JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
As I began to lead havdalah, the familiar prayer that I’ve chanted on hundreds of Saturday nights to close Shabbat, 78 pairs of eyes followed me. These eyes belonged to a group of Israelis that I had just met a few days prior, when I began my journey as a gap year participant in south…
By her junior year of high school, Bella Saunders already knew that she wanted to take time off before college and apply her “skills, passions and Judaism” to a non-academic setting. But when the coronavirus pandemic disrupted her senior year at Atholton High School in Columbia, Md., the 17-year-old Saunders became even more certain of…
(Plus61.net.au) South African teen Adam Seef’s tragic death by suicide while on an Israel tour program last month has devastated not only his family and friends, but the Jewish community worldwide, raising questions about the Jewish community’s addressing of mental health in its youth and LGBT+ members. Remembered as popular, funny, and a high achiever,…
I just graduated high school with perfect grades, an acceptance letter to my number one university, and what I thought was a sense of what I wanted to do with my life. Yet, to the surprise of many, I am not attending college this year. While my friends were choosing their classes and buying textbooks,…
There are few, if any, options for teens in America who want a Jewish experience during their post-high school, pre-college gap year, but don’t want to spend time in Israel. That was a key incentive for Portland, Ore.-based contracting carpenter Steve Eisenbach-Budner to create Tivnu, the first Jewish social-justice themed gap-year program in the U.S.,…
My daughter was the first person to tell me that an agreement had been reached for Gilad Shalit’s release. Her voice was joyous in a “shouting-from-the-rooftop” kind of way. Shalit’s captivity has been very much on my teenage daughter’s mind since she saw the halting video of Gilad as a prisoner of war two years…
