by Cantor Aviva Katzman, Tiferet Segel (Faculty) 
My first week in Tiferet has been wonderful and wildly creative. My funniest moment came on the first night when we were playing ice breaker games to help us get acquainted and learn each other’s names. After about half an hour, we were about to start our third game, and I looked around the Beit Am, marveling at all the talented, wonderful chanichim and the incredible madrichim and specialists. I realized my mind had wandered, and I had missed the instructions for the next activity. I hoped I would pick it up as we went along. The girl sitting two people away from me started things off with, “Hannah hamster!” Then the counselor looked at the girl next to me. She said “Hannah hippopotamus.” I wasn’t sure what we were doing, but I assumed we were trying to name all the animals we could think of beginning with an “h.” I know…it seemed reasonable at the time. I said something like, “Hannah hawk!” Then the boy next to me said, “Jacob jellyfish,” and I instantly knew i had made a terrible mistake. I weighed my options and decided I wouldn’t be able to remember to answer to “Hannah” for the next two weeks, so about halfway around the circle, I confessed that I had misunderstood the game. A great kid named Ben thought it was as funny as I did, and since that first day, he has called me Cantor Hannah, and I call him HannahBen.
A few days later we did a project called “The Exquisite Corpse.” The campers were divided into small groups of 5 or 6. Half were sent to the art room, and half were sent to another room. The goal was to write a progressive story, each small group picking up the previous group’s narrative after hearing only the last sentence. At the same time they would also create drawings starting with the head, then the torso, then the legs, and finally the feet, and each successive group would only be shown the very bottom of the previous group’s work. They were given the theme of the story which involved a creature and the tallest tower of a castle. It was an incredible experience, and when it was over, we were all electrified as the final products were unveiled! I’ve attached pictures of the creatures, and here are some excerpts of the stories:
“The evil villain, Nutella, tried to find the King so he could have the creature’s powers all to himself. Nutella traveled all around the kingdom to find the King and found him in the tallest tower. As he was searching, he found a vampire-zombie-unicorn-butterfly-norwhal. They joined forces and took over the world.”
“There was a monster who was locked up in a castle, because nobody wanted to see him. He was very sweet, but was sad that nobody liked him. He started turning not as sweet as the years went by without anybody coming to say hello. Then he turned completely EVILL [sic], dun, dun, dun!!”
“Then the dragon burst through the ceiling (because the sorceres was not smart enough to put a spell on the ceiling), and turned their hearts around to the good side by singing “Puff the Magic Dragon (by Peter, Paul and Mary)!”
On Friday, I led five girls in a little sampling of Jewish Mindfulness Meditation during a Chug M’yuchad (special elective) time when the chanichim could choose from a number of special options (including Ultimate Frisbee, and A Fabricated History and Tour of Camp (including the Art Center, which, they were told, should actually be called the Art Center Center, because it had been donated by a man named Art Center). What a week! Can’t wait for another week in the wonderful world of Tiferet.
Cantor Aviva Katzman is the Cantor at Temple Sholom of Chicago and is serving as one of the faculty members in Tiferet Aleph.