Eimatai Conference Essay
by Ilana Frankel
November 24, 2003

Last week from November 12th-16th I, along with Diana Berger and Ari Weber from Frisch, had the honor of being part of Eimatai, which took place at the Block and Hexter Vacation Resort in Pennsylvania.

Eimatai is a leadership-training program where kids from yeshivas from the tri-state areas to as far as Chicago, Memphis, and Florida bond and learn for a long weekend. Our topic this year was to understand the different levels of Judaism from the Chassidism movement to the reform movement. Our goal was to try to bring back a program to the school that will connect our particular schools to the conservative groups in our area.

In between the snow-ball fights (yeah, it snowed there and it was freezing!), the endless eating, the concert with Seth Nadel- a Frisch graduate, and an amazing bonfire that lasted till dawn, we got a great deal accomplished. Renown rabbis such as Rabbi Anchelle Perl from the Chabad of Mineola came to talk to us about kiruv, which is including and being active in bringing non-religious Jews to Judaism while at the same time realizing that all Jews are Jews whether or not if one, does more mitzvoth. This rabbi was so devoted that he drove up for four hours and spoke for a half hour then drove back home in time for Shabbos. We had sessions in smaller groups on how to react to Jews that are not similar to us and we learned many rabbis and their different approaches of including or distancing ourselves from less observant Jews.

Another aspect of the weekend was becoming leaders. We heard from many rabbis and teachers, including Rabbi Blau and Dr. Blau who are the parents of our very own Rabbi Blau, teach us the qualities of a leader. We heard from Rabbi Spodawk, the rabbi from Boca, that to be a leader "our actions must speak louder than our words." People can say what they want, but it means nothing unless they can act on it. We all had groups and one activity was to build a throwing and catching machine with not many tools and not much human intervention. It was quite difficult and it was freezing so after a while many groups were playing volleyball and stickball with the materials given to them! One of the highlights was the tish that our very Rabbi Eli Ciner led. He got the entire group of Eimatai kids plus every counselor to sing and dance and really experience a "Frisch tish." It probably helped that he gave out free Frisch gear, but it worked!

All in all, Eimatai proved to be a great experience and I really feel like I have learned so much. I hope to introduce new programs to our school and community to help bridge the gap between us and other levels of Judaism because bottom line is, is that we are all the chosen people!

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