Reform Students on Campus
Thursday, 12 January 2012
"Let's call ourselves Campus Organisers, because that’s what we are going to do". So ended an inspiring seminar for Reform student leadership last week, as Jude Williams explains.
The seminar took place at Finchley Reform Synagogue with ten Reform student leaders, run by Jeneration and RSY-Netzer staff.
With Jeneration's shift to focussing on Reform student needs and building Reform leadership, we needed to start the year with some energy and inspiration. Students do not need much encouragement to be creative, and excited it seems. We took ten student leaders from five campuses, added a couple of seasoned veteran students and a little bit of Ben Rich, and voilà, every campus has a plan of action for the coming term.
In all seriousness, our students have a great deal of capacity. They know what they want to see on campus. Our job is to support them, with financing, administration and quite a bit of enthusiasm.
Some students know what they want to do because they want to create an RSY-Netzer feeling on campus, or re-create services from their time in Israel on Shnat Netzer. Perhaps they want to do something different to what the JSoc offers, or have had a desire to learn about a certain topic but not had a clear way to make that happen. Now they can.
The seminar finished with Kabbalat Shabbat at FRS; it was a wonderful way to say "we are students on campus and are part of a synagogue movement". Many left having experienced a guitar-led Kabbalat Shabbat service saying "I want to bring my children up here!"
Jeneration is clearly on to something important. Moving forward we need to connect students with one another, with our synagogues and with our leadership.
But mostly we need to just create the opportunities for our students to organise Reform activities for themselves on campus.
To connect to Jeneration or to hear more email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
