We woke up bright and early, all our fatigue was gone, especially after getting a coffee at Dunkin’ with our amazing host, Adam. Also, American coffee is insane, having as much caffeine as a liter of regular energy drinks, but that’s a conversation for another day.
After arriving at BT we had our first program with the American students, teachers and rabbis. After Dr. Schorr’s warm welcome, we had a chance to get to know the shul’s senior rabbi, Rabbi Posner, with whom we talked about Jewish identity and values. Afterwards we were divided into small groups – both old and new members of the program were placed in each group – and had guided conversations which helped us get to know the new students while the veterans had a chance to joke around and reconnect.
When we were done talking, each group went on a tour around the school having the American students as our guides. While on the tour, we had the task of taking selfies in parts of the school which have symbols of Judaism, then we had to guess where each group’s photos were taken. Our discussion about the symbols led up to another conversation about Judaism with a rabbi, but this time with Rabbi Soskil (which was in my humble opinion the most interesting part of the day).
Our after-school programs included a visit to the 7Mile Market and a tour of the local JCC (Jewish Community Center). The market is basically a huge supermarket, the interesting thing about it is that it’s all kosher, which is something you’d never see in Hungary, as we have 2 kosher stores in the entire country, both of which are reasonably small. When we finished buying lunch at 7mile market, we went straight to the Owen Mills building on the Baltimore JCC, where we first got to sit down and eat our lunch and afterwards got a tour of the building led by our amazing guide Diana. No part of the building was particularly surprising, as we have something very similar in Budapest, the Bálint Ház (it’s also a JCC), but the JCC in Hungary is way smaller and less well equipped, so it was cool to see how well this concept can work with better funding.
While at the JCC we also discussed how to become a mensch (which in my understanding is a well-rounded, healthy person both out- and inwards, based on Jewish values), where we had to choose values that were important to us, while also getting to know each other’s core values.
Our final activity of the day would’ve been to go to Pearlstone (a nature reserve), but as it had been raining the entire day, we went to a mall instead (the name of which I don’t remember), where we first got to experience the arcade and afterwards had some time to look around in the mall with our friends from BT.
After a long day we grabbed some snacks from the local Target (pronounced /targeé/, as Adam told us, because of its French origin), and went back to Adam’s, where our host from last year – Ami – came over. We had some time to wind down, talk and play some rummy, after which we got ready for bed and got about 5 hours of sleep.
Mozes B, Grade 12
Samuel E, Grade 12
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