The Great Egg Drop: February 9, 2014

The meeting started off with Avodat HaLev from Ross and Alexa.  Alexa shared a scrapbook from her experience with the Ethiopian preschoolers in Rishon Lezion and Ross shared a story that touched our hearts and taught us to think peace. 

After Avodat Halev, our Junior Counselors split us into groups with a seemingly easy task. We were given fifty plastic straws, some tape, and an egg and were told to construct a contraption to keep the egg safe from being dropped from about five feet in the air. Two of the groups managed to keep their egg safe. Immediately after, our next team building exercise involved a pole that had string along the length of it, and a small maze. Our task was for each string to be held onto by someone who could not speak, while the others directed the movements of the pole through the maze. We completed this task quickly and ef

ficiently; our communication skills have come a long way since our first workshop.

Anais planned a great program that taught us about the Ethiopians in Israel.  We listened to a song about the long, hard journey the Ethiopians faced before they finally made it to Israel.  Queen Sheba of Ethiopia gave birth to King Solomon’s children.  This is the reason there are Jews in Ethiopia.  These Ethiopian Jews thought they were the only Jews in the world.  They had to prove that they were Jewish by memorizing all of the names of their ancestors.  After learning all of this historic information, Anais told us to act as if we were Ethiopians in Israel and handed us two pieces of paper with different amenities.  We had to try and trade our amenities with each other to get the ones we felt were most important for our survival.  We learned that many of these basic pleasures were difficult for the Ethiopians to maintain.  Then, Alexa stood up and shared her experiences with the Ethiopians in Israel and her knowledge of the struggles that they faced.  She explained that her mitzvah project was to raise money for Ethiopian children to attend preschool so that they could have the same level of education as the rest of the Israelis in their class.  Once the Ethiopian families moved to Israel, the fathers, who were dominantly the leaders of the household, lost their superior role to their children who learned how to speak Hebrew, thus created conflicts with in the household. Alexa explained that the Ramat Eliyahu Community Center in Rishon Lezion has programs for Ethiopian Jews so that they stay off the streets and can enjoy themselves. Next, we moved on to a discussion about what elements a leader makes. With Juliet being our scribe, we each named off different elements that we thought were important for a leader. Each element was put either on the right or left side of the sheet of paper; we learned later in the discussion that these sides represented internal and external qualities of a leader, and brought a very important question to each of us: Can a single type of quality, be it external or internal, make a leader?  Congratulations to the JC’s, Nitay and Juliet, and Anais for running a successful program.  However, It wasn’t the same without Leah. She was missed!  We can’t wait for our next meeting.