Spring ‘24/Summer ‘24
Celebrate Being Jewish.
As a child/teen/young adult, I spent my summers at URJ Camp Coleman. I loved my summers—celebrating Shabbat in an open air sanctuary, praying while overlooking Lake Shalom, with hundreds of other young people. In retrospect, those times at camp were when I felt “most Jewish.” I wonder why?
Without even knowing it, we were learning Jewish values through all of the amazing programming that was offered, as well as spending quality time in a microcosm of Jews. We were allowed to explore our Jewish identity in a safe space where questions could be answered with judgment or prejudice. T’filah was age appropriate and D’var Torah/sermons were relevant to us. To me, it was the Jewish Utopia…Jewtopia.
I am not hiding my ulterior motive: get children to love Judaism and subsequently come to TBE ALL THE TIME!!! It’s no secret that I am a product of a loving and nurturing family and URJ synagogue, URJ Camp Coleman, and NFTY. It’s because of all these wonderful institutions that I have connected my synagogue life to the real world.
There is a direct correlation with our children’s experience during Hebrew School and the level of commitment they demonstrate in their post Bar/bat mitzvah years. By ratio, our retention rate is higher than most synagogues. I believe this happens because we focus our area of study on making connections—both to the Jewish community and to each other. Our teen assistants want to be with us on Sundays, because they fondly remember their Sunday school experience when the teenagers drove their programming.
It doesn’t end here though. All participants benefit from our Kehilah Kedosha (holy community) we have created. All of our teaching practices and learning methods compliment our students’ learning in secular life, and we utilize all different kinds of strategies to cater to all the different kinds of learners out there. It is my observation that our participants become better readers and learners because of the methodologies we employ.
I walk around with my fond memories from Coleman as a standard to which I hold true to our Jewish Learning Center, but our standards have surpassed that! We have a created a space where our children want to learn and connect with our rich and vibrant history. My biggest fear is that our kids don’t want to come to Temple, or to celebrate being Jewish. We have overcome that fear by making the JLC a place where kids enjoy attending. So far, it has worked. In previous years, I remember leading the children to the carpool line 5 minutes before school ended, and now we have reached a place where kids don’t want to leave at the 12:30 prescribed time, so we hang out some more at youth group. On several occasions, I have witnessed our children whimper and whine that they have to leave and trust me, it is a good feeling!
B'ruach,
Barb