Teens

SUPER-S1ZED Shabbaton

Above, left: As their
color war teammates
cheer; Ariella
Goldfein of
Southfield and Pam
Goldfaden of West
Bloomfield, both 17,
show off their foot-
drawing technique.

Right: Playing guitar
is Jonathan Myers,
16, of Farmington
Hills.

Attendance at the 2001 Kornwise weekend is more than double last year's.

DIANA LIEBERMAN

Staff Writer

ason Roskind, the new teen
coordinator at the Agency for
Jewish Education of
Metropolitan Detroit, was
bowled over by the response to his
first major project.
The Robert Kornwise Judaica
Weekend on March 23-25 brought
together Detroit-area teens from the dif-
ferent branches of Judaism to shmooze,
sing and learn a little about each other.
Held every year at Camp Maas'
Sheruth Village in Ortonville,
Kornwise 2000 attracted 50 teens.
This year's event had a record 107.
About 28 of the participants will go
to Poland and Israel on the March of
the Living next week. But, even with-
out this group, this year's Shabbaton
would have been historic.
Roskind said much of the credit

sir

4/13
2001

86

goes to the 2001 Student Council, the
ad hoc committee formed every year
to plan the weekend. "They met more
than they usually meet. They came up
with all the programming and the
theme of the weekend," he said.
The Kornwise weekend is a memori-
al to Robert Kornwise, a 16-year-old
Bloomfield Hills Andover High
School student who lost his life in
1987 in a traffic accident. The goal of
the annual Shabbaton is to prepare
teens from all branches of Judaism to
live and work together.
"I'm very glad I went. It was an
amazing experience to see everyone
getting along, teaching each other,
holding hands at the Havdalah cere-
mony," said Student Council member
Brian Lundin, 16, of West Bloomfield,
a junior at the International Academy
in Farmington Hills.
The weekend's topic was Teens At Risk,
with separate programs on teen suicide,

substance abuse, the Israeli Jewish/Arab
conflict and its effect on American teens,
and interfaith relationships.
Each discussion group featured out-
side speakers. Clinical psychologist
Dan Stettner and suicide survivor
Jason Zacks spoke about suicide and
depression. Arab-American Terry
Ahwal of Canton, who is active in the
Seeds of Peace program, and Chicago
Aliyah Center Director Dan Bielski,
both born in what is now Israel, led a
heated discussion on the situation in
the Middle East.
Keynote speaker was Rabbi Yehudah
Fine, the "Times Square Rabbi," who
counsels runaways in New York City.
"I was pushing for the Middle East
discussion," said Rayah Samet, 18. "I
thought it could even have been
longer."
Samet is a Kornwise Student
Council member, a senior at Berkley
High School and leader of the metro-

politan Detroit Habonim youth
group.
"It's good we present controversial
issues that people don't talk about
enough,"Samet said.
Pam Goldfaden, 17, a junior at
West Bloomfield High School, was
most interested in the discussion on
intermarriage. "I don't see it as being
the right thing for me, but it was
interesting to hear what the speakers
had to say," she said. "One of my
friends who was there is the daughter
of an interfaith marriage and she was
very outspoken about it, about how it
could work."
Before going to the Kornwise week-
end, Goldfaden said she was sure of
her college plans: the joint program of
the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America's List College and Columbia
University in New York City. "But
now I also think I want to keep
Shabbat," she said.

❑

