's legitimacy is terrifying. External threats focus on the Israeli Apartheid Week and the BDS movement, hating Israel and sometimes the Jews for just being peaceful when everyone against the Jews is saying they're trying to get rid of the Palestinians, which is the furthest thing from the truth. The overall message was to be collectively involved.

BFL Group 18 from Connecticut, Boston, and Toronto (and Montreal)

In the second seminar, we learned a bit about Public Diplomacy. We learned that you need to focus on analogies and terminology. You must debate terminology BEFORE ideology, and you choose what words you want to use and when to stop the conversation. Cross-referencing in which you compare issues is important. Lastly, role reversal is a necessary skill to have; ask "What would you do [in my situation]?" If the other party is stumped, you kind of just won the debate. However, the most important thing in fairly using this skill is to listen, ask questions, and then react. After that, we had a graduation and I got a plaque which I can hang on my wall.

Shortly, I will write about what I have done since BFL. Until then, I gotta get to Jerusalem. My friend, Allison, is having a birthday party tonight! Yom Huledet Sameach!