United Synaoguge Youth movement
attracts teens with blend of socializing and davening

A participant gets an assist with his tefillin.

In pairs and small groups, still groggy, teenagers trickle into the empty Langerman Sanctuary at New City Jewish Center. A “do not disturb” air hovers about them. Brushing sleep from their eyes, they look like they’ve been up most of the night.

They find friends and take seats, more than halfway filling the sanctuary. With little fuss, they go about their business. The boys all don tallit — as do a handful of girls — and tefillin.

Noah Singer, a synagogue member and “rel ed” or head of religious education for METNY’s Koach division, tinkers with a computer and sound system so the service that’s about to begin can be injected with the songs of Jewish rapper Matisyahu. Rina Schulberg, a freshman, gets in place in the front of the room to lead prayers.
And then, without adult prompting, 240 teens begin to pray.

The Sunday morning service is the coda to a weekend-long divisional kinnus, where teens from across the Conservative movement’s New York region known as METNY, gather beginning on Shabbat for a weekend of Jewish exploration and socializing. The Koach kinnus, which brings in teens from Rockland, Orange, Westchester and Putnam counties, and Greenwich Conn., took place in early April and attracted 240 kids. It was the largest kinnus since METNY began holding the weekend events decades ago.

At a time when the Conservative movement has been struggling with declining numbers and a way to recast itself from a movement that bridged assimilation into something new, its youth movement, USY, is going strong. Somehow, by deftly combining dances, davening, serious Jewish discussion and a lot of hanging out, USY, as it heads into its sixth decade, has found a way to be cool.

“I got into USY because basically I saw a lot of older kids than me at shul, cool kids,” says Marisa Kelly, a member of the Orangetown Jewish Center’s chapter and Koach divisional president. “They did USY, and they sat me down and said you’re going to do USY and dragged me to my first event, and I’m forever grateful.”

Those involved attribute the organizations success to the fact that it offers teens community without pandering or platitudes. For the kids, it feels real and it feels fun.
Alex Hausner, 17, a junior at Clarkstown High School South and a member of Nanuet Hebrew Center, had been involved in USY since middle school as part of Kadima, the group that caters to that age division. He attended his first kinnus in the fall in Greenwich, Conn. and was really looking forward to the spring event at NCJC.

The dances are fun, he says, but it’s the group’s discussions, or sicha, that really interest him.

“I like to question things,” he says. “I’m a teenager, so I question my beliefs sometimes. I know I’m Jewish and sometimes question that, others do as well.”
Most importantly, though, “They listened.”

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What METNY is experiencing is happening throughout USY, according to Rabbi Charles Savenor, executive director of the METNY Region of United Synagogue. For individual programs the numbers are up, with divisional kinnusim, or conventions, and regional programming is strong.

“We’re seeing a dramatic increase,” he says. He attributes the strength to a savvy use of social media, which all the teens have access to through Facebook, email and twitter, and to good old-fashioned arm-twisting.

“The old recruitment tools still work,” he says. “Getting a phone call from someone still works.”

While participation in programs is way up these days, overall membership is not, he says. As go the Conservative congregations, shedding members each year, so goes its youth movement. What organizers are seeing that’s new, he says, is teens participating in individual programs, participating when they want to participate.

“USY participation rates in divisional and regional New York is going through the roof he said, noting that at mid-winter Kallah, a regional gathering in a hotel that can cost upwards of $200, attracted more than 100 teens more than it had the year before.
“We live in an age where the concept of membership doesn’t resonate with people as much as it used to; people participate in activities when they want to participate.”

United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism is the umbrella organization to approximately 652-member congregations. USY, it’s youth movement, is divided into 17 regions. METNY, which represents the metropolitan New York region, is further broken down into four divisions, Chazak, Kiryah, Rakevet and Koach, which includes Rockland County synagogue youth groups. The program begins in middle school with Kadima and continues through college, with Koach, though that program has not been as successful.
Throughout the year, member teens plan and attend events and run for office at the synagogue, divisional and regional levels. Once a year, they can attend IC, or International Convention and meet up with teens from other regions around the country. The program meshes handily with other USY programs, such as Encampment, a 10-day intensive Jewish camp at the end of the summer, USY on Wheels, a summer-long travel camp that takes teens across the United States, and USY Israel Pilgrimage, a similar program in Israel.

At the mid-winter Kallah, adult organizers polled participants, asking the more than 400 teens who attended why. The most common answer was completely expected, says Savenor. They wanted to be with friends.

But the next most common answer was completely unexpected: To be part of a Jewish community.

“The second one really surprised us,” says Savenor.

The teens, he says, want connection. They want to interact with one another in real and meaningful ways, not just at the dance, which, of course, is part of these events. But what adults are finding is the teens want to learn something, and they want to do it with their friends, in a Jewish context.

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