Skip to main content

My Attempt at Blogging

This week marks my two month-iversary in Germany. As things start to fall into place a little more I thought it would be a good time to start documenting my work adventures.

I’ve always found blogging a little intimidating and intimate but I wanted to challenge myself this year so why not let that include blogging?

First things first, what am I doing here exactly? Well I’m an Entwine Jewish Service Corps (JSC) Fellow for the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). Briefly JDC is (stolen from the JDC website):

The world’s leading Jewish humanitarian assistance organization. JDC works in more than 70 countries and in Israel to alleviate hunger and hardship, rescue Jews in danger, create lasting connections to Jewish life, and provide immediate relief and long-term development support for victims of natural and man-made disasters. 

In other words I’m spending a year in Germany working for the Jewish community helping to revitalize Jewish life here. I spend part of my time in the west of Germany mainly in Duisburg, and the rest of my time in Berlin.  

Incase you’re still confused by what exactly my day to day looks like here’s some quick snapshots of Sukkot time in Germany:

Sukkot in Berlin





So Bambinim (JDC’s Jewish family center for kids and parents where I do most of my work in Berlin) teamed up with Jews go green to make a 100% recycled sukkah. We repurposed CDS and of course made paper chains with the kids. Clearly I'm just as excited about decorating as they are. 



Shabbat Playgroup



After some urban gardening and challah making the kids have a mini Shabbat each week. It's always a miracle that I manage to get the challah to rise.


More sukkah decorating aka more crafting! 








This time in Duisburg we have a young adult decorating party! I'm such a child at heart even with grownups all I want to do is craft.


Heres to the continuation of an already süßes neues Jahr (sweet new year)! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going Back to My Roots

Generally I don't post about my vacations, but the latest trip I took with my mom Lithuania seems to fit with the theme of my Jewish experience in Europe so here we go anyway. Last week we went to find our roots in Lithuania. This needs some backstory. My grandma was born in a town called Memel (now Klaipeda) in Lithuania in the 1920s. When she was 6-weeks old my great-grandparents decided to move to South Africa. Since then my grandmother has never been back, despite being an avid world traveler. So when my mom decided to come to visit me in Germany it seemed like a great opportunity to do some heritage hunting. My mom has been researching our family tree for years now and managed to locate the towns and villages that our ancestors were born in so off we set to go see what these places were like today. Vilnus old city, Capital of Lithuania  Rather naively I underestimated how heavy and emotional this journey would be. Living in Germany of course I'm quite aware

Bridging the Balkans

Last weekend I had the honor of presenting at the annual JDC regions event "Gesher" or bridge in Hebrew.  This event aims to bring together jews from the Balkan communities. From Romania, to Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey and more young jewish leaders and community members all gathered in Thessaloniki. Seeing so many young jews who were passionate and excited to keep their communities alive was inspiring. After seeing how much spirited fun these communities have when they come together I'm almost ready to move to Greece or Serbia (not to pick favorites). One of the highlights of the weekend was splitting up and doing community service all around the Jewish community of Thessaloniki. I chose to join the group that went to the Jewish day school to revitalize the playground. We painted a murals and games on concrete play area. Later in the afternoon five other people and myself each spoke on a panel about Jewish life in our five respective countr