Melbourne Diller Teen Fellows

After experiencing our amazing first Shabbaton together, we were finally back for another exciting workshop!                 To start we had a hilarious icebreaker where we had to introduce our Israeli counterparts with out stuttering, umming or erring. It may seem simple but it seemed no one could complete their full introduction without an um or an err. It was a great way to start as everyone was laughing uncontrollably and got comfortable within minutes! Following this,  we had Nadia and Dahlia lead our Peer led sessions, which are always interesting and fun, and they didn’t disappoint! Each person was given 4 sticky notes on which they had to devote two to fun things that happened in December and two fun things that happened in January. When that was completed we moved to the other side of the room where a circle divided into two, for the two months, were set out. Each person stuck their two pieces of notes in their respective months and in the end there was a perfect circ

Our first Diller Shabbaton began a week prior to boarding the bus, at Beth Weizman, on a hot Sunday afternoon. We planned how we would cater to all the different streams of Judaism in our group. Little did we know how challenging and yet ultimately fulfilling this experience would be. When we finally arrived at Creswick, we were ready to give our all in every program and discussion that would follow. There were 4 main activities within the program; -        Exploring values as a Jew and Jewish values -        Discussing today's equivalent of the 10 plagues, such as the suffering in silence (darkness) and the curse of technology, based on the three final plagues which featured in Parashat Hashavua, Parashat Bo -        Learning about the different streams of Judaism, focusing on the Women of the Wall. -        “Hour of power” discussions, cantered on Jewish Identity, run by the Fellows. As a group of 20, coming from different perspectives and backgrounds, it was su