Happy New year! May 2012 bring you all much joy and happiness – and a little fewer snow days than last year! 🙂
Together with Lew Shaffer and Bruce Spiewak I have recently attended the Union for Reform Judaism biennial in Washington, DC. The program was absolutely terrific, as always – with multiple engaging sessions, services, music and camaraderie of some 6000 reform Jews from all over the United States, as well as Israel and the UK. For the first time in our movement’s history, President Obama addressed the gathering – and if you haven’t seen his address yourself, I strongly recommend taking a look at urj.org/biennial11 – the website where videos of many of the main sessions are available.
One of the main initiatives unveiled at this historic meeting was the Campaign for Youth Engagement. It is a comprehensive attempt to address the continued trend of disengagement of teens from Jewish life and the synagogue past their bar/bat mitzvah. The campaign will attempt to better understand the reality – and to address it directly. It will not be easy. It will not be simple. It will most likely not be straight forward… But unless we address this issue head on, we are ignoring one of the biggest threats to the Jewish community in the 21st century.
I am extremely proud of our movement and I look forward to engaging with members and leaders at Temple Emanuel in trying to find ways to better serve our teens and our families. It is not a secret that I have a dream that we will once again have a very strong and vibrant, self-dependant youth group soon. Much has already been achieved and I am very proud of all our teens and parent volunteers have accomplished in the last two years, but we still have a long way to go.
One of the strongest Jewish identity builders in children is Jewish camp. Study after study shows that a few weeks at camp often do more to foster a positive Jewish identity than many other things we do. Needless to say, a summer spent at Jewish camp combined with Jewish education received at the synagogue and involvement in the life of the community throughout the year is an excellent idea! As you know, for the past two years I have served on the faculty of Camp Eisner – most rabbis, cantors and educators take turns in spending 2 weeks at camp, teaching the kids and providing wonderful Jewish experiences. Last year 4 kids from Temple Emanuel attended the Eisner/Crane Lake camps, all returning home with renewed sense of Jewish belonging and I am hoping that this year the numbers will be even greater.
First time campers are eligible for a $1000 incentive grant from the Foundation for Jewish Camping and Temple Emanuel offers additional scholarship through the David Nevis Fund. If you are interested in sending your children to a sleep-away Jewish camp, please speak to me or pick up a brochure at the Temple. I would also like to encourage those of you who would like to support the TE kids going to Jewish camp in the summer to consider the David Nevis Fund when making your next donation in honor or in memory of someone. Whether it is through Camp Eisner/Crane Lake, or a local Camp Laurelwood, I sincerely hope that you will start dreaming of a Jewish camp – even though it’s only January!