Written October 30, 2008

Last night we had an incredibly thought provoking activity. There were two in fact. The first, and maybe more profound of the two, was the activity that required a pair to stand in front of the room and stare into each others’ eyes and then describe what they thought their partner was thinking of them. I was the third pair that stood up, and I did so with Ben. When we stood up, in front of a crowd, and stared into each others’ eyes, everything outside that moment seemed to entirely dissipate. As people would later tell us, we would be swaying in the same directions simultaneously. There were thousands of various components that made the moment so remarkable. The fact that we were so entirely caught up in that moment and nothing else, that we were at a complete loss of words to even describe the very experiences that were occurring, that we had such a powerful bond that it went beyond just standing in a room and connected much deeper than just that.
The second activity, the reading of the poem by Yehuda Amichai, left me thinking of just one thing: the poem titled Fleas which goes simply “Adam/Had ‘Em”. What was the poet thinking? What did he want the reader to think? What feelings was he implying? What social commentary? Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. This idea seems to follow a life mentality of mine: life is what you make it. I believe that nothing in this world has inherent value, it is only when people ascribe value to things do we believe them to be meaningful. So although the poet may have had profound passion and a very specific intended response with the poem, any response is equally interesting and profound.

Response to my first day at Akim
Today I started my social responsibility project at Akim. I was very excited and nervous to start today, but I’m happy to say that I feel it was net positive. I have worked with teens with mental disabilities before; teens with autism, downs syndrome and mental retardation. One of many things I learned while doing this work was that it is very important to build a close and friendly relationship with them for things to be at all productive. Therein lies my nervousness. Coming with me was Matt. After an arduous journey to the location, we had a meeting with the menahel of the program. Unfortunately, as I discovered very quickly, Matt speaks very, very little Hebrew. Thus putting me in the position of translator as well.
In the past, when I had worked with a boy named Jake with Asperger’s, I found it to be enormously rewarding for me and for him as well as being enormously emotionally draining – today was no exception. Interacting with the various people at the center was incredible. None of them spoke English, so it was a test of my Hebrew skills and confidence. Our role there was rather vague; we were pretty much just plopped down and told to hangout with them. But I am sure that in time we will find our voice. We very quickly bonded with many of the people there: Avram, a man with both some type of mental disability as well as a serious lung problem due to smoking for many years; Racheli, a woman that has the rest of the men there wrapped around her finger (as described by another madrich working there) and many other amazing people.
I look forward to going back.