Growin
Pains

As teens embrace youth groups to cope with adolescence,
leaders look for appealing strategies to bring in new members
JILL DAVIDSON S
STAFF WRITER
and keep the ones they already have.

Right: Teens at a NFTY gathering
get a dose of fun and education.

Bottom right: A game of "Duck,
Duck, Goose" breaks up a lesson.

PHOTOS BY B ILL GEMMELL

Bottom left: Camaraderie is one
reason teens join youth groups.

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t is early on a Sunday morning in February
and the woods around Camp Maas are mak-
ing crackling sounds, a sign perhaps that the
trees are too cold to bend in the breeze.
Aside from the trees' groans, the forest,
normally alive with animal calls, is silent to-
day. It is too cold even for the animals.
Despite the warning signs, a dozen high
school students — representatives from sev-
en youth groups ranging from B'nai B'rith
Youth Organization (BBYO) to Young Ju-
daea — leave the warmth of a cabin and
trample through ice and snow to swing from
a rope as part of a team-building exercise
at the Kornwise Weekend.
Team building or not, the wind chill reads
a startling 34 degrees below zero.
It is cold. Very cold. And it is not normal
for anyone to be out in weather like this,
much less American teens on a Sunday morn-
ing.
But while their counterparts huddle be-
neath blankets, warm in their beds, these

teens have been up for hours and are look-
ing forward to grabbing ropes and swing-
ing like actors in a bad Tarzan movie.
"Here, stand on my feet," said one girl, her
face bright red from the wind. "I can't feel
them anyway."
'Don't worry, we'll catch you. Just swing,"
a boy from Farmington Hills said.
Their dedication to the youth-group move-
ment — to come out on such a frigid week-
end — mirrors the interest in youth groups
shared by a growing number of Jewish teen-
agers in the metro Detroit area.
Take BBYO. The fall conclave this year at-
tracted almost 230 teen-agers, a 21 percent
increase over the year before. Organizers had
27 more students this year at their regional
meeting than theyear before and have added
a second young leadership conference to serve
twice the 33 teens who participated in the
past.
While the increase is not exactly eye-pop-
ping, it has meant a change in the perception

of the groups in the eyes of image- con-
scious teens. With more kids participat-
ing in activities, the groups' status has
made the leap from geeky and unhip to
acceptable, even cool in some cases.
"Some of my friends (who aren't in a
youth group) are jealous," said Michael
Cooper, a 17-year-old BBYO and North
American Federation of Temple Youth
(NFTY) member from Roeper High
School in Birmingham. "I get to meet
a lot of cool people from all over the place
and have experiences that they don't."
The reasons for the increase in par-
ticipation are many and depend on the
youth group itself. But one that applies
to all of the groups is the growth in the
high school-age population.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the
baby boom generation began having chil-
dren. Now those children, referred to as
echo boomers, are experiencing their
teen years.
At the same time, federations and oth-
er Jewish groups across America are
pumping more funding into youth
groups and activities in an effort to
achieve continuity.
"For years, Jewish federations have
been talking about continuity and they
are just now realizing where the gap is,
where the kids are falling off from their
Jewish identity," said Bernard Reisman,
a professor of contemporary Jewish stud- \
ies at Brandeis University.
The Max M. Fisher Foundation, for
example, targeted this group last year
when it awarded three-year grants to the lo-
cal chapters of the National Council of Syn-
agogue Youth (Orthodox), United Synagogue
Youth (Conservative) and North American
Federation of Temple Youth (Reform) to at-
tract more members and strengthen pro-
gramming.
`The community is more attentive to reach-
ing the young adolescents," Professor Reis-
man said. "More efforts are being made to
make that age a stepping stone and not make
it a black hole."
But even with cash in hand, the youth
groups are facing challenges.
For one, competition is enormous. Sports
and other extracurricular activities as well
as entertainment vie for teens' spare time.
Programming has to be bright, attractive,
fun and educational; the marketing has to
be just as sharp.
"It has to be interesting and fun for them
to want to come back," said Michael Mellen,

GROWING PAINS page 104