Sunday, February 26, 2006

STOP EVERYTHING AND EXPRESS YOURSELF

Whats going on? What have you been up to lately? What have you been thinking about? Please post your latest thoughts and concerns related/unrelated to any and all aspects of this project. This means YOU!

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

BREAKING NEWS RE: GH '06-'07

Jane Manwelyan writes:

Sorry we weren't able to be a part of the conference call (technical difficulties) but we had a meeting with Lior yesterday, and here are the things that we talked about.

1. Lior is going to be our madrich next year- which may have been obvious to some, but I wasn't so sure. But he said it, flat out...so he's really in it for the long hall...good for him, and good for us! This means that he'll be running peulot for us once a week, and generally looking out for our well-being.

2. We spoke specifically about the structure of next year. On mifgash we said that the first 3 months should be spent in Tel Aviv, taking ulpan, and being involved in Hashomer culture.

What this means more specifically is that these first 2-3 months will be ALLLLL about our education as a kvutza. Ulpan will take up 2 evenings a week (Monday and Wednesday) which gives up the opportunity to take trips Thursday-Sunday. On these 4 day tiyulim we will do everything from hiking in the north to visiting kibbutzim that interest us. We will study together, run peulot for one another, have guest lecturers and seminars, and partypartyparty in tel aviv.

Also at this time, we will be working for the world movement. (I guess when I say "we will" I mean "we can and I think we should") There's a pretty serious problem in Hashomer: new olim (particularly from south america and eastern europe) are not integrated into the Hashomer Israel culture. Many of them feel just as alienated here as they did back home. Yulia, a 17 year old girl from Ukraine, said to me at an olim seminar, "I felt like an outsider in Ukraine as a Jew, and now I feel like an outsider as a Russian in Jerusalem." She, and many others like her, came to Israel without their parents and without a social support system. While we are in Tel Aviv, we can be the bridge that can help bring these hashomer olim and hashomer israelis together.

Your thoughts...?

3. After those 2-3 months, we will then go up to Pelech for 1-2 months. More on this phase a little later, because I'm not sure how much people know about Pelech and the opportunity that we will have when living there to, in a sense, really live in and be a part of the new Hashomer kibbutz.

Pelech is in the north, which will also allow us to take day trips to the community in which we will be working. So, instead of just going straight from tel aviv to living there full time, we will have a solid transition period, which will allow us to get to know the community gradually and to ease in to becoming a part of it.

I will ask Natalia, our wonderful madricha who lives on Pelech, to help me and Michal write something about what Pelech is and what it's all about.

4. The physical project: Michal, Lior and I have a series of meetings in the upcoming 2 weeks pertaining to this phase of the year. After that, we should have a much better idea about what our options are, so as soon as we have those, we can all start discussing them and chosing one of them.

5. The last 2 months: we come back to tel aviv and, with our wonderful hebrew and 10 months of crazy emotional life-altering soul enhancing truth seeking experiences...we once again get involved in the every day workings of Hashomer israel. Except this time, in addition to having peulot run for us, we will be running some peulot as well.

This will be a time of sikuming, reflection, learning, teaching. It will allow us to come full circle and share what we've learned with Hashomer israel as well as the world movement. It will also be a time to make plans for the future!!!

6. $$$$

Everyone who is coming to Israel next year MUST MUST MUST fill out their individual MASA forms and send them in ASAP.

Here's the website: http://www.israelexperience.com/masa/english/

You will need a letter from the lishka confirming that you are a part of the program, and if you have any questions about the application process (which I'm sure you will because some of it is convoluted and nonsensical) then talk to Adam and Guy...PLEASE! When you're filling it out, you've gotta say you're doing shnat, becuase that program has been approved by MASA. I applied last year and I got $4,000 from them...although I haven't actually gotten the $ yet. So if you apply now, there's no guarantee that we'll even find out that you've been approved by the time that you're in Israel. So please please please...hop to!

Ok, that's a whole lot of info...but if you've still got specific questions, you can always always call me or michal...really, we sit by our phones allllllll day and just wait to hear from you. So don't be shy. Guy and Adam have our phone numbers, you can even go to the lishka and call us from there.

Chazak and Ematz!

XOXO
Jane

Monday, February 13, 2006

GH Frustrations Yield New Ambitions

Karl Marx's Alienated Labor and Private Property and Communism

Questions for discussion:

What is alienation? It is something that can be overcome?
What is Marx's view of history? Where are we in his view?
Are these texts out of date, or are they still relevant to our movement?

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Geshem Hapoel Conference Call Goes Crazy

Today some 8 or so interested persons from around the world partipated in a teleconference of the future. While the main event -- an update by Michal and Jane as to what projects they had learned about -- proved to be beyond the ability of the movement to have happen, the conference went on unabashed. The prevailing theme of the rest of the discussion was the relationship between "having money" and "having a project", a touchy subject considering the fact that without money we have no project but without a project we can't really get any money? Right. After deciding to table this discussion to a time when Michal and Jane could be cross-examined, the telecommunity proceeded to discuss the difficulties inherent in teleconferencing and passed a proposal requiring all members to register with msn messenger, through which future meetings would be facilitated. A bit dissappointed, a bit frustrated, the team said its goodbyes and hung up, perhaps unsure they would ever talk again.