Making This Ours

October 29, 2026 in From the Clergy, Rabbi Deborah Megdal, Scroll

By Rabbi Deborah Megdal

The teens were trickling in, after-school tired and cheerful but not yet motivated. I looked at Elisha Frumkin and Allison Brown, my talented colleagues who run our Religious School. We knew what we wanted: for these kids to feel that this program belonged to them.

It was the first day of Netivot (“pathways”), our new program for 7th-12th graders, designed to give teens more opportunities to learn by doing, develop as leaders, and take responsibility for Jewish life. The first fifteen minutes of each week are set aside for an all-school gathering.

But how to spend those precious, tone-setting moments? I asked the teens: What do you do to start each day at Jewish summer camp? They answered: Tefillot (prayer). Singing. Birthday celebrations. Gratitude shout-outs. Logistical announcements. We weren’t looking for the one right answer. We wanted the teens to begin imagining what kind of gathering they would create for themselves.

I asked this way because Jewish summer camp is among the most impactful and identity-forming experiences of their lives. There is something that Jewish summer camp does right that the rest of the organized Jewish world would love to tap into.

First, camp is uniquely immersive, one of the only times that young children spend extended overnights away from home. Professor Arnold Eisen from the Jewish Theological Seminary writes that for an all-encompassing experience like camp, “the teaching must be operative 24/7 – ‘when you lie down and when you rise up’ [quoting the Shema Ve’ahavta]” (“The Magic of Jewish Summer Camp,” 2012).

We can’t replicate that kind of immersion in a program that meets once a week. But the “magic” of Jewish summer camp can be attributed to more than immersion.

At camp, young people are not merely the recipients of Jewish experiences. They actively help to create them. They lead songs, establish traditions, plan activities, and shape the culture of the community. Jewish life isn’t a bunch of activities that adults arrange for them. It’s theirs to help create. And with that ownership comes responsibility: to one another, to the community, and to the tradition they have inherited.

Taking a page from Jewish summer camp, we are bringing some of that same sense of ownership into our weekly Netivot program. We want our teens to help shape the culture of our school community, rather than simply participate in a program that adults have designed. Not only will they decide how we spend the all-school gathering time, they will also practice making decisions, working together, and taking initiative through leadership seminars and hands-on learning experiences.

We are taking teen leadership seriously. We have even reserved a seat for a teen leader to attend meetings of our Beth El Board of Directors. Their perspective belongs not only in the classroom, but also in conversations about the future of our synagogue.

In the Talmud, Rava teaches, “Initially the Torah is called by the name of the Holy One [God], but ultimately it is called by the name of the one who studies it” (Avodah Zarah 19a).

Rava is saying that the Torah becomes ours through our engagement with it. Like kids at Jewish summer camp, we make Jewish life our own by immersing ourselves in it and taking responsibility for what it becomes.

I can’t wait to see what our teens come up with this year.