Kol Rinah USY & Kadima

Towards the end of our 30 hour Shabbaton at Kol Rinah, we sat huddled in the darkened hallway of the basement singing songs right before Havdalah. We had begun Shabbat together the night before and had been with each other every minute since. Before saying goodbye to Shabbat and hello to the new week, we went around and each of the 12 USYers and Kadimaniks spoke of a rose (something they enjoyed about the Shabbaton), a thorn (something that was difficult or more challenging for them), and a bud (something they are looking forward to). It was so nice to hear as so many of our kids spoke about how they enjoyed meeting new people and getting to know each other and look forward to being more involved and attending more USY and Kadima events.

The excitement from Shabbaton and the new faces that joined us have invigorated our USY board who is hard at work planning future events for our Spring semester. The past couple of months we have had lounge nights with themes of spa day, stand up comedy, movie night, Religions in Israel, a Chanukah Party, a study party, and Jane and the Rabbi Night. I can’t wait to see what their creative minds come up with for future programming for this Spring.

In addition to Shabbaton and Lounge Nights, we also helped set up for Kol Rinah’s Jewish Muslim Day of Service Project so that everything was ready to go on December 25th to make “fresh start” bags for the Gateway 180 Shelter. KRSTL also sent one Kadimanik to Iowa for Kadima Kinnus and one USYer to Omaha for Kinnus. We cleaned out and said goodbye to our former home, the little white house behind the site for our new building. It will sadly, but also excitingly, need to be demolished for construction of the new building.