Week 1: Introductory Posts

January 1-7th:

I was invited to take part in writing legislation for Asefah, a national NFTY board meeting held at NFTY-Convention in Mid-February. I am writing legislation on next year’s Study Theme for the year 5777-5778. The Programming Vice President of NFTY-GER and I are focusing on a theme that encourages NFTYites to speak out and be confident in their convictions, while understanding why it is important for us to take social action as reform Jewish youth.
For Winter Kallah on January 13th-15th, I was given relatively short notice to write a program for the last hour of the event prior to closing. I have been working on that, as I have written and received the go-ahead on the program for 136 participants, and I have been assembling a small team of group leaders to run the program.


January 8th:

Our last official board meeting prior to the event was January 8th, five of the six board members met at the hotel our advisor was staying at. This weekend, NFTY-Phoenix met with Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, and Rabbi Jonah Pezner, Director the Religious Action Center. I had the privilege to individually discuss with them the reform Jewish movement driven by the URJ and RAC, as well as ask questions about the struggle of reform Judaism and the future of our movement.


January 13th-15th

Winter Kallah was a resounding success! Despite having limited programming space for our theme of Mental Wellness, the weekend ran rather smoothly. There were no injuries or drama, to my knowledge. I arrived at Temple Kol-Ami at 2pm to help set up for the event which officially started at 4:30pm. After setting up tables and chairs for dinner, I gathered and organized our papers from the massive printer that spewed out all of the programs, name tags, and other essential paper-related items.

The NFTY-SW President, myself, and regional advisor Lynne Butner accomplished this prior to the out of town participants arriving at the event. At their arrival, we instructed them on where to set their belongings. Two staff on site ran a program on personal Judaism while we finished setting up.

After the arrival of all the local participants, our Membership Vice President ran a social activity, which was followed by dinner at 7:30pm, and Havdalah. Following this, all participants and staff drove off to their host homes with the intention of getting enough rest to last through an entire weekend of learning and excitement.

What does this have to do with Business Management Theory? Every single activity we did this weekend was thoroughly planned out. All of the logistics from time management, materials needed, locations- every little detail had to be planned out and I played, and continue to play a large part in this process in many ways.