Youth Programs Span the Globe
by Sharon Rockman and Jody Caplan
The women of Women’s Philanthropy are not the only ones who have been traveling this year. Teens and twenty-somethings from Greater MetroWest NJ have also taken advantage of both homegrown and international programs to explore their Jewish identity and create bonds with Jewish communities in Israel and around the world.
Diller Teen Fellows is a unique international Jewish teen leadership program that explores personal Jewish identity, leadership and service, and Jewish peoplehood in conjunction with a sister cohort in Rishon LeZion, Israel. The program culminates in a three-week Israel Summer Seminar that unites the two groups.
For Diller Teen Fellow Rachel Malaga, a student at Randolph High School who recently returned from the Israel Summer Seminar, one of her best memories was the home hospitality in Rishon LeZion. She said, “It was so awesome to get to experience what it is like to live in Israel.” Rachel’s mother, Julia, noted, “Diller… is a great mechanism for exposing our children to pluralistic expressions of Jewish observance. Diller has allowed her (Rachel) to more fully explore what Judaism has to offer while finding her own meaning. The level of mutual respect and shared learning has been transformational in our family’s understanding of Judaism.”
It was Max Needle’s Diller experience that led to his participation in Write On for Israel, a two-year program that empowers high school students to become advocates for Israel through writing, broadcasting, and public speaking. Needle, a student at The Wardlaw-Hartridge School, explained, “I wanted to continue my relationship with Israel in a way that allowed me to connect with, but also protect, Israel and its people.” Midway through the program, Needle says he already feels “more informed and more prepared and on my way to lead advocacy for Israel in college.”
A cornerstone of the senior year portion of the Write On program is a week-long trip to Israel to complete the students’ training in Israel advocacy. Jonas Singer, a Write On graduate, is currently serving as President of BIPAC, Brandeis Israel Public Affairs Committee. His mother, Lisa Chenofsky Singer, credits Write On for teaching him “to write for campus news and media, how to program effectively for events, and the fundamental knowledge of the Middle East that he is continuing to build on.”
Area teens looking for an extended immersive Israel experience have attended Alexander Muss High School in Israel (AMHSI), a non-denominational pluralistic study abroad experience for high school students offering academic and experiential study of Israel and Jewish history. While many students opt for a summer experience, Paula Weissenberg spent the spring semester of her junior year of high school in Israel. Said Paula, “AMHSI was the best four months and the best experience I have had in my life. The friends and memories I made there will stay with me for the rest of my life. I learned so much not only about Judaism and Israel, but about myself as well.” Her mother, Robbie, describes Paula as a creative thinker with a natural curiosity and desire to experience other cultures. She noted that “as a result of AMHSI, Paula shows an interest and commitment to Israel that did not exist before.” Paula’s experience also reignited the family’s connection to Israel, as they embarked on a trip to visit her in Israel, the first trip they themselves had made since being teenagers.
Opportunities to travel to Israel are not limited to high school students. In conjunction with Taglit-Birthright, Greater MetroWest sends three buses of 18- to 26-year-olds on a free 10-day trip to Israel. Once each winter and twice in the spring, groups enjoy a special itinerary designed to include one or more of our partnership communities in Israel. Donna Davidson’s two children both traveled on Birthright with Greater MetroWest. She felt, “It is important to have our kids feel a connection with Israel and Israelis. The media portrays such a negative viewpoint, it is critical that our kids get to see the country and the culture first hand.” Donna’s son Max recalled, “It was a positive and interesting experience and I am still grateful for the opportunity.”
For those who have already participated in an organized trip to Israel, Greater MetroWest partners with Onward Israel to create an in-depth summer Fellowship in the Negev for 18- to 26-year-olds that includes a high-level internship based on skills, interests, and career plans. Ariel Artz, a student at Binghamton University, was eager to return to Israel and was very excited to find a way to marry a practical, work-related internship with travel to Israel. Her experience “working with Ethiopian children, most without parents, opened me up to how much I want to help people” and inspired her to look at master’s programs in occupational therapy.
Meaningful travel experiences expand across the globe. Each spring, Greater MetroWest teens take advantage of the opportunity to participate with March of the Living, an international, educational program that brings Jews from all over the world to Poland on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex built during World War II. The two-week program culminates in Israel, picking up Jewish history at the founding of Eretz Yisrael. Thousands of teens come together to celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut in Jerusalem.
Noah Lisser, a Diller Teen Fellow and Write on for Israel graduate, participated in March of the Living his senior year of high school. Now a student at Northwestern University, he reflected on his experience: “March of the Living was a very sobering experience. What March of the Living did very well was tie that one chapter of Jewish history into the greater story of the Jewish people. The trip focuses not on the six million killed but on what could have been of those six million. They were mothers, fathers, sons, teenagers, nothing less than a version of ourselves. And they were lost.”
“If I took one message from my experience in March of the Living, it would be to have faith in the future and faith in my people. We survived this, and we have more now than we ever have before. Is there a greater miracle than that?” asked Noah.
Our Federation’s work in Cherkassy, Ukraine is similarly hopeful and optimistic. Danielle Rockman, a senior at Muhlenberg College, has developed a special relationship with families in our partnership community of Cherkassy after spending two summers working at its Jewish Heritage Family Camp. Most recently, Danielle travelled to Israel to attend staff training with Israeli peers and then continued to the summer camp in Cherkassy, where she helped Jewish families learn about their heritage. Danielle was drawn to this program because “it combined my love of Judaism, Israel, and Jewish camping.”
What Danielle loved best about working at the Cherkassy camp was that “we are Jews from three different countries, speaking three different languages, but come together as one to form strong relationships because of our common love of Israel and Judaism.” These strong bonds include a special friendship Danielle forged with a young girl, Sonya, whom she first met in 2013. Sonya is now preparing to become a bat mitzvah. Danielle and her family hope to return to Cherkassy Family Camp in November 2016 to celebrate with her.
Added Danielle’s mother, Sharon, “The Hebrew word for ‘give’ is ‘natan’ which is a palindrome. Spelled forward or backward, the word is the same. As the word natan shows, the act of giving is also the act of receiving. The idea of giving of oneself doesn’t mean giving away or sacrificing because by giving of ourselves, we receive back so much more. And that was Danielle’s experience. Danielle brought Cherkassy back with her.”
So too did the participants of all these programs. When speaking about their trips, each person mentioned a connection to Israel and Judaism that they did not possess before. Said Erica Needle, “Programs like these help our teens to develop strong Jewish identities as well as connections to Israel and their local communities. They also build leadership skills and foster life-long relationships with other like-minded Jewish young adults.”
For more information about these programs, as well as several others, please visit www.jfedgmw.org/israel-center or www.thepartnershipnj.org.