Learning from the Americans
Thursday, 03 September 2009
Student leaders head to New York City to sample Jewish life at its most creative.Eight Jeneration campus reps from universities across the UK will be heading to New York next week on a quest for ideas and inspiration from one of world’s most vibrant and innovative centres of Jewish life. In 2010 Jeneration hopes to expand to cover even more campuses. This will be made possible by the addition to the Jeneration professional team of a third student fieldworker, to be funded by Liberal Judaism.
During their week in New York, the students will be visiting both major Jewish institutions such as Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary, as well as grass roots projects started by young Jewish social entrepreneurs. These will include ‘Storahtelling’ - a radical fusion of storytelling, Torah, contemporary performance art and traditional ritual theatre - and ‘Hazon’ – an organisation which works to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community and a healthier and more sustainable world for all.
They will discover other initiatives at New York’s Jewish ‘incubator’ known as Bikkurim (‘first fruits’) which, like Jeneration, nurtures and supports young Jews to help them bring innovative ideas to fruition.
The participants will also be meeting with their student leader peers at Columbia University to share the challenges of overcoming denominational issues in order to foster Jewish pluralism on college campuses.
On September 11th, they will hold a memorial service at Ground Zero and discuss how the events in the larger world shape attitudes towards tolerance within the Jewish community.
Organisers of the trip, Jeneration fieldworkers Sheldon Mordsley and Dan Rickman hope to demonstrate to the young participants that "the sky’s the limit" when it comes to expressions of Jewish life and identity:
"We want them to be inspired and fired up by what they experience over there, so that when they return to their campus for the new year they are full of fresh ideas and energy to invigorate the Jewish scene on their campus, and not afraid to try something new and totally different," Sheldon Mordsley commented.
Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, the Reform Movement’s Executive Director, who will be spearheading the educational element of the trip said: "This trip shows how seriously we are committed to nurturing our future leaders. We want them to experience first hand the vast possibilities for Jewish life and, in particular, to learn from the pluralist model which pervades the New York Jewish community. I am confident that they will return with a new understanding of themselves and their Judaism, and the inspiration to create a more vibrant Jewish community in the UK."
The campus reps, who are studying at universities in London, Cambridge, Sussex, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester and Leeds, have been organising a range of activities from charity Rag Raids, to 5-a-side football tournaments, and Lunch & Learn study sessions since January 2009.
In 2010, once the new student fieldworker joins the team, Jeneration hopes to expand to Bristol and Oxford universities, with a new group of campus reps to be recruited in January.
For further details, please contact Andrea Newman, Public Relations, the Movement for Reform Judaism.
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