The Power of Our Time

December 19, 2022
Gal Rubel

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Class of 2025

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What's the daily reminder that you are part of BBYO? For one of my friends, it's riding the bus as we taught him how so he could go to chapter meetings. For another one, it is when they say hi to their friend, and for me, it is every time I turn on my phone. This may be a weird answer but let me explain, I have two clocks on my phone, one with Argentina time and one with Eastern Standard Time (New York). 

When people want to look at the time, I always get a confused look, the first question is why do you have 2 times? I always give the short answer, I have meetings and friends in the states, but the longer version is filled with magic I'd like to share.

The long one is that one of my best friends is from Alabama and I want to text her good morning on her birthday or that I have a meeting at 6 am to finish our oral arguments. The answer sometimes spans to I have a late call or I simply hate being late to meetings. When I am asked I say that I always forget about daylight savings and I don't want to google it daily, no matter the answer it all boils down to one word: BBYO.

This magical Movement has changed me in a million ways. The one that taught me friends care above international borders. That I could and wanted to wake up early just to talk about our traditions, that my best friends live far away. It taught me not only leadership skills but the fact that I was a leader, and that all of us are leaders. It gave my best friends with whom I could not survive without . 

Almost everything regarding the International Order requires meetings. Requires seems like a bad word, it takes meetings. Hours of planning, laughing, and making friends is necessary to shape this Movement. I am not the person who has spent the most hours in BBYO but I definitely have loved every single one of them and I am forever thankful for all the meetings that created the present. I try to be in all the meetings I can to shape a great future for all of those teens who are not involved yet.

Although I hate my meetings being an hour later and I much prefer meetings from March to November, The two time zones represent something much bigger. It symbolizes my friends and projects that run a different timezone for which I will always make time.

Gal is a BBG living in Buenos Aires, Argentina who is in love with outer space.

All views expressed on content written for The Shofar represent the opinions and thoughts of the individual authors. The author biography represents the author at the time in which they were in BBYO.

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