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By Samuel Barnett, NFTY NAR President
“Leadership is about moving the stored energy in society to where it can be best utilized,” said community organizer Andrew Slack at the inaugural New York Area Jewish Teen Leadership Summit. As Jews, we are responsible for questioning the world around us. At the summit, we asked ourselves: How can our leadership change the world?
The event brought together nearly 200 Jewish teens from the New York Metro Area for a jam-packed day of presentations about social justice, community organizing, worship/spirituality, Jewish education, and Israel. Modeled after a TEDx conference, the summit combined powerful keynote presentations with personal and interactive workshops. We had the privilege of hearing from more than 20 passionate leaders, including Warren Bass, a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal; Jeremiah Bosgang, a television executive; Rachel Ishofsky, managing director of Innovation: Africa; and other incredible individuals.
The goal for our annual leadership event, be it LTI or the Summit, has always been the same: to inspire Jewish teen leaders throughout the New York metro area. However, this year at the Summit, we changed how we met those goals. Instead of simply telling the aspiring Jewish leaders in our region how to be good leaders, we showed them by bringing in the real experts. We decided that if we want to inspire leadership, then we have to provide them with the most meaningful and inspiring Jewish leaders. It wasn’t a training process that provided them with general information that they can use in the future. Rather, it was one that allowed them to experience a wide array of leadership styles and decide for themselves what could work for them individually. This new training style changed the game. Unlike the LTIs of our past, I noticed so many teens excited about new initiatives that they want to bring to their congregations. I know that it had a strong effect on our region’s teens.
Leadership is utilizing stored energy to overcome hurdles and inspire change – not about holding a powerful position or directing others. The summit taught Jewish teens that in order to become great leaders, we must first understand where the potential energy exists in our communities.
Each presenter showed us, through the context of his or her expertise, how to tap into this potential energy. Songwriter Jacob Kraus emphasized the energy in a crowd that can be released through music. Actor/playwright Jon Adam Ross explained how excitement and engagement can coincide with Torah study. Youth director Amanda Greenawalt empowered us to see the value in interfaith programming. And Micol Zimmerman, director of NFTY, worked with us to realize the incredible potential for Jewish youth engagement in the New York area.
The event broke from standard position-centric training (i.e. “How to Be a Good Temple Youth Group President”) and instead adopted a more universally applicable model. Its goal was to elevate teens so we feel armed with the tools to make tangible change in whatever fields are most important to us. We discussed topics such as interfaith programming, LGBTQIA issues, social media enhancement, congregational membership, and recent controversies related to Israel.
In the realm of Jewish Youth Engagement, tradition is often incredibly important to teens. It is hard to change tradition within all organizations–let alone Jewish ones. We teens often feel a deep connection to the “way things have always been done.” But the Summit changed that impression for me. After participating in 4 lackluster LTIs, I knew that the leadership event needed to change dramatically. But, I was afraid of how the region would accept this 180-degree transformation. What I found was that the new model–entirely different from our traditional one– was so successful because of its innovativeness. In the past, we were too caught up in tradition to notice NFTY-NAR’s potential for improvement. Once we took a step back in June to reevaluate the event, we realized how great our opportunity was. Looking forward, to our Fall Kallah at the URJ Kutz Camp, we are making sure to make decisions about the event with intention and thought. As we plan, we question every aspect of our traditions, examining closely where we are failing and where we could be better. Rewriting our programs, events, and traditions allows us to strengthen our community and our engagement as a whole.
In addition to how the regional board is acting differently after the Summit, I have also noticed significant changes in how other teens are operating. I know of several youth groups that have stayed connected with some of the Summit’s speakers–hoping to gain even more insight from the experts. They responded well to the change—some set up fundraisers for Summit-related organizations while others reevaluated their own youth group structures to more efficient models. I found that NFTY-NAR’s reimagining of its leadership event coincided with the reimagining of Jewish youth leadership for many of our teens.
The Summit was not perfect. After all, it was only our first try! Next year, I would like the Summit to include a wider array of Jewish leaders. Preferably not only those who tackle the most prominent issues, but also leaders who deal with problems that teens care about. In other words, we want to “meet them where they are.” I also want to make sure that the workshops and presentations are as interactive as possible, more so than this year. This is to make sure that the participants can delve into the topics and leadership styles to get the most out of the event.
Post-summit, I hope that youth advisors learn that the best leadership training sessions do not have to be position based, but can teach leaders how to inspire others. At other leadership events that I have attended over the years, I learn about a thousand different ways to plan events and solve problems. I don’t believe that is necessarily the best way to learn how to lead. Simon Sinek, a bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last (and a personal hero of mine), said that “the greatest contribution of a leader is to make other leaders.” That idea, I believe, is the foundation for the Summit and the next phase of Jewish leadership education. By bringing adult Jewish leaders to the Summit to inspire our teens, the teens can pass it forward. They can develop their own styles of leadership to inspire the next generation. Leadership is a complex skill, and you don’t learn a skill by learning processes and information, but by watching experts and teaching others.
We teens left the summit with a single challenge echoing in our minds: “to embrace change and take risks in order to redefine Jewish youth engagement.” These dreams of expanding Jewish youth engagement and shaping a socially just world are only possible with great leaders at the helm. With new insights into leadership, it’s now upon each of us to identify the aspects of Jewish leadership we want to explore and strengthen – and then run with the ideas from the summit to chase our wildest dreams.
Sam Barnett is the President of NFTY New York Area Region (NAR).
