Reflections on Starting A New AZA Chapter

Having been at BBYO's ILTC recently gave me some consideration about my BBYO experience, primarily because participants would ask me "Were you ever in BBYO?" and, if so, how involved I was. So, I would say I had been and that I was chapter Aleph Mazkir, Aleph Godol and Aleph S'gan followed by Regional Aleph Mazkir and Regional Aleph S'gan, the latter of which are pretty good and in which I expended a good amount of energy. However, what brought a smile to my face was when I described having started my own AZA chapter. Moreover, there was an opportunity one afternoon for participants to go around and talk to staff who had been in BBYO and a particular experience of theirs. I chose to speak about my experience of starting my own chapter. (As an aside, one of the interestingly unforeseen aspects of it was that many of those teens who decided to attend my particular discussions (there were three rotations) were either interested in starting their own chapters, wanted to start another chapter elsewhere in their regions/councils, or wanted to know how to deal with the chapter off of which their chapter had split and there was not such great relations there.)
In speaking about the chapter I started, I realized there were several animating reasons that I did it: 1) Every week at the same time and the same place at the JCC, the AZA and BBG chapters would have their meetings. While this provided a nice opportunity to meet other BBYOers and there would be the occasional program for everybody to join in, most chapters just had meetings at that time. What Heart of Ohio would do is pretty much have meetings on those evenings and perhaps an occasional program here or there. The problem with that modus operandi is that having meetings is not the point of joining BBYO - they are meant to support the activities (primarily the programming) of the chapter, which are to be more primary. In other words, teens don't want to go to lots of meetings - they want to be involved in activities, programs, etc. We shifted the focus in my new chapter to having programs on a fairly weekly basis on Sunday afternoons and whenever we would have the occasional meeting, we would go and do something afterwards. This approach yielded us having the most programming of any AZA chapter within the region that year, which was satisfying.
2) When I finished my term as Regional Aleph S'gan, I wanted to invest the knowledge and experience of BBYO I had into Heart of Ohio, so I figured the best position would be Aleph Moreh. When elections came around a few weeks after Regional Convention (which I had co-coordinated) and didn't win, I realized that my efforts would be better expended elsewhere. However, not getting elected by the chapter was really reflective not so much of me, but of a pervasive ideology of electing underclassmen in order to give them experience and, more significantly, to give them a better opportunity to make it on to regional board. One problem with this approach is that it sacrifices the chapter for the sake of the individual's gain. Rather than letting members gain experience before getting onto chapter board in order to use their experience or any training (especially LTI or other regional conventions (or ideally CLTC, but not many people from Columbus BBYO went, probably because there was never an established desire for it to be attended)) to bolster their term serving the chapter and, by extension, their chapter, the idea was to get them on board to get "experience". This "experience" was primarily, albeit not exclusively, having been on board and could be used to get onto board for a higher position later on and hopefully regional board. Oftentimes, once elected, these board members wouldn't necessarily know what was to be done due to their lack of training and/or experience. They might get some things accomplished but not as much as otherwise.* Gain experience perhaps through planning programs or on committees and chairs, then through that earn their way on to board with experience. If there are members who are particularly talented or good, they can make it up the ladder, by not giving preference to younger (read: inexperienced and not knowledgeable about BBYO) members
3) Heart of Ohio AZA #55, the chapter in which I had been for my first three and a half years in high school, had members who were primarily in Bexley and got together there and also had their own social networks there, etc. In starting my own chapter, I had known other guys in my town of Gahanna and surrounding areas who would be interested in joining our new chapter.
4) One innovation I made was by rethinking the board positions and duties. Whereas a standard chapter may have an Aleph Godol, an Aleph S'gan, Aleph moreh, Aleph Shaliach, Aleph Gizbor, Aleph Mazkir and Aleph Kohen Godol, I felt that the positions could be a little different and also the duties could be better split up. From this, I merged some positions, resulting in a board that had an Aleph Godol, Aleph S'gan and Aleph Moreh as per usual, and an Aleph Shaliah whose duties were the Jewish programming solely (no community engagement), Aleph Mazkir, whose duties included note-taking and money tracking. Aleph Sofer for the newsletter and website; Aleph Modia, whose job was to inform the members of what's going on in the chapter, inform local media (primarily the local Jewish newspaper) of upcoming events (and past events). These last two were a bit novel in my KIO region and I liked it because it made sense and because I had created it, I felt a special connection to it.
5) A last reason was to set up from the outset certain activities or other practices (such as an annual or semi-annual AIT overnight or chapter convention) that might have received pushback or rejection from an already existing chapter due to "not having done it before". Thus, we were able to get those set up.
The question that I would receive, though, after talking about having set up my own chapter would be "What happened to it? Is it still around?" Sadly, the answer is no. I think it lasted 2-3 years afterward, but ultimately folded. Although, on the one hand, I feel like I had graduated and was no longer in high school and, by extension, AZA, I needed to move on and no longer involve myself with it, I also felt, on the other hand now that I probably could have checked in with the chapter and offered my assistance more than I did. That's life. I didn't have any further involvement with BBYO until I staffed two KIO RCs (2001 and 2002) and LTI in 2002 as well as international programs in 2002-2004.

* This really occurred originally on account of less than optimal circumstances: prior to my joining Heart of Ohio (in 1995-1996), he chapter had had a very strong senior class and a freshman class. I'm not sure how much the seniors passed along heir knowledge to the freshmen. When I joined the next year, the freshmen who had become sophomores were doing what they could, although they didn't totally have their act together. Less than a month after joining, I became the Aleph Mazkir (really because no one else wanted to take notes at meetings and I was fine with stepping in and doing so (despite never having done so and without any training (as a result, they weren't properly formal or adhere to any particular standards (but hopefully they had the important information)) (later, when I saw how the Regional Aleph Mazkir took notes, I was impressed by how it was done))). While at KIO's Regional Convention that December (1999, which I co-coordinated), I realized we weren't having any programs which was why I had joined in the first place and wanted sports stuff, which was kind of tough with our current chapter make-up, but I realized that we could have a Super Bowl party the following month. So, we did :) By the time the next election came up, I ran for and won Aleph Godol (I did run against someone this time, but I think because I did a good enough job and put in work at Aleph Mazkir), they trusted me to take over (I think they were also largely apathetic, probably largely because they didn't want to have to work on the chapter, having had the seniors run it. Anyways, the following year, it was primarily sophomores and freshmen and a junior here or there, with heavier underclassmen involvement.

Rabbinic Popularity in the Tosefta I: סדר זרעים

Having gone through the entirety of the Mishnah and counting up how frequently various sages were mentioned, I decided I would turn my attention to the Tosefta and do similarly (both because of curiousity and because I had developed a nice system for it (creating grids and working פרק by פרק in tallying them up (yup, old-fashioned(!)))).
So, I started off with סדר זרעים and found that, once again, Rabbi Yehudah is the most frequently mentioned sage and that his colleagues are also up there (if you would like to compare/contrast this with the Mishnah, see here). This סדר also prominently featured the two houses along with the חכמים. However, Rabban Shimon, son of Gamliel featured much more prominently than he did in the Mishnah (and his primary בר פלוגתא, Rebbe). The special honorary mention goes to Rabbi Shimon, son of Elazar, who seemingly came out of nowhere and was pretty frequently mentioned - the twelfth most mentioned in this סדר (the 11th was Rabbi Akiva). Here is the top ten:

1 - רבי יהודה
2 - רבי יוסי
3 - רבן שמעון בן גמליאל
4 - רבי שמעון
5 - חכמים
6 - רבי מאיר
7 - רבי אליעזר
8 - בית הלל
9 - בית שמאי
10 - רבי

As to the most frequent mentions in each מסכתא, voila:

ברכות - רבי יהודה
פאה - רבי יהודה ורבי שמעון
דמאי - רבי יוסי
תרומות - רבי יהודה
שביעית - רבי יהודה
כלאים - רבי מאיר
מעשרות - חכמים
מעשר שני - בית חלל
חלה - חכמים
ערלה - רבי יהודה ורבי שמעון בן אלעזר
בכורים - רבי שמעון

Some Physical Changes at B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp

Fence by LTC Dorm 6 (which is now not in use)

As mentioned previously, I am staffing BBYO's International Leadership Training Conference currently and already discussed some of BBYO's summer programming changes at B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp (BBPC); additionally, there have been some physical changes, as well, to the grounds. One noticeably apparent change has been the addition of a fence between the camp and the adjacent road, extending from the camp's main entrance all the way up to just past dorm 6 [of the Bernard Ehrenreich Youth Leadership Village (henceforth, Leadership Village)]. This fence also has a gate which is typically closed/locked at the adjacent road's entrance into the Leadership Village (which is frustrating for us who drive in and out of the Leadership Village, as we now have to drive around and out through the main gate, rather than just out of the one right by). In addition to whichever security advantages the fence affords, it also serves as a huge part of the eruv surrounding the Leadership Village. Also, the gateway into the Leadership Village has been taken down....*
         I remember the ILTC I attended was one of the fullest they've had in a while: they used all 9 dorms of the Leadership Village as well as a "tenth dorm", putting those participants in the Adult Lodge ("A-Lodge"), and there were certainly a lot of participants! This year's ILTC is also really large, perhaps larger than the one I attended in 1998, with 198 participants. However, for some reason, Dorm 6 has been condemned or shut up for some reason (one rumor I've heard is that there's a rare tree in there (although I'm not sure about that)), so they have one less dorm available for use. So, instead of leaving four participants to a room with five participants' rooms per dorm, they have now put more bunk beds in each room, with most Leadership Village rooms containing 3 bunk beds to hold six participants each - along with cubbies for them. In order to help with the cramped quarters, the program stores the participants' luggage elsewhere. (If there is a concerned [potential] donor out there, I'm sure BBYO/BBPC would welcome a donation of a dorm or two....)

CLTC Classroom 1 now with exercise equipment inside

     A new addition to the campgrounds has been the addition of a new soccer field that replaces dozens of trees that were adjacent down the huge hill to dorms 8 and 9 of the Leadership Village. While it's gorgeous, I remember staffing ILTC in 2004 and sadly watching those trees being cut down to make room for it.... Nevertheless, they basically took away the goal posts that were in the Leadership Village soccer field between the baseball field and tennis courts and now have new ones up at the new soccer field (along with some powerful lights there).
     Also, due to the awful smell and dirtiness of the carpeting in the Music and Performing Arts Center (commonly referred to as the Performing Arts building), it was ripped out and simply concrete flooring in the building....
Since the sessions of the Chapter Leadership Training Conference (CLTC) are no longer being held there (the last one was held there in 2005), the four CLTC classrooms are now available for use by ILTC and Kallah, which is great for spreading out. However, for some reason, staff from the Perlman kids camp has moved in a bunch of their workout equipment into CLTC classroom 1 (pictured).... Although it's a bit odd that they would take over a room of BBYO's use, it is, nevertheless, a boon to those of us who would like to get in a few reps (it's perfectly located next to the Adult Lodge, where I'm staying, and en route to the dining hall - perfect for some pre-meal lifting...)....
         One random thing: since BBYO's International Convention is now no longer taking place at BBPC, I wonder what will happen to the time capsule that was "buried and Dedicated on August 19, 1999 in honor of AZA's 75th Anniversary To be opened at International Convention 2024, on AZA's 100th Anniversary" (the caption was from the plaque above the time capsule (which I wrote down eight years ago), although I haven't seen the plaque anywhere this summer....
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*According to the plaque on the gateway (which now no longer stands), the Bernard Ehrenreich Youth Leadership Village was "presented and developed by the Boys' and Young Men's Apparel Lodge No. 2460" in July 1973. As to after whom it was named, the plaque continues: "Bernard Ehrenreich represented a perfect example of a three "c" man - he cared. He was concerned. He was committed. And these words sum up his long devotion to public and community service. He gave of himself to many worthy causes and was a lifelong foe of suffering, iniquity and inhumanity... a proud son of Israel.... A true son of the covenant." Although I am not definite, I believe this is the same Bernard Ehrenreich as Rabbi Bernard Ehrenreich, who was one of the founding members of Zeta Beta Tau and also started Camp Kawaga.

Rabbinic Popularity in the Mishnah VII: Top Ten Overall [Final Tally]

As mentioned previously, I went through the Mishnah and counted which sages were mentioned the most times (see I, II, III, IV, V, VI for previous posts on individual סדרים), tallying them up yesterday and here is the list of the top ten sages mentioned the most times throughout the Mishnah:

1 - רבי יהודה

2 - חכמים

3 - רבי מאיר

4 - רבי שמעון

5 - רבי יוסי

6 - רבי אליעזר

7 - רבי עקיבא

8 - בית שמאי

9 - בית הלל

10 - רבי יהושע

Rabbi Yehudah was clearly at the top of the list, with nearly 650 references - he was the most referenced in each of the six סדרים of the Mishnah and was frequently the most commonly appearing rabbi in the tractates. The חכמים were all alone in second place, with no one near them at more than 450 references (see the earlier post in which they are mostly voicing their opinions against fourth and fifth generation tannaim). Then, Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yose, and Rabbi Eliezer were all pretty close in positions 3-6. Rabbi Akiva wasn't too far behind them with more than 300 references throughout. The two houses of Shammai and Hillel were pretty close to each other (which makes sense since they mostly appeared together) above 200. Closing out the top ten as well as the last rabbi to receive over 100 mentions in all of the Mishnah is Rabbi Joshua/Yehoshua.
Basically, Rabbi Yehudah and his colleagues' generation (Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Shimon, and Rabbi Yose) were the most frequently mentioned, in addition to Rabbi Eliezer and his colleagues' generation (Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehoshua), along with the two houses....

Some Changes to BBYO Summer Programs at B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp

As mentioned before, it's been seven years since I've been to B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp (BBPC) and, while here, there have been changes that have occurred. In this post, I wanted to discuss some changes to the summer programs taking place here (for some background to this, see here).
The first is that no longer is there four weeks of Kallah, three weeks of International Leadership Training Conference (ILTC), followed by International Convention (IC), nor are there any Chapter Leadership Training Conference (CLTC) sessions. First off, the last time there were any CLTCs held here were 2005, one year after I staffed two CLTCs here.
Also, 2005 was the last time IC was held here, when it was held in Atlanta and has switched cities around since.* And since ILTC usually led into IC, there's no more reason for ILTC to follow Kallah, so they switched it, as the mood from Kallah to ILTC often was a sense of a Jewish let-down (allowing for increased Jewish learning and living from ILTC to Kallah). Moreover, instead of ILTC lasting three weeks and Kallah four, they have reduced their lengths to two weeks for ILTC and three for Kallah.
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* Since 2005, the cities in which BBYO's International Convention has taken place are as follows:
2006 - Atlanta, GA
2007 - Bruceville, TX
2008 - Chicago, IL
2009 - Long Branch, NJ
2010 - Dallas, TX
2011 - Los Angeles, CA

Against Whom the חכמים Were in the Mishnah [Top Ten]

As mentioned previously, I went through the Mishnah and counted which sages were mentioned the most times (see I, II, III, IV, V, VI for previous posts on individual סדרים) and discovered an interesting element: sometimes sages were mentioned and then חכמים disagreed with them. Although I don't have any particular speculations as to anything about them (I would love to see what people have to suggest), I wanted to list the most frequent amongst the sages against whom the חכמים had a different opinion:

1 - רבי מאיר
2 - רבי אליעזר
3 - רבי יהודה
4 - רבי עקיבא
5 - רבי שמעון
6 - רבי יהושע
7 - רבי
8 - רבן גמליאל
9 - רבי ישמעאל
אדמון ורבי יוסי

Rabbinic Popularity in the Mishnah VI: סדר טהרות

While flying last week, I finished up my project of counting the most referenced sages in The Mishnah with סדר טהרות (see previous posts on זרעים ,מועד ,נשים ,נזיקים, and קדשים). Once again, as with the other five orders of the Mishnah, Rabbi Yehudah was, by far, the most commonly referenced sage (and, thus, the most throughout the entirety of the Mishnah). Without further ado, here are the top ten most referenced sages in סדר טהרות:

Top Ten

1 - רבי יהודה

2 - חכמים

3 - רבי יוסי

4 - רבי שמעון

5 - רבי מאיר

6 - רבי אליעזר

7 - רבי עקיבא

8 - בית שמאי

9 - בית הלל

10 - רבי יהושע

For the most commonly referenced in each tractate, here is a listing:

כלים - רבי יהודה

אהלות - בית הלל

נגעים - רבי יהודה

פרה - רבי יהודה

טהרות - חכמים

מקואות - רבי יוסי

נדה - בית שמאי ובית הלל

מכשירין - רבי יהודה

זבים - רבי שמעון

טבול יום - רבי יהודה

ידים - חכמים

עוקצין - רבי יהודה

I am glad and quite happy that I finished this project; next up: tabulating the results....

Back to B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp for ILTC

I am heading off tomorrow to Pennsylvania to be one of two Judaic Educators at B'nai B'rith Youth Organization's 53rd annual International Leadership Training Conference, taking place at the B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp. This will be my fifth time at ILTC, as I went as a participant in 1998 (my first ever international BBYO program (followed by three International Conventions and Kallah (in 1999))) and then returned as administrative staff in 2002, 2003, and 2004. It has definitely been a while since I've been back (seven years), plus I've not been much in touch with BBYO or even thinking about it, but I imagine it will be nice to be back in that environment, especially as a rabbi.

Selling Sahara's Stuff

Yesterday, before departing from Las Vegas, having visited for my third Father's Day, we checked out the liquidation sale going on at the Sahara. The sale was going on at the Sahara, which closed a little over a month ago, and begun five days ago previously to sell off everything on the premises. We were there the first day that admission was free, as National Content Liquidators charged $10 for entrance the first four days. I had never heard of NCL, but it kind of felt nice, as they had brought employees from Ohio with them, my home state.
I had only stepped in briefly last August to get some half-shot glasses, so I was largely unfamiliar with the hotel and casino. However, walking around, I could tell why it was time for the hotel to go: it wasn't particularly nice and several decades behind the time decoratively-speaking.
In the end, I got a dozen half-shot glasses at 50 cents a piece and a couple other glasses for the same price. Many items from the guest rooms were decently-priced, as they had hundreds to sell off, especially the credenzas with tvs attached to them, selling for $25 a piece. However, there were also numerous items that were priced higher than they should've been. I'm glad we were able to check it out.
The sale will be going on for another 52 days and they will still probably have lots of things for sale....

"Plants Versus People?": Considering Environmental Concern As a Social Justice Issue

Six and a half years ago, while walking in El Salvador with Rabbi Sid Schwarz, the topic of our trip came up. I was among a couple dozen rabbinical students who were there for ten days as part of the second Rabbinical Student Delegation trip of the American Jewish World Service, which focuses on social justice. I hadn't been aware of "social justice" before going to rabbinical school, but in my first semester there, I heard of this neat winter trip to engage with "social justice work" and classical Jewish texts related to it. While there, we spoke a lot about helping people(s) in the world, which didn't resonate much with me, but was an interesting idea (although I found the idea of doing it as Jews an amazing kiddush hashem). The thing that did tremendously interest me was the environment - having heard in school growing up about the terrible things humans have been doing to our environment and how sad it was to see the oceans becoming dirtier, the ozone layer depleting, etc.
So I let him know that the trip was interesting, but social justice just did not compel me, whereas the environment did and I phrased it by apologetically saying, "It's not that I necessarily think plants are more important than people....".
However, I was thinking Thursday night about this exclusion of interest in the planet's health to my interest in helping people around the world and realized, aside from how simply awful it was to see the world changing for the worse, what animated me about this concern - it's really about the condition of the world and worrying about how our living conditions will be in the near future, let alone in our children's and grandchildren's lives(!). By air quality getting worse, it affects our breathing; by water being worse, how much of it can we drink without being adversely affected; with decreasing amounts of fish, how can we feed people as adequately (or fishermen make a living)?
I realized, my concern for the environment isn't instead of people, it's for people. What this means, I believe, is that helping achieve a healthy environment is fundamentally a social justice issue: I believe that humans should be able to live in the world God gave us - it is something that people deserve.