I am honored to be attending and co-facilitating at Opening the Dor, an event in Berkeley, CA, geared to engage East Bay Jews between the ages of 21-45 in creating a collective vision for a vibrant East Bay Jewish community.
Areas of focus will be Arts & Culture, Social Justice, Spirituality, Gender and Judaism, Technology/Social Media, Leadership Development, Philanthropy, and others, with focus groups facilitated by local organizations of the Jewish community. (One guess where I'll be.) Participating organizations include Birthright Israel NEXT Bay Area, G-dcast, Moishe House, Progressive Jewish Alliance-Jewish Funds for Social Justice, ROI Community and others.
Bay Area peeps, hope to see you there on Monday, September 19. (Check out the Facebook event page or the registration page for more info and to save your place.) And if you can't be there in person, follow us on Twitter at #openingthedor.
Whoever you are and whenever you're there, if you chose to be in Vegas, you’re probably there because you crave, at least a little, to suspend logic, reason and thought, or because you yearn to reintroduce your serious self to its more spontaneous side. But for 1200 Jews imported for something called TribeFest, the pull to the desert was something more. These Jews, ages 25-45, took the confusing cacophony of Sin City, and added to their agenda of cocktails, craps and clubbing an exploration of Jewish identity.
For me, TribeFest came not quite at the end of two months of conference-going. Most of these were Jewish conferences, each with an intense, exploratory vibe. From the BBYO International Convention to LimmudLA and Jewlicious, those conferences were marked by serious investigations of Jewish life, leadership, culture and identity in sessions large and small, but all of them managed to feel intimate and interactive. TribeFest was a slightly different animal, largely - I believe - because of the size, but also because of the location.
With the location (and imperative to socialize) providing a formidable distraction to the programmed content, it’s a wonder that anyone went to any sessions at all, especially my Tuesday “morning after the last night of Vegas camp” session on careers in the Jewish communal world. But they came, not just to that impossibly scheduled session, but to all of them. In fact, they came in droves – there was a huge line to hear my longtime friend Sharon Pomerantz and author Joshua Braff speak about their respective novels, and I was almost closed out of the “Work the System” session, which would have been its own story had I not been rescued by someone from JFNA who understood that it was important for me to be in that room. At the standing-room only session, passionate attendees tuned in for specific notes of how to encourage collaboration between Federations and innovative initiatives, and in fact, in a challenge of the word “innovation” itself. (Anyone have audio or video footage from that session? Please share…)
At (and after) several sessions, I overheard people yearning for a more interactive framework - breakout sessions of 60 people didn't provide people with the intimacy they wanted, but perhaps had no right to expect from Vegas (or from a conference of this size). I have the impression that many sessions could have gone well into overtime by answering all of the hands that flew up in a room. Of course, it would have been great if we could have managed to filter out "non-questions" - when a speaker asks "any questions?" and people raise their hands and speak without asking any kind of interrogative statement used to test knowledge (but that's not important right now).
Some may have wandered in and out during plenaries (word on the ground is that non-sports fans may have found “Lunch with a Legend” – one of the least diverse sessions at TribeFest - skippable), or traded session attendance to take in a show (or a nap) before the evening festivities, but participants are to be commended for an overall impressive attendance record. And as uninspiring as some sessions and speakers were, others resonated with standing ovations. The incomparable and undisputed TribeFest champion was Alina Gerlovin Spaulding, who spoke passionately and personally about how the Jewish community transformed her life and that of her family when they emigrated from Ukraine - this moment was a watershed, concretizing for many the importance of structures like the Federation in helping families in need. (For a short play-by-play of the conference, see Jewcy.)
I would be surprised if any PhD theses on Jewish identity were born over those few days in Vegas, but there was a palpable feeling of Jewish excitement at specific moments. In the opening plenary, the Hebrew Mamita’s delivery of her eponymous spoken word piece - an exploration of her own Jewish identity and pride - caused a vibrant cheer to erupt at its conclusion. Many identified with the presentation by actress Mayim Bialik, who spoke candidly about her Judaism. (A partial transcript is here.) VideoJew Jay Firestone called it Birthright meets Burning Man in his video synopsis. (My video synopsis is being held for editing by my editor, me.)
In the less-than-a-week time period since the 2.5 day conference ended, there’s been some nostalgic yearning for the energy and people left behind. Twitter, in particular, has hosted a lovefest of energy and private jokes, over the #tribefest hashtag and beyond; Facebook, too, has swelled with wall postings and reminiscences, as new friends communicated across the miles. Just now, people are beginning to upload photographic proof of the good time had by all, and edit videos in a way that conveys said good time, hopefully in a way in which no Jewish professionals lose their jobs. Not that anything untoward would ever happen to a bunch of Jews in as wholesome a place as Vegas...we're just overly cautious that way.
I know the #tribefest hashtag won't last forever - but I'll watch it as long as it's there; like credits rolling at the end of a movie, I'm with them until the final frame fades into the distance, fades to black, and then it's over.
[Here's my first video report for the ROI Community filmed shortly after I arrived. Plus, in case you missed it, here's when I became a one-name sensation, much like Cher and Madonna, of course, but in a Jewish Twitter context. Other videos and photos to come, no doubt.]
And now, a slightly mad, but slightly comedic interlude:
20 THINGS TO DO IN AN AIRPORT DURING A SNOWPOCALYPSE
Create new and exciting hashtags for use on Twitter. Recommended terms may include: #snowpocalypse and its shortform, #snowpoc, #snowpoc10 or #snopoc. Also possible are #snowetry/#snoetry, #sno-mg/#sno-mg-d, if you prefer. Be creative! You’re not going anywhere!
Turn your curiosity into exercise! Count people who are sleeping on the floor in the exact same position, and every tenth one, poke with a coffee stirrer. Then run. If you get caught, just tell them someone asked you to make sure they were still breathing, and add a “you’re welcome!” at the end. Or opt for a more playful approach, and when they tackle you (or have you tackled by security) say, “OK, OK! Now I’m ‘It’”!
Run around the terminal mimicking the flight pattern of the “JFK Birds.” This is not my hallucination. There are at least several small birds in the terminal, who have been here every time I have been here over the past 4 years. (Next time you’re at El Al at JFK, check it out.) Clearly they live here and we are visiting in their world: what better way to pay homage to birds who don’t want to live outside in a snowpocalypse than to run wildly about the airplane terminal where they live? Suggested musical accompaniments include: “Fly Like An Eagle,” “Free Bird,” and if you’d really like to make sure your snowpocalypse neighbors never forget you, “Bird is the Word.” (Sorry.)
Appreciate the simple, dairy-free pleasure of hot green tea and honey that you squeeze from packets into the paper cup that – even doubled – is impossibly hot.
Prepare lawsuit addressing the burns that may result from your use of the doubled paper cup which has NO warning whatsoever that the beverage you were about to consume was extremely hot and required caution.
Listen in on Israelis’ conversations (Hebrew-speakers only, sorry). Are they complaining, using their iPhones, or drinking lattes and eating yogurt parfaits? Give yourself one point for each of these activities in which they are currently engaging.
Count the Uggs until you can’t stand looking at them. Uggh.
Someone in the airport has really weird hair. Find him or her…NOW!
Shhh! Do you hear typing? Someone may be blogging your experience, right now! Find him (because, let’s face it, if it’s not me, it’s probably some Mac user who has figured out to hack into the JFK wireless without paying) and ask him if he plans to “tweet it out” when he’s done. Also, if he has hacked the wireless, obtain the code, because paying $8.95 a day for internet is bullshit. Power to the people!
Take bets: Which closed-locked-and-protected-by-a-metal-gate airport shop will open first? Upper Crust? Wok & Roll really isn’t a morning flavor, but who knows? Duty Free? Which stores will accept your airline food voucher? Which will run out of food first? Where will the food riots begin? There are literally nearly a dozen stores to choose from, and three of them are Hudson News, so choose your draft picks carefully in each category.
Think way back to before your flight was cancelled. You were sitting there in the airplane, waiting (and waiting) for the takeoff that never came. But what did come was a plague of screaming children. Not just one or two at various intervals, but a core constituency, constant, beginning as a frustrated hum and escalating to “bloody murder.” Now that you’re in the airport with time to spare, blindfold yourself, and let your ears do the walking, as you try to identify these children only by their screams. (“35E!” “Hapless dad with poorly behaved twin!”) Then feel sorry for their parents – even the best parent who is able to magically calm their toddler for most of the day is under stress now. Cut them a break, shoot them a look that says, “I know it’s not your fault.” And then find a spot without so many toddlers. Because your sanity’s important too. And besides, all of those crying children remind you that you’d like to start crying too.
Place more bets! Which passenger from your flight is most likely to completely lose it and start yelling at airline personnel? Which one will fashion a shiv out of a comb and a BlackBerry charger, and who will be injured first in the resulting melee?
Play Jewish geography with the group of Birthright Israel kids who are leaving, or who at least think they are leaving. Later, they’ll sit on the runway for 9 hours until someone comes to rescue them, but for now, “who do you know?” will suffice as entertainment.
Wander into the airport bar, and wonder why Eric Idle is narrating the football match, and then realize it’s not Eric Idle, but some other British person. (It seriously sounds like Eric Idle, though.) Then consider getting excited about London, but realize that you may not get there.
Sit in the pub and wonder who could drink such an enormous beer, let alone multiple glasses of said beer.
Try to identify people in the airport who could understudy the cast of “Lost.” You know, just in case. Then pray they’re not all on the same airplane. Or at least, not on your airplane.
By now you’re fully aware that lots of flights have been cancelled, as people from different countries and cultures flood the departures terminal. There is no better time to take up a new language, make new friends from other countries, or engage in racial profiling.
Cry. Again. I mean, this is ridiculous.
After the most violent outburst yet by members of your flight who are incensed by additional delays, be consoled by a sensitive guy in his late 20s who, amazingly, makes you laugh as you’re recharging your BlackBerry. When he tells you he’s on his way to London to meet up with his Ukrainian girlfriend, realize that things are on their way back to normal.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that our flight was never taking off.
Indications came early, as snow swirled light and fast en route to JFK, and intensified as I arrived at an airport with what seemed to be no designated area for my airline. A customer service desk, unmanned, bore only a sign with an 800 number to call for more information. Calls to that number went to an automated system which was never answered. I reached out to @VirginAtlantic on Twitter and was informed that the staff would be available to help us slightly in advance of check-in, so we sat and waited, talking with fellow passengers about their long road to the airport. Many of them had been stranded by the previous closures at Heathrow – their New York vacation extended because they couldn’t get home.
As we sat there, the rumors started about a potential airport closure on the horizon, which – to any rational person – seemed, frankly, like the right thing to do. It would be annoying to go back to the beginning, but we’d understand. Snow every which way meant zero visibility and high winds. But that was a decision for the airline – and there were still no Virgin Atlantic staff members in the terminal. Nothing we could do.
The VA staff arrived, put up the signs, and started processing us in that long serpentine line that at the end of it you hope there’s a log flume or some sort of other lineworthy attraction. And honestly, we thought there was – it was called VS004, and it would carry us to London. That was our light at the end of the long check-in process – getting to where we were going, for some of us, after days or weeks of delays.
And so we moved through the line, like links in a centipede, processing our checking and our seat assignments and our baggage. We took our bags to the drop point, passing them through a machine that scans for – what, exactly? – whatever it scans for.
As I moved toward the security line, I realized that I had forgotten to remove my neck pillow from my luggage and I sensed a mild disturbance in the force. I’d buy a new one, I thought, quickly followed by “hey, the flight’s going to be canceled so if I buy one, I’m going to have two the next time I fly.” The thought was fleeting, like the sleet, I hoped.
Then I joined the security process – even with no line, it is a process. Haven't flown in a while? You'd be shocked. All outerwear – coat, scarf, gloves, hat, sweatshirt – removed, in a bin. In a separate bin, the computer. In a separate bag, the liquids that are dangerous if their containers contain more than a collective several ounces. Oh, and shoes! Don’t forget our dangerous shoes! In some airports, you must put them in a bin. In others, you must under no circumstances put them in a bin! They are wily creatures, those shoes, which apparently present regionally specific issues when it comes to security scans.
That sleet turned to snow, the ultimate powdery white cliché covering the horizon and blotting out everything in sight. How would it be possible for us to fly in this weather?
As you may know, I was among those stranded at JFK Airport when a blizzard prompted the cancellation of hundreds of flights on December 26 of last year. My Virgin Atlantic flight - which had been cancelled on the 19th due to a blizzard at Heathrow and rescheduled for the 26th at 6:05pm - was cancelled after we sat on the plane for two hours because of a blizzard at JFK, and was rescheduled for 6:05pm the 27th, then delayed to 7:30, then to a boarding time of 8:15 that didn't happen, and eventually, after great protest from the passengers, finally took off after midnight on the 28th.
What's the problem? Why won't Virgin Atlantic make compensation to the 250 of us who were on VS 004? According to USA Today, Virgin Atlantic (via spokesperson Greg Dawson) claims that "monetary compensation is not due" to the people on our flight - who "had to sleep in the airport terminal because all hotels nearby were booked" - because the snowstorm was an 'extraordinary occurrence.'
But apparently, Virgin's petulant behavior extends far beyond our particular flight - according to Bnet's Brett Snyder, "Virgin Atlantic has decided it won’t pay Heathrow Airport’s owner BAA anything until an inquiry into last month’s days-long shutdown is completed. Virgin Atlantic is acting like an impatient child here, and runs the risk of making relations with its most important airport even worse."
This preposterous experience just doesn't seem to end. And least of all for writers. Because Jason is still on this situation - it's his job to be. And as for me, while I'm not spending every day fighting about it, I definitely have more to say. Because all the elements of this experience combined into something resembling a psychological experiment in how far people's patience can be stretched before someone cracks and goes postal.
Look for the first part of my recollections to appear later today.
Some scenes from the snowpocalypse of December 2010 at JFK Airport. Taken around 7am, the morning after we were stranded at the airport. No additional music was added (except in the intro and outro) to preserve the eerie silence that we were all trudging around in.
Stuck at JFK (or any major airport) overnight thanks to a Virgin Atlantic or other airline flight cancellation? Put off by a hard, dirty floor that's probably crawling with human germs and rodent feces? Well, get down off your high horse and embrace the inevitable - the human body can only take so much walking around an airport before you need to catch forty winks. Plus, if you ever get to that conference in the UK you're supposed to present at, you'll want to make sure you don't sleep through your own presentations! So here's how to get comfortable when there’s no comfort able to be found!
Step One: Scan & Select Your Space
As soon as it becomes clear that you'll need a place to sleep, the prime sleeping spaces will go quickly, so scan the terminal like you're the Terminator, assessing the potential spots for their potential comfort based on your internal programming: Are you seeking solitude? Heat? The company of others? Find a piece of floor that reflects your preferred sleeping sensibilities: if you stake out your own space, people may give you a wide berth, resulting in your own island of space in a crowded terminal. Or, if solitude is threatening to you (single females, you may wish to consider this) or is in a dark location away from the public eye, you may wish to seek out a trustworthy-looking group of similar-age individuals - this selection may be a bit rowdier or more brightly lit, but may appeal to your sense of safety and community.
Want to recharge as you recharge? Make sure to locate the "sleeping spaces" next to electrical outlets: if you have a power strip with you for some reason, now's the time to use it and become very popular.
Step Two: Sterilize Your Space
Make sure your chosen space is clear of obvious garbage that will muck up your sleeping experience - steer clear of sticky patches of spilled Coca-Cola or snowy wet boot tracks, for example. If you have 3 oz of Purell in your Ziploc bag of allowed liquids, now's the time to use it to sterilize the space. (Or save it, to clean yourself once you rise up from your nap.)
Step Three: Build Your Bed
Then spread out a blanket and – what’s that? You don’t have a blanket? Wrestle one away from one of the airline staff members (they claim they don’t have them, but they DO!). If your airline doesn't have blankets, you may go to another airline with a cancelled flight. They don't know who's on which cancelled flight, so the important thing is to get a blanket from someone before everyone runs out. You can then use it as a mattress (recommended for comfort and hygiene reasons) or as a first layer over your shivering body in contact with the near frozen floor. and build a nest out of that and whatever you have on you: your coat, scarf, a hat pulled down over your face to block the light, an extra pair of pants stuffed into a laptop sleeve and used as a pillow: be inventive. It’s like Project Runway, only - let's face it - you are probably never going to get to the runway.
Step Four: Tweet Your Position
Obviously.
Step Five: Secure Your Stuff - To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
Once you've built your bed, now's your chance to lie in it. But before you close your eyes to enjoy the wrenching back pain of sleeping on a rock-hard airport floor, make sure your valuables are secured to your person: this may entail things like using your computer bag as a pillow, threading a bag handle around your arms or legs so you'll feel it if someone tries to nick it, or trusting a virtual stranger who says he or she will watch your bags whilst you sleep. There may be a price for generosity like this - like your photo ending up on Twitter - but it's a small price to pay to greet the morning (or the later part of the morning) having had 20 minutes of sleep, isn't it? When you wake up, it will be time to battle with the rest of the hungry airport zombies for food at airport eateries with dwindling supplies, so you'll want to have had that 20 minutes to fuel your attack strategy.
We at My Urban Kvetch hope that you've enjoyed this practical travel guide to sleeping at international airports. Stay tuned for other helpful guides about overnight airport bathroom survival and use of nearly useless food vouchers at eateries that don't accept them or have 200-person lines and minimal supplies.
The Big Easy in the title is not a description of how simple it was for me to start blogging here again. I've been incredibly busy lately, with three part-time jobs that easily together take up 6 days a week if not more. Plus, this was going to be post #2010 for My Urban Kvetch, and I wanted it to be a post of quality and depth, humor and wit. But I was too tired. So instead, I thought I'd share some information about where I'm going. And yes, that's where the title comes in.
One of those aforementioned jobs has been planning an event for and blogging in advance of the annual General Assembly run by Jewish Federations of North America. This year, the conference - which draws thousands of Jewish professionals and lay leaders from across the continent (and, with a number of participants from Israel, we can say "from around the world" as well) - is happening in the home of beignets, jazz and lots of things kosher people can't eat.
My role at the GA is running the NOLAISM Schmooze-Up, a meet-up for GA-goers who are Jewish innovators, social media enthusiasts, or who are interested in either of those two spheres. While I'm in New Orleans, logging at my own "blog properties" will continue to be light, but please continue to follow me on Twitter, and check out my posts on the GA blog, where I'm going to be focusing my writing on Jewish innovation (with a minor concentration, as always, in social media and technology).
If you're not going to the GA, follow all the action on Twitter by following the #NOLAGA hashtag, and check out some of these resources offered by my former client, the Berman Jewish Policy Archive - they've compiled a helpful list of readings that are related to sessions that will be running at the GA.
So in a few hours, I'm boarding at LAX to transfer in ATL to arrive in New Orleans. Only two planes? I guess that's why they call it "The Big Easy." See you all on the other side.
I recently was invited to participate in a ThinkTank about Experiential Jewish Education in New York, sponsored by Yeshiva University, which held the private meeting of educators, Jewish thought leaders, and people involved in the Jewish innovation sector as an exploratory step in creating a certificate program in the subject. (This is part of a grant between YU, JTS, HUC-JIR and the Jim Joseph Foundation to create better training for Jewish educators, independent of their denominations - you can read more about it here in the Fundermentalist at JTA.) The ThinkTank pulled participants from different streams of Jewish affiliation and observance for a candid, respectful series of conversations, under the leadership of the Center for the Jewish Future (and CJF director Rabbi Kenneth Brander), and expertly moderated by facilitator Marc N. Kramer.
The chance to participate in the exploratory stage for this academic program, to witness the emergence of and ask questions about a nascent field was a particularly interesting opportunity for me that raised questions for all of us.
Experiential education sounds simple to define, but is actually far more nuanced and complicated than it might originally seem. If we agree that experiential education is more effective education, why shouldn't all education contain elements of the experiential? Is experiential necessarily interactive and innovative? What does interactive mean? How do you make specific the nonspecific of "I know experiential education when I feel it"? Who decides on what constitutes innovation, and how it differs from what constitutes informal or experiential education? Are meaningful experiences about teaching methodology, teacher personality, or about the environment? Can you formalize training for a field with such limitless possibility and definition?
There were also logistical questions: How do you integrate innovation or experiential education into a pre-existing, traditional educational structure? How do you encourage longtime, experienced teachers to open their minds to new methodologies that may sharply conflict with their teaching styles and experiences? And how do you translate the potential for learning into meaningful or inspiring, measurable educational outcomes?
As we considered these questions, we talked tachlis about "defining the core curriculum," broken down into skills, tools, knowledge, traits and experiences; and visualizing all of these things in categories, buckets, paints and brushes, tires and boxes, tools, computers and BlackBerrys. We wrote a press release of the future, noting in a retrospective style the highlights of this program and what it had been able to accomplish in the five years since we founded it - this is one of my favorite exercises, using writing skills and projecting into a future to imagine outcomes and perhaps thereby track back to the core of the task. And we engaged in "getting-to-know" you conversations which helped us work together in teams, and which were also, in their own ways, instructive in the mode of the experiential.
I know some of you out there are educators, informal or formal, experiential or innovative and/or traditional. What's your understanding of the definition of experiential education? Must it be innovative? Is it the approach, or the teacher, or the environment that defines either the experiential, the innovative, or both?
In the airport, as in life, it's all about making the right connections, or what happens when you don't. Also, there is poetry in the almosts, in the near-misses, in the I-nearly-didn'ts.
Arriving at Gate A5, learning that my connecting flight was at A79, I set off on a run that would make my high-school gym teacher proud, I ran fast, keeping my knees low so as to minimize the jostling of my computer, which lay in my backpack, cushioned, but still worth considering. Ran fast between people movers, those electric conveyer belts where people slowed down and let the machine do the walking, jumped onto and off of them like an Olympic hurdler, watching as my shoelaces untied. I wondered if I had time to stop, and inevitably determined that although I didn't have time to tie my shoes, what I really didn't have time for was to get caught in an electric conveyer belt.
So I stopped to tie my shoes - didn't put my bags doen although my back cried out for a rest. Kept running, kept running; never had a terminal felt so interminable. I made it there, a minute after they'd canceled my seat, and a minute before they closed the gate. I made it through, heard the gate attendant close the door behind me, stepped over the threshhold of the plane door to a greeting of, "oh, we thought you weren't going to make it."
Pulse racing, I found my seat, and found myself in thoughts of "Sliding Doors," and of the dream/anxiety/premonition I had about missing this connection; this led to my reconsideration of all the opportunities in life I might have been a minute too early or too late for, and how those moments, to me, are worse than anonymous - they're non-existent. They're in a split, but parallel timeline; beyond my field of vision or beyond the plane of my cognitive awareness.
The plane taxis on the runway and takes off into the late-date midwestern sun; condensation on the jet runs across the windows, streaming tears of something - joy (we're so glad you made it) or longing (stay; don't go there, into the clouds, escaping earth and reality before plunging back into routine).
Those tears, those rivulets of some sort of unclassified emotion, soon succumb to temperature and become frostbitten. Because such is the fate of all tears - the sting, the heat of their beginning, and the flame that boils them until they can no longer be contained, this fire is not so much extinguished as metastasized, metaporphosed into something frozen. Subzero emotion freezes these tears midstream and midsentence, before they say all of what they're supposed to, trapping them in their own misery as they cling to an airplane or a memory that they're very likely trying to outrun.
The freezing makes sorrow easier to deal with for the moment, but the fix is only temporary - the wind always shifts, the air always warms, the temperature changes, and the frozen frosty tears thaw and melt, reverting - as we all do - to that original state, the feeling that we are here again, in the original moment. For all our metamorphosis, we remain - for the greater part - unchanged.
