Shir Shalom Shifts School Day

A

bout a year and a half ago,
Temple Shir Shalom sur-
veyed families of teens
in light of the student trend toward
heavy weeknight commitments. The
hope was to determine if another time
would be more attractive than Monday
night for high school students to
gather at the 950-family synagogue in
West Bloomfield.
Sunday night came out on top. And
high school attendance is up 25 per-
cent.
"Families respond-
ed enthusiastically,"
says Rabbi Dan
Schwartz, who works
closely with Rabbi
Mike Moskowitz in
leading Sunday night
high school, affec-
i i
Rabbi
tionately dubbed
Schwartz
SWAG – Sundays We

All Gather. "The idea was to figure out
how to re-engage families."
The change wasn't driven by the
Union for Reform Judaism's call to
better appeal to teens although it's
certainly related to that URJ initiative.
Schwartz, a former 10-year staff
member at the URJ-Goldman Union
Camp Institute in Zionsville, Ind.,
joined the Shir Shalom family in 2007.
He's taking 23 teens on our commu-
nity's 2014 teen mission to Israel.
"We're always looking at how to
improve engagement of post-b'nai
mitzvah teens," Schwartz says.
"We've had better than average high
school numbers, but that wasn't good
enough."
Shir Shalom improved its bid to bet-
ter transition younger students for
Jewish life and learning by adding a
student intern especially for them this
school year. Alec Lybik, a University of

Michigan sophomore from Carmel,
Ind., is serving as an intern from the
URJ-Goldman Camp Institute.
He works under Sarah Allyn,
new associate director of Shoresh
(Hebrew for "Roots"), Shir Shalom's
pre-K/grade 8 religious school. On
Sunday mornings, Lybik helps teach-
ers excite fourth- through sixth-
graders about being Jewish and
seeking Jewish experiences. He also
recruits for summer camp.
It's hoped the effort will pay off
down the spiritual road with more
pre-teens finding the "swagger" to
embrace Sunday night high school.
Says Schwartz, "We want, we
need, to be at the cutting edge of
high school programming to help
get teens ready for continuing their
Jewish journey in college and he
years beyond."
- Robert Sklar

Eliana Finkelstein, 14, of Orchard Lake,
Lindsay Steinberg, 15, of Commerce and
Ethan Silk, 14, of Waterford pose
before the Lincoln Memorial during
Shir Shalom's annual Sunday night
high school trip to Washington, D.C., in
January. The rotating annual sojourn
also takes students to Cincinnati, New
York and Chicago.

Securing from page 112

NFTY-Michigan Region director Barrett
Harr and YFTI president Ashley
Schnaar at the YFTI-JARC party

Rabbi Jacobs

between the ages of 13
and 18. URJ maintains
most of these teens aren't
engaged in Jewish life. In
2011, URJ was stunned
to learn 80 percent of its
teens are "out the door"
by 12th grade, President
Rick Jacobs said. So

Jacobs pledged to set as the top URJ prior-
ity turning "wide-scale disaffection into
deep engagement" for teens.
In the Reform Judaism magazine panel
discussion, Rabbi Yedwab discussed the
Reform movement divesting "from youth
work on the national and regional levels
many years ago:' and how "the movement
only now is beginning to add full-time
youth worker staff— hopefully in time to
turn things around:'
"In the past:' Yedwab, a guitar-playing
rabbi, said, "we depended on teens to lead
the adults. Teens were the ones who wrote
the music that adults reacted and related
to. Debbie Friedman's Mi Shebeirach,
which changed adult worship, came from
the youth movement. Our liturgical turn
back to tradition was spearheaded by
NFTY. Teens led us in social action, from
the United Farm Workers to the Sudan.
You see, when teens are at the center,
everything else gets raised up by their
enthusiasm and their vision"
Inspired Engagement as a strategy spun
from a rigorous mapping process in Jewish
youth engagement — a process funded
by the San Francisco-based Jim Joseph
Foundation. In honor of NFTY's 75th year,
URJ is smart enough to tap into 75,000
alumni of its youth programs in hopes of
engaging many of them as teen-program-
ming mentors and supporters.
Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park bought
into this new way of thinking under Rabbi
Arturo Kalfus, who came to the 440-fam-

ily synagogue in 2013.
Restructuring teen
pursuits at Emanu-El,
including Monday night
high school, is a priority.
"We want to strength-
en this area of our
Temple life in formal
Rabbi Kalfus
as well as informal
ways:' Kalfus said. "Our
teens have many opportunities at Temple
Emanu-El. They are our future:'
Two Emanu-El teens will go on the teen
mission to Israel.

Regional Reach

In another illustration of its commit-
ment to advance NFTY as "the way in"
for wavering Reform teens, URJ bolstered
outreach. It recently hired its first NFTY
director — a full-time, New York post —
to oversee professional development.
Last June, URJ brought to Detroit
its first full-time regional director for
NFTY-Michigan, which includes Windsor.
Barrett Harr, 34, is a Dallas native and
founding member and current member-
ship vice president of the Reform Youth
Professionals' Association. Her Michigan
region includes 16 congregations. serving
about 1,000 teens.
Harr, based at the West Bloomfield JCC,
works with a teen leadership board that
develops and leads five gatherings a year
for students in grades 9-12 and one annual
get-together for students in grades 7-8.

URJ teen goals are ambitious. "One
goal; Harr said, "is to see the majority of
teens engaged in Jewish life by 2020:'
She added, "We are working to expand
on the magic that happens at URJ summer
camps and help build the connections for
those campers at year-round events:'
Harr's job is multifaceted:
• To enable Reform teens to explore
Judaism personally and communally
through travel, social action, friendship,
community, leadership and ruach (spirit);
• To help Reform congregations train
and mentor youth professionals and youth
leaders;
• To bring together congregations with
similar interests and needs to create a
common vision for youth engagement.
Harr is a 2012 graduate of Hebrew
Union College's certificate program in
Jewish education specializing in adoles-
cents and emerging adults. Her back-
ground includes seven years at Temple
Shalom in Dallas, where she created and
ran the education program for post-b'nai
mitzvah students.
Harr isn't territorial. She's respectful of
how BBYO, a popular, unaffiliated Jewish
youth organization, has grown to more
than 2,300 teens in Jewish Detroit — a 30
percent increase in the last year.
She's also building local partnerships
with Repair the World, Forgotten Harvest,
Frankel Jewish Academy, Hillel Day School
and the civic-minded Harriet Tubman

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