Eizor Galil: Some of HDNA's Finest

We're very sorry for our delinquency in writing on the blog - mostly it's Brian's fault for not being on top of things. Well - that's all going to change now! Expect way more posts from Eizor Galil with awesome stuff to tell you about.

So far we have had a very successful first half of the year, from Fall Seminar to our most recent event, the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. We've had peulat shichvah almost every month as well as a major Eizor event held every month. We've had incredible showings at all community-wide events.

In fact, we tend to provide many of the teen planners for these events. We had two chaverim of HDNA (Anna Yankelev and Jenny Smolen) help plan the Hadag Nachash Concert in December and we have 5 representatives (Sara Zebovitz, Jordan Cooper, Ally Amado, Danielle GRoss, and Randy Schur) for Philadelphia for the J-Serve program out of a total 8 possible spots. We are all over the place!

Today we had almost 50 HDNA Eizor Galil chaverim at the Community Caring Carnival at the Haverford School for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. It was an amazing day where families from the Variety Club, an organization that helps families with children with mental and physical disabilities, were partnered with local Jewish community teens to participate in a fun carnival at the Haverford School outside of Philadelphia. You could see chultzot everywhere! It was a great day.

Well, that's all for now. Enjoy the pictures and we'll update you again soon!


Adam Mayer (WS55), Molly Bernstein (WS59), and Jake Felder (WS54) at the Jewish Relief Agency Food Packing Day


Brian Cohen (WS53), Yony Laurence (WS59), and Sara Zebovitz (WS59) excited at the Hadag Nachash Concert


Karmi Oxman (WS58) and Anna Yankelev (WS58) at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service

Ken Afikim 2006 Year End Review

The last two months of 2006 were eventful ones for Ken Afikim, and now that we've rung in a brand new calendar year, we should take a moment to look back at what we've done lately here in Detroit.

In November, Tikkun Olam was center stage, as we discussed the fundamentals of "fixing the world." What is tikkun olam, why do we do it, and how? We shared our collective visions of what makes a 'broken' world, what makes an 'ideal/perfect' world, through a visual collage medium, and then discussed what we can do to move things closer to the latter vision. In the process, we collected cans to donate to Yad Ezra, the Jewish food pantry in town. It was a great peulah, thanks especially to the nachshonim who attended.

We also had a rockin' Chotrim Overnight with the entire Michigan Eizor, at which we had fun peulot, had a medurah and made s'mores, sang kumsitz, watched a movie about establishing unions and challenging the dominant paradigm, and got to spend a lot of time together with our friends from Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor. (We can't wait for the Eizor Michigan Shabbaton to do it all again!)

Then, December brought the eizor Chanukah party, which included paper bag dramatizations of the Chanukah story, sufganiya eating contests, a challenge to make the best chanukah menorah out of playdough, lots of dreidel spinning, chocolate gelt eating, exchanging of gifts, and best of all, partying with our fellow Habo's from all over Michigan! We even collected a very large box of donated children's books to go to Bookstock, a Jewish book sale for the metro-Detroit community.

Nachshonim and Ma'apilim then headed off to Winter Seminar in lovely Mansfield, Ontario, for a week of intensive peulot about the movement and lots of crazy kef with our chaverim from all over North America. The weather outside was not very frightful, but the fires were still delightful, and the company could not have been better! Tzevet Afikim returned inspired, and firmly upon the hagshama path, ready to begin a brand new year!

If you are interested in picking up what we are putting down in D-town, and would like to be on our mailing list, just contact Raya, Rosh Eizor for Detroit, at rosheizordetroit@gmail.com.