Looking back at the NAS and forward to the Israel Summer Seminar Cohort 17

At our workshop today, Brian Lurie, a former Executive Director at the Federation, came to speak to us about the Federation’s ongoing relationship with Kiryat Shomone. It was really interesting to learn more about San Francisco’s connection with the area because it made me realize that our upcoming trip to the Upper Galilee is part of an already existing relationship, which is pretty amazing. Also we were able to ask him questions about the Upper Galilee and since the majority of us have never been to that area of Israel, it definitely helped give us a sense of what would be helpful to do during community week. 

 


We spent a lot of the workshop engaging in a feedback session summarizing and the North American Seminar. It was really nice to talk about the NAS and all the fantastic memories we created during the Israelis’ time here. We each drew a picture or wrote something describing a memory or something we took out of the NAS and then we were given another fellows note and had to present this as our own story. I loved this activity because it really gave us the chance to see all the different things people took away from the NAS because even though we were together for the retreat and the Israelis weren’t here for very long, each of us definitely took different things away from it. During the workshop and throughout this month we’ve been adding more and more details to our plans for community week and finalized our T-shirt design, which has made our upcoming trip to Israel feel so much more real and exciting!  We haven’t had a workshop since the NAS, which was a month ago, so it was nice to be in a more relaxed environment with just the San Franciscan cohort and catch up and work on all our plans for Israel!

Moriah Wolfe- Cohort 17