PHOTOS BY JOHN M. DISCHER
A
A Little Song And Dance
And lots of magic at last weekend's NFTY Winter Conclave.
MICHAEL SIMON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
s the NFTY cheer echoed
through the halls of Tem-
ple Emanu-El in Oak
Park on Saturday, over
150 Reform Jewish teen-agers
made their way into the Esther
Katzman Hall for a spirited song
session.
This year's North American
Federation of Temple Youth's
Michigan Regional Winter Con-
clave theme was Kabbalah, or
traditional Jewish mysticism.
Programs and services focused
on elements of kabbalistic Ju-
daism through group discussion,
skits and worship aimed to ed-
ucate NFTYites in an area
with which few were remote-
ly familiar.
A major theme in NFTY in-
ternationally is tikkun olam
b'shem Adonai, "repairing the
world in the name of God."
Much of the weekend's activ-
ities centered on the kabbal-
istic creation story in which
a vessel of pure energy, rep-
resenting God, exploded into
tiny shards strewn about the
earth. The goal of all Jews is
said to be to restore the shards
to their original state by doing
tikkun olam.
One program, after a skit
about the 10 kabbalistic sefirot,
or degrees of spirituality, en-
couraged participants to create
their own levels by breaking a
glass vessel and putting it back
together again, identifying which
s efirot they thought they had
achieved. Another program had
participants, who came from as
far away as Traverse City, invent
their own mystical creation sto-
ry
A visitor from Long Island was
North American Religious and
Cultural Vice President Adam
Michael Simon, a NFTY
member, is a sophomore at
Birmingham Seaholm High
School.
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