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You are here: Home / The American Jewish Scene / Like Dawn Skimming the Horizon: Riding the Changes in NFTY

Like Dawn Skimming the Horizon: Riding the Changes in NFTY

June 1, 2020 By eJP

NFTY Convention 2019; courtesy.

By Michelle Shapiro Abraham, RJE, MAJE, Maya Levy & Fletcher Block

In the last five years, like many Jewish organizations, NFTY: The Reform Jewish Youth Movement has been making gradual, intentional changes. Faced with falling numbers at overnight events and navigating new models for teen engagement in our synagogues, we realized we needed to clarify NFTY’s purpose.

Through many conversations with teen leaders, stakeholders, and staff, we have seen more and more bright spots in recent few years as NFTY has started focusing more heavily on local events, engaging middle schoolers, holding joint events with URJ camps, and more. The change was slow, but the future was coming into focus, and it looked bright.

Then COVID-19 hit.

In a matter of weeks, NFTY’s intentional, methodical change process was kicked into overdrive. Due to our new financial reality, NFTY faced significant staffing changes and needed to quickly embrace a new organizational structure. Change is always difficult, but it’s especially difficult for an 80-year-old youth movement whose millions of alumni make up the current and future leadership of our Reform Jewish Movement.

In this moment of disruptive change, we came to realize that we needed to embrace the fact that our work – and the way we do it – needed to radically shift. We needed to embrace a future of NFTY that is different from what we are used to, but that remains strong and resilient for the generations to come.

How are we doing that?

1. Holding our vision close

Though each generation has had a slightly different experience, the overall goals of NFTY have remained constant – and they don’t change as a result of staffing structure or resources. We are, as we have always been, dedicated to providing life-changing experiences for teens through community, leadership, and social justice – all rooted in Reform Judaism and the goal of making our world more whole, just, and compassionate.

Through NFTY’s eight decades of existence, the organization has seen many iterations of staffing, supervision, and program focus. But NFTY’s strength, like the strength of the Reform Movement itself, has always come from holding tight to our vision and evolving our approach based on both internal needs and external realities.

As we began this work, we quickly realized this isn’t a moment to abandon our vision; it is the moment to bring our vision to life throughout these changes, to reimagine how we implement it.

2. Gathering our people

At the core of NFTY is partnership between our teens, our synagogue leaders, and the staff and leadership of the URJ, and in announcing out plans for NFTY’s future, we knew we needed to respect our relationships with all who lay claim to this program. We resisted the urge to wait until our plans were “fully baked” before sharing with our community, instead forging ahead with as much transparency as possible.

We knew this news would be difficult to hear, and we wanted to quickly assure our community that NFTY would still be around, that everything would be all right, and that we were working hard to support this precious program. As soon as our staff – especially those whose jobs were being eliminated – were notified of the changes and cared for by their supervisors, we invited our community to join us in virtual meetings to learn more about the significant changes coming to NFTY.

On those calls, attended by more than 1,000 people, we shared what we knew: even with the switch from 19 regional directors to 4 area managers who oversee multiple regions, each NFTY region would still host one URJ-run retreat every year; there would be new opportunities for synagogues and teens to partner with the URJ; and that we would continue to support our NFTY regional boards. Everything else, we told them, we would figure out together.

These informational meetings launched a summer-long co-creation process – led by a core team of NFTY teen leaders, synagogue professionals, and URJ staff and alumni – to help NFTY evolve into this next stage of its development. This collaborative process will allow NFTY’s restructuring to be driven by ideas that come from, and work for, more people; giving teens the power to reimagine the movement they will lead and live in.

3. Prepare to Grow Anew

In our first conversations about our co-creation process, we mourned our loss and worried for our future. We immediately fell into a preservation mindset: How do we continue to support teen leaders? How do we keep our most cherished events and programs? How do we maintain the partnership of our congregations?

Once the initial sting faded, we realized we were having the wrong conversation.

Building on the change process we began two years ago, we returned to our core vision and started to reimagine how to implement it. Instead of looking backwards, we need to look forward to a bright future. We need to look at our assets and many resources from alumni and parents, to our strong staff and camping system and reimagine what role they can play.

Now, we’re asking ourselves questions like:

  • How will we gather in ways that help us be our best selves and make our world more whole, just, and compassionate?
  • How will we shift from a program model, where opportunities are offered by a large, dedicated staff, to a platform model, where everyone is a creator?
  • How might we create meaningful support for teens to lead now and in the future?
  • What areas can NFTY transform, and what is the unique opportunity in this moment?

Current NFTY President and co-author, Maya Levy, shared this quote from Walidah Imarsha, co-editor of Octavia’s Brood, in discussing the road ahead:

“Nature has taught me about fluid adaptability. About not only weathering storms, but also using howling winds to spread seeds wide, torrential rains to nurture roots so they can grow deeper and stronger. Nature has taught me that a storm can be used to clear out branches that are dying, to let go of that which was keeping us from growing in new directions….

“The only lasting truth is change. We will face social and political storms we could not even imagine. The question becomes not just how do we survive them, but how do we prepare so when we do suddenly find ourselves in the midst of an unexpected onslaught, we can capture the potential, the possibilities inherent in the chaos, and ride it like dawn skimming the horizon.”

As Maya told our teens and families this week, “May we all see the possibilities inherent in the chaos and ride this change like dawn skimming the horizon.” Ken yehi ratzon, may it be so.

Michelle Shapiro Abraham, RJE, MAJE is the Director of Learning & Innovation at the Union for Reform Judaism. Maya Levy is the 2019-2020 NFTY President. Fletcher Block is the 2020-2021 NFTY President.

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Filed Under: The American Jewish Scene Tagged With: Engaging Jewish Teens, NFTY - The Reform Jewish Youth Movement

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Arnold J Draiman says

    June 1, 2020 at 1:09 pm

    i am very happy to see that you are seriously addressing the issues since the falling numbers of teens being involved is indeed worrying for the future of the jewish community. i am curious to know if there was any discussion regarding adherence to mitzvot, halacha, jewish law as interpreted within the reform movement. (that is, i wouldn’t expect reform jews to keep shabbat the same way that haredi jews do, but i do expect reform jews to keep shabbat as reform jews do! – see the urj resolutions about shabbat observance, for example; and ditto for kashrut)

    i would also like to know where God fits into your plans. the reform movement, as per the urj website, “maintains faith in the Covenant between God and Israel as expressed over the generations in the teachings of an ever-evolving Torah and tradition” and “to pursue a life of meaning as inspired by the Divine”.

    i think that teens are searching for anchors in their life – Torah and mitzvahs and God can all be a part of that, but i didn’t see you talking about that. would love to hear your thoughts. thanks.

  2. Dave Neil says

    June 1, 2020 at 1:51 pm

    Rabbi Rick Jacobs advocated at a BBYO convention that NIFTY and BBYO should have more joint events. Studies on Jewish teens have shown that teens like to be inclusive and that suggests they are very open to meeting all teens in their area. Here is my suggestion which is already happening in smaller communities out of necessity but I am advocating this for all Jewish teen youth groups:
    All youth leaders from a given community- NIFTY, BBYO, USY, Young Judaea and any other active ones- all the youth leaders should meet at the very beginning of a school year and plan their calendars together, including their tikun olam projects and social events- together.
    When youth show up to an event and there are 6 people or less, that doesn’t go over very well. So many USY chapters have sadly closed. We need to think in terms of “United Youth of Atlanta” for example where all the groups have their own events and projects but also invite all the groups to their events and projects. Each group can “run” its own social event or do it’s chesed (tikun olam) project but also invite all other groups to it and on planned year calendar allowing for each group to take “credit” for the large turn out at each event.
    There are so few Jewish teenagers who are interested in Jewish life these days. BBYO has done some good things due to recent funding and hard work but the rest of the youth movements are lagging. It’s either work together or fizzle out. United we stand or divided we fall.

  3. Dave Neil says

    June 2, 2020 at 8:30 am

    As pointed out to me by a friend, I omitted to mention in my previous talk-back that besides BBYO, NCSY is very vibrant- in fact NCSY may be the most active Jewish youth movement in the U.S. today. I didn’t mention that group as I was only speaking about the liberal (or non-Orthodox) Jewish youth movements.
    NCSY does a lot of outreach- for example http://www.jsu.org where NCSY runs clubs in public schools and on the NCSY website you can read about their high school peer trip to Israel for public school non-Orthodox students called TJJ the Samson Jerusalem Journey high school trip to Israel- both programs reach hundreds of students.
    In the previous talk-back I was advocating for BBYO, NIFTY, USY and Young Judaea (and any other Jewish youth teen groups that are active locally) should in each community plan a joint calendar with social events, Shabbatons and chesed projects- each such event would be sponsored by one of those youth groups but would invite other groups to participate and all the groups would have better turn outs. It would be a win-win situation for all involved, especially for the students.

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