Following 16 months developing leadership skills, exploring Jewish identity, experiencing Israel, and participating in acts ofTikkun Olam , 19Jewish teens from the Chicago area graduated from the Diller Teen Fellows program on Sunday, Jan. 8. Graduating Fellow Elly Qunell, a junior at Naperville North High School, delivered the following speech.

Hello everyone. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Elly Qunell.

I’m here to speak to you about one of the Diller Pillars, Israel. A peak experience of Diller Teen Fellows is the Israel Summer Seminar. This is the three weeks we spend together in Israel. Honestly, it is one of the main reasons I applied for the program.

I feel that we spent a lot of time building up to the trip. There was not a workshop or Shabbaton when we didn’t spend time talking about current Israeli events or learning valuable communication skills that we would use in Israel. However, the Israel pillar is much more than just a trip that we all plan and take together. The Israel experience represents something much larger, a coming together and belonging for Jewish teens from across the globe.

During our three weeks, we met Jews from Canada, South Africa, and Australia, as well as other parts of the United States and Israel. I learned what Israel means to different peoples and how being in Israel as a fellow of Diller is truly blessing. Despite differing religious and political views, over 700 Jewish teenagers were able to come together in harmony and be a part of one, diverse and pluralistic family.

I live all the way out in Naperville where the Jewish population is relatively small. My confirmation class had less than ten people. My motivation to join Diller was to be part of a bigger Jewish community. I never thought that throughout these 15 months my community would consist of hundreds of people from around the world.

Before Diller, I had been to Israel once with my family. For those two weeks, I was with Americans doing American things, visiting all of the most popular sights in Israel. My only exposure to Hebrew was our tour guide speaking it to others as he navigated our way through the country. What I didn’t know was that being a tourist and actually living in a country are completely different.

It’s hard to truly experience a country and its culture until you live there with a native’s perspective. You can travel to the Western Wall and you can eat the best falafel, but none of that compared to living in an Israeli household.

As a cohort, we got the purest form of Israeli culture. We spent a week seeing the country from an Israeli perspective and learning to navigate daily life. For most of the time I spent at with my host family, I was observing. I was hosted by a Diller Teen Fellow from Kiryat Gat, Lachish, and Shafir named Liron. Liron spoke English fairly well, but the only other member of her family who spoke English was her mom. Liron spent a lot of her time translating from Hebrew to English, and back again. However, my favorite conversations were the unspoken ones with her younger siblings. We spent entire nights playing card games and video games that require no spoken communication, but truly made me feel like a member of the family.

After everything, I had the opportunity to experience while in Israel, I’m still shocked at how much I still don’t know. Through Diller, I have developed a stronger connection with not just the land itself, but with the people who live there and the meaning Israel has to all Jewish people.

I want to leave you with a quote by Alan Dershowitz, who is a famous Jewish lawyer and juror. “No country in the history of the world has ever contributed more to humankind and accomplished more for its people in so brief a period of time as Israel…”

Thank you all very much.

Elly Qunell is a junior at Naperville North High School and a graduate of Diller Teen Fellows Cohort 3. In addition to Diller, she has taken a number of leadership positions in the community including the Naperville chapter of Operation Snowball and the Student Advisory Board at the Alive Center. She is also active in her school community, serving as a Link Crew Leader, an Adaptive PE leader, and is a member of French Honors Society.