RJ Blog

by Rachel Kasten In a few hours, we’ll be hopping off a plane at LAX with a dream and a cardigan, but right now we’re a youth professional and an involved teen getting excited about attending the Youth Engagement Conference and NFTY Convention, respectively. I’m the Assistant Director of Education & Youth Programs at Isaac M. Wise Temple in Cincinnati, OH, attending the Youth Engagement Conference while Alyssa Weisman, a NFTY-Ohio Valley Regional Board member and a madricha at Wise Temple’s Religious School, attends NFTY Convention. This is my third time attending NFTY Convention – once as a student, and [...]

The teenage girl puts her arm around the fourth grader. They both smile. The younger child feels warmth, love and a sense of “I matter” from her protector, a cool positive Jewish role model. The teen feels a sense of purpose, of meaning and a sense of “I matter” from a child who looks up to her as a positive Jewish role model. For which child’s benefit did my congregation, Congregation Or Ami, organize this three-day retreat? Ostensibly, for the younger child, as this weekend was designated a 4th- through 6th-grade retreat. Yet anyone who has witnessed the powerful effects [...]

by Samantha Pohl There have been no greater influences on my life than my temple youth group, NFTY-GER, Urban Mitzvah Corps, and NFTY in Israel. My participation in these programs as a teenager led me, as an adult, to become a Jewish professional and an active participant in the New York City Jewish community. While a student HUC-JIR’s School of Jewish Communal Service (now Jewish Nonprofit Management), I had the opportunity to explore how the top teen leaders of the Reform Movement connect—as volunteer leaders and in professional capacities— to Jewish life today, several years after their teen involvement.  In [...]

I recently returned from the National Association of Temple Educators (NATE) conference. The theme of the conference was Project-Based Learning, a methodology in which participants go through a process of inquiry in response to a complex real-world question, problem, or challenge. Ron Berger, an expert on Project-Based Learning and keynote speaker, shared an example from his practice. His community discovered that some of their well water was contaminated. Instead of bringing in an outside testing service, Berger trained elementary students to do the testing themselves. Many issues emerged at the conference that have implications for the work of engaging youth, [...]

The Reform Movement’s B’nai Mitzvah Revolution is the widest reaching initiative ever, launched by the Movement to radically transform the entire B’nai Mitzvah experience. Earlier this month, the first set of pilot congregations participated in a weekend-long workshop with 65 professionals and lay leaders from 14 congregations including faculty and staff from Hebrew Union College’s Experiment in Congregational Education (ECE) and the Union for Reform Judaism’s Campaign for Youth Engagement (CYE). The goal of the workshop was to support the congregational teams in radically rethinking their approaches to the preparation for, and celebration of, bar and bat mitzvah.

In preparation for the Campaign for Youth Engagement‘s launch at Biennial 2011, over 1,000 teens, educators, rabbis, youth workers, cantors, administrators, and lay leaders were involved in grassroots conversations about what engages teens and what does not. One theme clearly stood out: building meaningful relationships and a dynamic and engaged Jewish community is essential for youth and their families to commit to Jewish life. Rabbi Rachel Ackerman, posted on Facebook about an experience at her congregation that exemplifies the value of meaningful relationships and community. Rabbi Ackerman described the Temple Shalom teen community’s remarkable reaction to the tragic loss of [...]

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this season’s teen angst movie, illuminates the very real pressures of being a teenager. The teenage search for identity is interwoven so poignantly with the dislocation created by individual brokenness. Ironically, the scene of audience participation in a costumed presentation of the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show seems tame by comparison. A must-see movie for parents, teachers and others who interact with teens, Perks of Being a Wallflower reminds us that when it comes to kids, if we master the relationships, we motivate the teens. I felt that twice this past Sunday with [...]

I was on the phone a few months ago with Marshall Einhorn, executive director of Brown-RISD Hillel, discussing a talk I was asked to give at Brown, where my younger son is currently a junior and of which my older son is an alumnus. As an aside, I asked Marshall who would be leading the campus Reform services for the High Holy Days. When he said he had asked a number of people but without success, I offered to help. “That would be great!” Marshall said. “Let me know if your networks surface someone interested.” “No,” I told him. “Maybe [...]

By Rabbi Karen Thomashow On the first day of HUC in Jerusalem, amidst our orientation, I learned that the word orientation comes from the Latin word for “orients,” which indicates the direction of the rising sun. It was exciting and moving to think of the initial days of a formal journey toward the rabbinate not in terms of where I would end up, but rather beginning to point myself in the direction that I want to travel toward. Recently I learned that the Hebrew root of letters ayin-resh-resh, meaning to awaken, rouse, or stir inspired the development of the word [...]

by Rabbi Nicki Greninger Do you know Hebrew?  If you ‘know’ Hebrew, what does that mean? Does it mean you know the letters of the aleph-bet and can sound out words? Does it mean that you feel comfortable with modern, spoken Hebrew? Does it mean that you understand basic Jewish life vocabulary in Hebrew? (i.e. words like shalom and tzedakah or phrases like tikkun olam or b’tzelem Elohim) Does it mean that you know most of the words of the prayers we say and can recite them with the community, even if you could not necessarily translate the prayers word for [...]

Why do so many synagogues struggle with Hebrew instruction, t’fillah education, and post-b’nai mitzvah celebration? We have come to believe that these challenges — and others, too — are all related to one deep-seated problem: Jewish learning prior to age 13 is driven by the bar/bat mitzvah celebration. This common practice was instituted more than 70 years ago to increase involvement in the synagogue. But, it has had the opposite effect. Treating bar/bat mitzvah as the goal and end point of Jewish education has degraded Hebrew learning, stifled efforts to expose students to the depth and meaning of communal worship, [...]

I was recently going through some old files. To be honest, they were very old files. Amongst reports from high school, I found two Erev Sabbath service outlines. They dated back to when I was the president of my templeyouth group (Temple Judea in the Bronx). They were titled “Folk Sabbath Services” and were dated 1976 and 1977. Many of us in the youth group were veterans of regional NFTY events, including Shabbatons at Kutz Camp in Warwick, New York. In youth group events such as shul-ins, and especially at Kutz, we discovered a different type of Jewish worship. The [...]

In a drash he wrote a couple of weeks ago, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth has this to say about B’midbar: B’midbar takes up the story as we left it toward the end of Shemot. The people had journeyed from Egypt to Mount Sinai. There they received the Torah. There they made the Golden Calf. There they were forgiven after Moses’ passionate plea, and there they made the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, inaugurated on the first of Nisan, almost a year after the exodus. Now, one month later, on the [...]

by Craig Rosen Research has shown that the most effective way to engage Jewish youth is to build relationships with them. I have been studying the art of relationship building for the past few years – and practicing it for a lot longer than that – and one of the most pivotal themes surrounding this topic is the idea that relationship-building takes time. We must take time to get to know our young people and allow them to get to know us as well. While working as a youth director in California during the 1980s, I made sure I took [...]