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Congregation Focuses on Teens Throughout the Pandemic and Beyond

“Or Ami is reinvesting, rethinking and reinvigorating our teen program,” Or Ami Rabbi Paul Kipnes told the Journal.
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October 28, 2022
Courtesy Congregation Or Ami

Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas spent the pandemic finding ways to support their community’s teens. Post-COVID, they are now more dedicated than ever to reconnecting their youth to their temple and each other.

“Or Ami is reinvesting, rethinking and reinvigorating our teen program,” Or Ami Rabbi Paul Kipnes told the Journal. “With support from all these grants from the community, and our own congregants, we are creating a real space for teens and young people to be able to find meaning, gain real leadership experience, be heroes to younger children and find adults who will sit and listen to them.”

The Or Ami Neshama [Soul] Initiative is a multifaceted program for seventh through 12th graders; it includes education, retreats and trips. Plus, there’s Makom, their Wednesday drop-in programing, focused on helping students deepen their Jewish knowledge, leadership skills, spirituality and social connection. Through these initiatives, teens learn about and experiment with Neshama tools, as well as strategies for dealing with the stress and pressures they face.

“It just feels right to be spending time and energy and resources on the youth right now, as we’re rebuilding this year,” Or Ami Rabbi Julia Weisz, who is also director of education, told the Journal. “COVID really took some chunks out of our programming and out of us, [out of everybody], emotionally and psychologically.” 

Weisz said her rabbinate has been focused on creating safe, brave spaces for anyone who comes in.

Toward the beginning of the pandemic, Or Ami sent their teens a survey, asking how they could help support them. “Overall we had teens saying, ‘Just show us that we matter, show us that you care,’” Weisz said. They could have asked for things like paying for the programs (which they would have figured out) or teaching more Judaism and Hebrew. “What they said to us is, ‘We feel alone. We feel like we don’t matter right now, because we’re in these silos,’” Weisz said. “So we really came up with some ways to show them that [we care].”

During COVID, Kipnes and Weisz, along with their teen engagement coordinator Andrew Fromer, started doing driveway check-ins. “We would bring our camping chairs and surprise some of the teens with gifts and things like that,” Weisz said. “[We’d] sit there and talk to them for 30 minutes to an hour.”

The team also hosted “office hours,” which they called Cocoa Conferences. They would send hot cocoa packets, a mug, microwaveable popcorn and a popcorn container in the mail, along with an invitation to join Weisz and Fromer on Zoom. 

“Most of the teens showed up,” Weisz said. “They were [also] completely Zoomed out, but at 8 o’clock at night they would have their popcorn and hot cocoa and hang out with us.” 

These simple tasks — care packages and driveway drop-ins — took time and energy. “But isn’t that why we run the teen program in the first place?” Weisz said.

Last year, Weisz noticed kids and families pulling away. Their kids were “anxious” or having trouble making friends at school. “How can I force them to come to temple?” the parents asked. The teen team spent a lot of last year trying hard to connect. The interruptions from the Delta and Omicron variants didn’t help. 

Fromer, the teen engagement coordinator, spends his time texting, emailing and calling, trying to get kids in the door. 

“I don’t know about synagogues around the country, but my guess is, they’re not always getting a text message from their youth (coordinator), saying, ‘Hey, do you know about this upcoming event?’” Weisz said. 

In fact, if Weisz gives a family with kids a tour, and they don’t know anybody in the synagogue, Fromer follows up and takes the kid out for ice cream. 

As they prepared for this year, the education team, including Weisz, Fromer and senior educator Rachel Altfeld, along with Kipnes’ support, reevaluated their efforts and asked themselves, ‘What are we bringing back? What was successful? What do we want to change? And how are we going to get to that?’ 

Their first goal was Disneyland, Weisz said. The year before COVID, Or Ami took their seventh and eighth graders to Disneyland. These are now their high school Madrichim (leaders). Last year’s trip was canceled due to the Delta variant. This year, they made it happen in mid-August.

 “We worked our tushies off to get the 20 kids to go to Disneyland,” Weisz said. “We didn’t see some of these kids all year last year.” 

Connecting and reconnecting kids to their Judaism and to each other is a big component of this year’s plan. 

“The reason why we’re trying to get kids back in the door is number one, that safe, brave space,” Weisz said. “We want kids to have the option to come to a youth group event instead of drinking before homecoming or whatever. There are kids that just don’t want that.”

“I think everything we do has mental health at the forefront, because we have to meet kids where they’re at.”  – Or Ami Rabbi Julia Weisz

They also give their teens an option to invite a friend to an event, even friends who are not Jewish. “I think everything we do has mental health at the forefront, because we have to meet kids where they’re at,” Weisz said. “We’re saying, if you want to invite a non-Jewish friend to this Jewish event, we’re not going to try to convert them. There’s going to be some Judaism there, and you’ve got to know that. And here’s what to expect.”

This gets them in the door. 

“It’s our hope that they feel safe back at their second home,” Weisz said. “I’m excited to be intentional about decisions and programming. And also, I’m excited about some of the new things that we’re doing and have kids reconnected to what I think is a magical place.”

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