Friday afternoon, we all arrived at the JCC, loaded up the bus, and departed for camp. We had only had one workshop prior to the Shabbaton, so most of us barely knew each each other at this point. Nonetheless, there was certainly an anxious excitement in the air, with the big question..how was this weekend going to go?
I never knew you could do icebreakers on a bus, but the activity we did, "Bus Speed Dating" proved it quite possible. Just as speed dating works, we had a certain amount of time with each person as the people on the outside of the seat rotated around the bus. With each new person we talked to we were given a question to get the conversation going, everything from making animal noises, to listing the worst jobs to have, to what kind of food our personality smells like, and more. By the time we arrived we had all gotten to talk with everyone, and in such a short time I already felt like I knew everyone, well at least everyone's names.
When we got to EKC, we first unloaded all of the food, which there was quite a lot of. Then we brought all of our stuff to our rooms, and changed into our white attire for our Friday night Shabbat experience. We lit the candles then our special guest, Gabe Goldman, led us down to the lake to admire the true beauty of nature. The Shabbat was different than most, for we substituted formal prayers and traditions with a discussion and admiration of our connection to G-d and nature.
After this grounding experience, we went to dinner, which was then followed by an activity led by Yarden Naim, our Pittsburgh Community Shlicha. We were broken up into teams to play this giant board game made out of cupcakes. As we landed on different colored cupcakes, we had to perform a different activity or read about a part of Israeli culture. Our competitive sides certainly came out during this activity. But hey, everyone was a winner in the end because we all got to eat the cupcakes.
We then returned to the common room for our Oneg Shabbat discussion: What's in a name. We talked about our names, both our American and Hebrew ones, what they mean, how they define us, and what role they play. This is all a part of finding our identity, as our names and what they represent are a big aspect of that concept.
Following this discussion we had our very first Ma'agal Liliah. As Chris explained, these night activities will range from serious and deep discussion, to fun and crazy games, and more. Friday night's activity was 20 questions. As a question was proposed, we went around the circle and each had a chance to answer the question. Some of the questions and answers had us dying of laughter, while others were more serious and gave true insight into one another's lives and personalities. I really enjoyed this, for when it was over I really felt like I actually knew everyone, and that bond between us as a group already was tangible.
By the end of the night, looking back on everything we squeezed into in a matter of 7 or 8 hours seemed insane. I still can't believe how many friendships had formed in such a short time. If I had any doubts going into the weekend and even the program, they had completely vanished by Friday night. As I went to bed, I could feel the excitement, not just for the rest of the amazing weekend to come, but for the next whole year that I would get to spend with this amazing group of people.
~Allie Shepard
On Saturday, we woke up, and after breakfast we “woke up” with some teen-run yoga. It was really fun to try all of the different poses and joking around was a nice way to actually wake up. After the yoga, we had a Shabbat experience with Gabe Goldman. He led us in conversations about our thoughts on God and other inter-personal thoughts. The conversation was very deep and brought many of us to tears in sympathy for our fellow Diller teens' stories. I think that the point of the Shabbat experience was to have us look into ourselves and think about our personal activities. It really made us think about how other people think and what they are going through.
Next, our junior counselors, Henry and Jared, led us in "outdoor training activities," a series of icebreakers and leadership activities. The most interesting one in my opinion was that we all closed our eyes and had to make shapes with a giant loop of rope. We also did the "helium stick", which has a long stick (like a broomstick) and we had to each have two fingers on it and lay it on the ground, will all fingers touching it the whole time. It was really difficult because we all had a tendency to make the stick go up. We (theoretically) needed a strong leader to help us out and direct the team to complete the activity. But, when we did it we all contributed ideas and encouragement to the entire group, so we didn't really have a leader. The other team had a leader that kept encouraging them and helped to keep the stick going down. Afterwards, we had a conversation about what it means to be a leader and talked about successful ways to be a leader.
After an uneventful lunch, we did a “jelly bean activity,” a way to explore our Jewish identity anonymously. Each person had a cup, and we sat in a circle. Each cup had a question on it. The majority of the questions were about our Jewish identities and we would put a different colored jellybean (according to the different answers on the cup) and would go around and discuss our answers.
The last activity before dinner was the one I was most looking forward to (from the title), the “game show activity”. We were all put in groups and played many "game show"-type activities. The most interesting one was "jewpardy", a Jewish jeopardy game. One of the categories was “Jewish Comedians”. For every answer we didn’t know, someone would just blurt out Adam Sandler or Jerry Seinfeld, because those were the only answers that we could think of.
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We did Havdallah after dinner in a nice little pavilion, and then did an activity about our Jewish values and which ones meant the most to us. We drew the most important values to the entire cohort into a Chamsa on a large bed sheet and decorated it. We did a Sacred Trust Circle Ma'agal in the activities field next. We were blindfolded and led to a field where we were asked our biggest hopes and fears. After the Ma'agal, we had a fun bonfire where we asked our junior counselors (and Meital, who was super helpful and supportive on the girls’ side of the cabin) different questions (both serious and for amusement). Overall, we had a fun-filled, emotional day and it was super awesome!
~Becca Tsapis Mosse
After most of us having gone to bed after 3:30 the night before, the
7:30 wake up call on Sunday morning wasn't exactly the highlight of the weekend. With our excitement of going spelunking in the hours to come, we scrambled to pack up our rooms and get to breakfast by 8:15. The guys seemed to accomplish this with no problem, but for us girls it was a bit of a different story. Nonetheless, we all made it to breakfast, had our choice of cereal, bagel, oatmeal, and donuts, then packed our lunch for the day.
Finally, once the bus was all loaded we departed EKC with fond memories, off to Laurel Caverns.
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When we got there, we went to a room where our tour guide, Ben, gave us our oh so attractive yellow hard hats and chin straps, along with an overview of what was to come. Somehow the topic of dying or getting lost in the cave came up, a very comforting idea just as we were about to delve into this underground adventure. We began by descending down a straight, lit path which ended at about 15 stories beneath where we started. Then it was time for the real spelunking part. With flashlights turned on, we entered into the dark, surrounded by giant rocks on every side. At multiple places along the path Ben gave us the option of taking the easy or hard way, which most of us went by "go big or go home" and took the challenge with much success. The few that chose to go the "get soaking wet" way ended up having to army crawl through the muddy stream. I couldn't have been happier with my decision to stay dry on that one. He also pointed out land marks along the way which, looking back, we probably should have paid more attention to.
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At one point we stopped when we had reached a huge boulder on the side that had clearly fallen from the ceiling at some point, likely long ago. We were all instructed to turn off our flashlights, and I don't think I'd ever seen true darkness until that moment. With absolutely zero light in the cave a few hundred feet underground, we couldn't even see our hands an inch in front of our faces. Our challenge was to go around that giant rock in the darkness with only our sense of touch. Lucky me, I happened to be standing first in line, so I had absolutely no idea of where to go. With difficulty, we all made it through, though certainly not without some tripping and head bumping. Then, we turned on our lights and took that very same path, in just a fraction of the time it had taken without light. This reassured the fact that there would be absolutely no getting out of the cave without a light source, and certainly made us appreciate the light we had rather than take it for granted.
Finally, after almost 2 hours we reached the very bottom, the dead end of the cave, where we were 46 stories below where we started. At that point Ben and the staff took the back seat and it was up to our own guidance to get back to the top. We reached the first two landmarks, the snake head and post office, with relative ease, however after that there were some controversies over which way was the correct way. I think what threw us off the most was that there were at least two ways, easy and hard, at every turn. Thankfully Ben didn't let us completely choose the way to go by subtly throwing out things like "You probably don't want to go that way". Nonetheless, we eventually reached the light, and had successfully made our way out of a cave almost completely on our own. Go us. Like the other activities from the weekend, the ability to work together was key. Certain people stepped up as leaders, but for the most part everyone was able to have a voice in the decisions.
Three hours and a round trip of 92 stories later, we emerged from the cave, covered in dirt. Some, quite a bit dirtier than others, especially those that crawled through the stream. Somehow I managed to come out almost just as clean as I had been going in, who knows how though as I'm usually a mess. After a few photos and clothing changes, we left Laurel Caverns with the JCC as our final destination. It was without a doubt the quietest bus ride I have ever been on. I think I speak for everyone when I say I was absolutely exhausted. The next thing I knew, I was being woken up from my deep slumber parked in front of the JCC.
It started to sink in that we had to go back to reality, after such an amazing weekend away from the world and its trivial problems. In just 48 hours we had all grown so close, and I know most, if not all, of us didn't want it to end. Thankfully, though, this was just the beginning of our adventure, and I'm now so excited for the next year to come with this amazing group of people.
~Allie Shepard
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