In the beis medrash and on those nature hikes, who would have thought a talmid chacham was being cultivated?

Experience: Project SEED

Setting: Seattle, Washington

What I learned: Seeds will blossom

IT was a typical post-Purim conversation in 12th grade of Mechinas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, Maryland: “What should we do this summer?” A few friends and I wanted to go out and make a real difference, and Project SEED, a Torah Umesorah summer program that sends participants to communities to instill Torah values in the hearts and minds of local adults and children, piqued our interest. After several conversations with Rabbi Hillel Hexter, the yeshivah’s SEED liason at the time, he suggested Seattle, Washington.

The more we looked into it, the more excited we got about the idea. Everyone told us Seattle’s summer weather was gorgeous, there was plenty to do there, and most importantly, the community was ripe for impact. A day after yeshivah ended, we were on a nonstop AirTran flight cross-country, ready to spend a month in Seattle.

U

nder the leadership of Rabbi Avrohom David, Seattle’s rosh kollel, and Rabbi Yehuda Bresler, a dedicated kollel member, we were tasked with running a boys’ morning program — learning followed by sports — and at night, learning one-on-one with adults. The afternoons? Those were ours to explore, and explore we did.

Over the course of those four weeks, we traveled all around Seattle and beyond. We strolled through Pike Place Market, taking in the lively outdoor shops, the iconic flying fish, and the original Starbucks store. We rode ferries from downtown Seattle to various surrounding islands, cycled through Seward Park, and went with a community member on a ten-mile bike ride through the city. We climbed Mt. Rainier in the 80-degree weather and wrote “SEED ’08” in the snow on the mountain, and went camping with the Portland Kollel in Camp Wilkerson, Oregon. We toured the Microsoft Visitor Center, which showcased the company’s history and current innovations, and the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, where we watched planes being built. We climbed the rocks at Snoqualmie Falls, went kayaking in Puget Sound, and even made our way across the border to tour Vancouver.

During our morning learning sessions, I was assigned to the sixth-grade boys. At 18 years old, I didn’t have much teaching experience, but the boys in my group still took to the sugya of kibbud av v’eim in Maseches Kiddushin. Their backgrounds varied, as did their levels of learning, but we still formed a bond as we studied and schmoozed.