by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

March 5, 2009

Matthew Survis, 14, began to understand the extent of the devastation in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina during a visit to the city’s Lower Ninth Ward.

“There were steps leading to no house,” he said.

Matthew, who lives in Short Hills, was one of 24 teens from Oheb Shalom Congregation who took part in a spiritual journey to New Orleans on Feb. 15-18. He went as a participant in his congregation’s teen program, Etgar, now in its second year.

The goal of the trip, said Rabbi Mark Cooper, was not only to help with the recovery efforts.

“Trips like these are tremendously powerful in terms of building community, building shared responsibility, a shared purpose, and a connection to each other,” said Cooper. “Whenever you go away there’s an intensity…. Every moment is dedicated, focused on a purpose.”

But the trip is just one facet of Etgar.

Etgar — “challenge” in Hebrew — is the South Orange Conservative synagogue’s response to the need to engage teens. Although the broader community offers several options for young people across Morris, Essex, and Sussex counties — including Central Hebrew High School with branches in Livingston and Whippany, and the Rebecca and Israel Ivry Prozdor, a program of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City that also offers classes at a synagogue in Millburn — many local synagogues have created their own programs designed to keep teens rooted in their home communities.

(United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism also has a program for students called Etgar, and there is a Jewish teen tour called Etgar 36; Oheb Shalom’s program is connected with neither.)

At Oheb Shalom, post-b’nei mitzva youngsters, from grades eight through 12, attend a two-hour session on 24 Wednesday evenings through the year. They eat dinner together, study Jewish texts, and take part in guided discussions on topics relating to their lives and the wider world, ranging from environmental issues to the latest news from Israel. General conversations are led by rabbinical students from JTS, including Oheb Shalom’s rabbinic intern, Michael Fel.

Etgar’s aim is also to involve teens in social action initiatives like the trip to New Orleans as well as projects closer to home.

This year, the Etgar members have done mitzva clowning — entertaining residents of nursing homes and patients in hospitals in full clown costume — and took part in several joint projects with a group from a Newark church. So far enrollment is 25.

‘Happy to go’

Matthew joined Etgar in the fall because his parents pushed him. “For us personally, it’s really important to keep our children connected to our synagogue,” said his father, Gary Survis. They did not consider other community programs.

“I’m not excited — but I’m happy to go and I do look forward to Etgar,” said Matthew. He didn’t feel the same way about religious school, which he called “extremely boring” and “a waste of time.” By comparison, he said, Etgar “is more relaxed, and we talk about subjects, many currently happening now.”

A recent session focused on the war in Gaza. “Even if we did not agree with what Israel was doing, you could freely talk about your beliefs,” he said.

The New Orleans trip, an integral part of Etgar, was also planned as a means of encouraging the congregation’s teens to bond with one another. Most of the 24 participants are Etgar members.

Yehudah Webster, an Oheb Shalom teen who attends the Prozdor program in New York, was on the trip. “Although the trip was only four days, I feel that as a group Oheb Shalom walked away as a family,” he said.

Matthew called the experience “life-changing.”

“I thought this is a natural disaster but why does it affect me? I’m a plane ride away. Now I see it — people were talking about how they felt the government abandoned them. I could hear them say the people coming down are the ones who are making a difference. I really can make a difference — it was not just busy work.”

He said he also enjoyed observing Jewish rituals along the way, from keeping kosher, not something he generally does, to putting on tefillin every morning.

“When I think of New Orleans, I think of gumbo and shrimp,” he acknowledged. But this trip showed him “that you can be kosher and Jewish wherever you go. That was cool to see.

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Kushner kids lend a hand

DURING THE SAME week that the teens from Oheb Shalom Congregation were volunteering in New Orleans, 10 students from Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston also traveled to the storm-ravaged city to lend a hand.

In a program sponsored by the National Council of Synagogue Youth, the Kushner teens, like their peers at Oheb Shalom, helped rebuild Katrina-damaged homes. They were also taken to see the extensive devastation, particularly the damage done at the Orthodox synagogue building, which can no longer be used. (The Orthodox congregation now rents space in the Reform synagogue building.)

One of the most affecting parts of their Feb. 18-22 trip, said participants, was spending Shabbat with the Orthodox minyan. Whereas Shabbat services can be taken for granted in the large Orthodox communities that Kushner serves, that is not the case in New Orleans. “They made the minyan,” said Rabbi Ethan J. Katz, assistant regional director for New Jersey NCSY, who led the trip. “They had a whole appreciation of making a difference. Here, they go to shul and hang out with their friends and then leave; there, they were singing and really making Shabbos – they wanted it to go on and they didn’t want to leave. It was one of the most gratifying things.”

They also prepared a program to bring into the New Orleans Jewish Day School, a community school. There, Katz said, they gained an appreciation for the dedication it takes in some parts of the country to create Jewish community. The school runs from pre-K through fifth grade; there is no day school in New Orleans for high school. The students “were worshiping the teens who came” from New Jersey, said Katz. And the Kushner teens “felt they were making a tremendous kiddush Hashem. People appreciated every aspect of what they were doing for them.”

— JOHANNA GINSBERG

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