When Matthew Kaplan's mother suggests he has too much homework to go to Hebrew school on a particular weekday afternoon, the 16-year-old Livingston resident protests, insisting upon going anyway.

"It's a great experience," he said about the new Hebrew High School at Temple B'nai Abraham in Livingston. "We learn life lessons — we learn stuff about other religions, about drugs, and stress about college. It's really great. They tell us how to balance our time and have time to relax."

Kaplan underscores the differences between the high school and the pre-bar mitzva curriculum. "In earlier Hebrew school, we just sat there like another day of school. Now, you can speak your mind, talk with really educated people, debate about current issues like politics."

For many observers of Jewish life, Kaplan seems as rare a sighting as a giant squid: a teen engaged in Jewish life.

Study after study reveals the lack of teen participation in Jewish life. The 2004 National Study of Youth and Religion showed that Jewish teens are less immersed in the life of their religion than are teens of other faith groups. In 2000, Brandeis University researchers surveyed 1,300 non-Orthodox b'nei mitzva ages 13 to 17. By the 12th grade, the number of kids participating in Jewish educational, volunteer, or recreational activities had fallen by half.

Such findings have made Jewish teens the new "it" group. And in Morris, Essex, and Sussex counties, educators are responding with new and completely re-envisioned Hebrew high schools, together with myriad projects from community service to high-tech activities. Their goal: to draw teens back into Jewish spaces and back into the Jewish community.

As educators work with a variety of approaches, they are gaining information about best practices: about what works and what doesn't with today's teens. Frontal learning is out; experiential learning is in. Grownup study agendas are out; relevant teen issues are in. Leadership training, technology, and community service are all successful draws. If the timing is convenient, so much the better. In short, meeting teens where they are is a critical component of any successful program.

Local synagogues and agencies are leading the way nationally in this effort, according to Steven Krauss, education consultant at the Jewish Education Service of North America.

"We've known we have to do more. We've tended to focus until now on bar and bat mitzvas forming Jewish identities rather than on issues of teens and youth in college, which we know are crucial ages," he said. "There's a constant repetition of breaking down the notion of formal and informal education, and educating people where they're at. MetroWest is helping to lead the way. There are only a handful of other communities doing this."

The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, replacing the Jewish Education Association of MetroWest, focuses heavily on teens. That alone makes it unusual, according to Krauss, who said only a few education agencies make teens a primary target. (While the Partnership spends a significant part of its time on teens, it also focuses on early childhood and elementary-age children.)

The Partnership has embraced a model of multiple portals to reach teens. Since its inception a year-and-a-half ago, it has created five new programs, in addition to radically transforming its Central Hebrew High School, which currently meets once a week in one of three locations: Sundays in Whippany and Livingston, and Thursday nights in Montclair.

Enrollment in the high school program peaked some years ago at 400 students; it was down to 180 by early 2006 and now rests at 160.

The school's new philosophy — a "work in progress," according to Partnership executive director Robert Lichtman — is to emphasize "experiential" over formal classwork.

"We want to combine formal and informal education, community service, and even exploring the relationship with God," Lichtman said. "We are looking to create a program, not a school; experiences, not classes." Organizational, structural, and content changes are now in the works according to interim principal Edward Prince, who began in June. Many of the changes will be reflected in courses offered this spring.

For example, cooking, the most popular course in Hebrew high schools around the country, will be revamped to provide more content. "Food does not come out of nowhere. There's a context there. It reflects cultural issues, historical issues, and religious issues," said Prince. So students might begin a class making lentil stew and then continue with a discussion about Jacob and Esau.

"As the stew simmers, we'll talk about the story and how attractive the smell is when you're coming back from a day of hunting, and how you might give anything for it," said Lichtman.

The omnipresent Jewish film course is about to get a facelift. Beginning in the spring, students at the school will create their own short films under the guidance of a professional filmmaker — through a partnership with Avodah Arts and its Reel Learning curriculum. The best short works created by the students will be submitted to film festivals.

And rather than learning about prayers through text, one project will have students being asked to use their cell phone cameras throughout the day to take photos of things that argue for or against the concept of praying.

Lichtman's goal for the school? "We're looking for balance, to create a rhythm for Jewish life that is relevant to the rest of your life, not only doing but also learning and becoming informed about Jewish life."

The changes should be fully implemented by next fall, according to Prince. So far, enrollment is holding steady at 160. Prince said they will consider the school a success if they retain 85 percent of the students and nudge the enrollment numbers up. He declined to offer a specific enrollment figure. Instead he offered some questions the school would use to analyze its progress. "Are we offering programs kids have an interest in? Do they have a legitimate Jewish value? And are people aware of what we are offering? When we are doing our job right, Central Hebrew High will again be the place to go."

Meanwhile, synagogues across the community are establishing or recreating their own post-b'nei mitzva programs. Many were created to bring students back into their home synagogues.

Administrators find that teens want to talk about current issues and that they demand flexible schedules and requirements. Opportunities for socializing are crucial. As a result, most of the synagogues have adopted an informal model.

Temple B'nai Abraham in Livingston started its program four years ago with 56 students and now has 127. Students like Matthew Kaplan come for the guidance the program offers with national and everyday issues.

"We discuss contemporary issues that affect teens and incorporate Jewish values, like what's on TV and what's the Jewish perspective, capital punishment, abortion, stem cell research," said Claudia Minde, the school's director. "And we talk about issues that affect them, like the Internet and gossip, friendship and cliques. You have to incorporate the issues unique to their generation" to be successful, she said.

Timing can be everything for high school students with plenty of homework and pressure. So programs like the Chai School at Temple B'nai Jeshurun in Short Hills runs a credit-based program. Students can fit the classes to their schedules.

Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston has done away with mandatory classes altogether. Instead, director Leah Beker created an adult education model, Temple Experience for Teens, or TEXT. It attracts about 15 students to any given event.

"Students get a calendar with all of the choices, and they can come to one event, or two, or all of them," she said.

Beker schedules events on different days of the week to avoid conflicts, and she brings in a variety of speakers. These have included a person with AIDS talking about good and bad choices, and tzedaka guru Danny Siegel, who inspired several students to run a car seat drive for expectant mothers.

At Temple Beth Ahm Israel in Springfield, which created its own teen program six years ago, it's the socializing that draws students like James Southern, an eighth-grader.

"What really works well is the classes and the dinner/social period before it," he wrote in an e-mail. "During dinner I can sit and eat with my friends while I do some of that night's homework with my friends."

Although there is no Hebrew high school at Congregation Beth El in South Orange, teens are getting leadership training as ozrim, or assistants in the classrooms of younger students. And at Temple Hatikvah in Flanders, teens have organized their own junior board, offering a direct link to leadership to increase young people's involvement in synagogue life.

Hebrew high schools, however, are only one facet of the larger Jewish landscape for teens. Many, like TEXT, are jumping-off places for social action.

"Community service is something teens are inclined to do anyway," said Adam Oded, teen educator for the Partnership. "It's a generational thing."

At the Partnership, five new projects offer opportunities for community service. They include a local one-day social action commitment and more intensive long-term projects, like the Iris Teen Tzedaka Program (run together with JCC MetroWest and the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest), which teaches teens about philanthropy, and the Diller Teen Fellows. Diller, a local version of a national initiative, includes weekly seminars that partner students with peers in Israel, culminating in four joint projects with the Israeli students, two in Israel and two in New Jersey.

Technology is another critical tool in attracting teens to Jewish programs.

"How do you reach the people who do not belong to a synagogue or don't do anything Jewish?" said Oded, who has created blogs and podcasts for the Central Hebrew High students. "You have to meet kids where they are, and where they are is on the Internet. We can choose to have a presence there, or we can miss the boat. By developing a stronger Web presence, we will attract more teens who are otherwise uninvolved."

Oded has created a teen tech internship that engages students in creating that Web presence — including a video, edited by the teens, of their involvement in United Jewish Communities of MetroWest's Super Sunday, posted on YouTube.

Across the community, efforts to harness technology are having some success turning on and keeping students. When Rabbi E. Noach Shapiro of Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Montclair joined Facebook, the social networking site, students from his congregation posted messages indicating their surprise and amusement that he had joined — and welcoming him.

And when Rabbi Eliezer Rubin, head of school at Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, whipped out his phone during a club meeting and asked a student to text him something, a low murmur went around the room. The students were clearly impressed.

Rabbi Mark Mallach inadvertently realized the power of technology when someone at his synagogue, Beth Ahm in Springfield, asked if he had pictures of his new granddaughter. He took out his iPhone to show off the photos.

"Soon, we were surrounded by the students who were far more interested in my phone and that the rabbi has an iPhone than in my grandparenthood status. I think it helps the teens become more connected to their rabbi and gives them a very comfortable venue to reach me," he said. Teens know they can reach him via texting, e-mail, or cell phone.

At Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell, where teen projects have been 10 years in the making, all options for teen engagement are in play, with 11 different teen programs offered. Some are community-wide while others are in-house. Some are completely external but are accessible to students. They include everything from tutoring children from the Newark public schools, to visiting with the elderly, to seminars with the rabbi.

There are local arms of national projects, like Rosh Hodesh: It's a Girl Thing for ninth-grade girls, and participation in the regional Hazamir youth choir.

"One venue is not enough. Our goal is to provide as many opportunities as possible," said Susan Werk, educational director at Agudath Israel. About 150 teens in the synagogue take advantage of one or more available options, out of approximately 250.

Lichtman acknowledged that no matter how institutions revamp their programs, "the biggest challenge is finding the right professional leadership."

That's the main reason Claudia Minde's program at B'nai Abraham is so successful, at least according to Matthew Kaplan's mother, Barbara.

"Reaching kids has a lot to do with success," she said. "Claudia's seasoned enough to be a teacher but young and cool enough for them to confide in her. Claudia has an amazing ability to relate to kids. And that's the best curriculum."