On September 10-12 we held a seminar for youth on the topic "Hesed. Tsdaka. Fall Holidays."

Tatyana Slivinskaya told the guys about Hesed work, how this word is translated from Hebrew, what assistance we render to our clients, and about our main sponsor - The American Joint Distribution Committee "Joint", and that the money distributed by Joint is collected all over the world.

The Jewish law advises we should be more careful in following the Torah commandments, be more strict with ourselves and generous. Elena Petrova told the guys what tsdaka is and that the best way of providing assistance is to support another Jew, to save him out of poverty. Then all participants divided into teams. One person in each team played a role of a "millionaire-businessman", other two persons had a task to receive financing from him for solving a specific problem. Out of five groups only two were able to receive the money; the others could not find convincing arguments or were not listened to by the "millionaire".

Irina Tveritneva told about traditions and customs of the fall holidays Rosh Hashanah, Iom-Kipur, Sukkot, Shmini-Atseret, and Simkhat Torah. Having divided into three groups, participants were answering the questions, "What I would like in the New Year for myself, my family, and community?" In all three groups the young people wished for good health, well being, prosperity, and excellent education results. We also discussed in detail the meaning of a prayer, who a person addresses when praying, why we request to forgive us when praying. We came up with the following common prayer, "Blessed our G-d, forgive all our sins of the past year. Include us into the book of life and attach a seal to it. Thank you for the world we live in, thank you for understanding, for our life. May all our dreams come true!"

Seminar participants were informed that a Republican Quiz on history and traditions will be held soon. They got very interested and received a task to create an emblem for the quiz. In four days four emblems were presented for review_e.

Having listened to the presentation about holidays the guys demonstrated what they had learned. The first team - Katya Zhdanova, Katya Malenkova, Vlad Vasserman, Volodya Tereshuk, and the team captain Alexander Barinskiy presented Rosh Hashanna, stages of world creation. The second team - Kseniya Petrova, Lera Grusman, Liza Gelfeinbuim, Zhora Kurilov, and the team captain Roman Mikhailenko presented Sukkot. The third team - Liza Daerbayeva, Adam Sakharov, Sergey Akhmetzyanov, Polya Getmanova, and team captain Alexander Braynskiy presented Simkhat -Torah, dance with Torah.

Lots of new talents were discovered in our creative workshop during the process of making post cards. Only natural materials gathered in the surroundings of the resort were used. The guys made amazing post cards!

We had Shabbat - lighting candles, Kiddush, Shabbat songs, our week chapter. In Avdala, the guys were holding hands of each other and singing, "It is great to be together!"

We had many different game trainings aimed at developing cooperation skills, team building, positive attitude, understanding own emotional state and feelings of people around you, developing communication skills. This helped our participants to make friends and learn about themselves in different new situations.

All seminar participants made a financial contribution to the organization of the seminar - paid for the transportation. When we were summarizing the seminar results, the guys were saying that it was very interesting for them but they had very little time - two days was a very short period. They suggested holding such seminars at least once in every two months.

All participants thanked President of Mitsva Association Alexander Baron and the organizers for the great seminar.

Tatyana Slivinskaya, Irina Tveritneva