Instilling Spirituality into Our Children's Lives

it's very fitting in my mind uh this week in terms of parshas vajri which is in some ways literally the quintessential parsha of jewish continuity it's really the first time we see the messora passed not only from parent to child but in this case as well from grandparent to grandchild in in a very explicit and graphic way and in a sense that's really what uh we're trying to accomplish uh specifically with ncsy that you've heard a lot about uh this weekend in terms of the goals and more importantly the need for uh very thoughtful and creative approaches to cure in north america the the situation is complex and daunting we have very ambitious goals at ncsy to double the level of impact in north america in the next five years and from a youth commission perspective my confidence and my fellow lay leaders very much hinges on the success and really the professionalism that we've seen from the staff at ncsy led by rabbi michael greenland who i'll introduce in a moment uh but really the full team around him uh is really something that should all i think give us confidence and inspiration that we've got really uh talented dedicated professionals looking at this on a non-stop basis this something that they wake up and go to sleep thinking about and it will take that type of effort i think to ensure that we can hopefully god willing have that the same expression that yaakov had uh when seeing the continuation of the messor from his children of baruch shame keval that's really the hope and aspiration that i think we can all look forward to in the years to come specifically robert greenland was the director of the midwest region for 12 years became the international director of ncsy two years ago and in a very short period of time has left a very strong stamp uh on real growth in terms of execution in terms of vision and leadership for ncsy towards this very important goal without further a greenland thank you so much avi it's a pleasure and honor to have the opportunity to speak with you a little bit this morning um i think fundamentally spirituality is a recognition of beauty and sometimes that means are we even paying attention are our eyes even open to the beauty that's around us so the washington post conducted an experiment a few years ago the experiment involved lent plaza train station in washington dc one friday morning in january january 12 2007 as commuters were rushing through the station and they wanted to know what would happen if they put rather than a regular street performer in the corner what would happen if they placed a really a more talented musician in the corner would people would people stop would they notice would they see what was going on would they recognize beauty real splendor as it was unfolding before their very eyes do people pay attention that was the question and so they took a musician who was an extraordinary musician for 43 minutes and they placed them in the corner and lent lenflant plaza station in washington dc 1097 people passed by only 16 stopped for more than 16 seconds the before the experiment began the the columnist who was putting together this this concept went to the to leonard slotkin who was the head of the uh the the national symphony in washington dc and said what would happen if we if we did such a thing would a crowd gather so leonard slotkin said of course it depends on the caliber of the musician but of course i think a crowd would gather said and and would he you know if his violin case were open you think he'd put together some money unquestionably how much well it depends on who the musician is but you know at a few hundred dollars at least well the columnist said well we did this oh yeah who was the musician it was joshua bell joshua bell joshua bell who regularly plays to sold out audiences who a few nights before this experiment had played with the boston symphony to thousands of concert goers with the minimum ticket price of a hundred dollars joshua bell joshua bell of course a crowd would gather of course he would make a lot of money joshua bell in addition in addition to regularly playing music to to sold out theaters also plays on a 1710 stradivarius violin the the instruments that were put together and there are only uh a dozen or so of them left in the world the violins made by the famous violin maker stradivarius joshua bell had purchased this violin for three and a half million dollars taking out loans in the process the most magnificent instrument played by the most thank you so much the most magnificent instrument played by one of the most magnificent musicians playing six of the most famous classical music pieces culminating with with bach's chaconi i hope i'm pronouncing that right for 43 minutes and 16 people gathered but he did make some money 32 dollars and 17 cents so that's right some people contributed pennies but i think this is a a an incredible indication of the reality that when our eyes are open for beauty when our eyes are open then many of us can can can appreciate it fully in fact my guess is among those 1097 passers-by there are some who themselves would have been willing to pay a hundred dollars to hear josh bell play violin but on an ordinary morning when you're not expecting beauty and when you think places to go people to see are we paying attention to what's in front of us and i think fundamentally when we talk about spiritual spirituality whether it's spirituality for our children or spirituality for ourselves and they're certainly interlinked and we'll talk about that in a few minutes the fundamental question is are we even paying attention are our teens even paying attention and are we even paying attention there's a famous gemara and a famous tour that i think many of you are likely familiar with the gemara says that kavanagh during the first bracha of davaning i'm so uncomfortable speaking about alaka in front of shakhtar so i i hope shakthi will correct me if i say anything incorrect but the the gemara says that that the the first kavanagh appropriate attention recognition zoning into what we're really accomplishing what what do the words mean are we in front of the reboner shalom we're really talking to the master of the universe the king of kings kavanagh during the first barakah of shema esre is a non-negotiable it's critical gemara and then rashi there explains that that for that bracha that if you if you don't have kavanaugh for that bracha you're supposed to actually go back and repeat it again so the tour brings down this gemara and says that even though the gemara in fact says that that when you don't have kavanagh during the first practice of esra you're supposed to go back and repeat the first barakah again this time like you really mean it but the tour says bisman in our times that we have so much trouble with kavanagh there are no guarantees that you'll have kavanaugh the second time through either no guarantees that you'll have kavanaugh the second time either so he passed differently is that you're not supposed to go back and repeat the tour writing in the early 1300s 700 years ago we in our times where kavanaugh is weak so if we think spirituality and focus on kavanagh is a new problem then we're sorely mistaken the tour wrote about this 700 years ago the problems only compounded in our days but focusing on on spirituality even recognizing that we're talking to god when we're actually supposed to be having a conversation with him during shimon esre right in front of our very eyes that was a challenge that the that that was struggled with for centuries brisker was famously asked the question i think it was brisker was famously asked the question when does parenting begin a prospective father was asking him this question might i'm about to have my first child when does parenting begin when am i supposed to start does it start a month after the baby's born a year after the baby's born maybe when they're five when when does hinok really start and reprime answered begins 20 years before the baby is born which really underscores what i think is the fundamental concept that as parents all of us need to recognize that it's not about our kids it's about us and the strategies that we employ and the approaches that we take and how our own spirituality is first and foremost on our minds and that in turn will determine what the outcomes are for our kids i'm going to give some other strategies organizations like ncsy can help also but in our communities in our homes i think fundamentally it is about finding ways to make spirituality to make beauty that that we could behold before our very eyes on an ongoing basis to make that first and foremost on our minds on a regular basis so some strategies let's speak about that a little bit so as i've touched on the first strategy is modeling the behaviors ourselves demonstrating to our kids to our children that we care about spirituality spirituality means a meaningful connection with god and often in judaism god is absent from the conversation in christianity not so much christians are very comfortable talking about god they bring god into every conversation or you know a relative of of his so to speak but we don't bring god into the conversation not often enough we don't talk about when we're talking about prayer we don't talk about that it's actually about god there's an incredible incredible muscle that a a a mentor of mine in tafila rabbi yoshua karish in chicago who does outreach and focuses his area of expertise is to feel he wrote a magnificent essay i'll call it it's about 25 pages and if you if you google it you can find it daviding on hot dot it's called dominating on hot coals how to pray like you really mean it and rebecca develops a a muscle a parable about somebody that he calls uncle lou i'm going to tell over this parable as if i have an uncle which i don't so i'm going to i'm going to emphasize at the beginning i'll probably emphasize again later that this is entirely fictional but let's think for a minute about our uncle lou about my uncle lou i grew up with parents of ordinary means mother is a school teacher father who does data entry again this is fictional too and we my mother earned a modest salary my father earned a modest salary and yet i never lacked for anything my private day school education was paid for the clothes on my back i always had nice nice clothes we went away together as a family on nice vacations we lived in a beautiful home my parents each had a nice car i never lacked for anything in my life anything i wanted i needed anything i wanted i got more or less within reason anything i needed i for sure got and from the moment i was old enough to be sensitive to this question i started to wonder how is this all possible my mother and her mother salary my father and his modest salary how how is it how is it all working out that all of our needs are provided for we never lack for anything my affluent friends also never lack for anything but i i see why that is but we never lack for anything either it's it naught at me my entire upbringing another thing though not at me my entire upbringing it was that at every family simcha my parents had this very frustrating habit habit of forcing me into conversations with my very awkward uncle lou every time we were at a simcha there was uncle lou in the corner and he would come up to me here we go again mikha micah my parents call me different names mikha that would be my mother or micah that would be my father go talk to on galoo talk to uncle lou again it's so awkward uncle would come over and say how are you i'm fine how's school the conversation would always feel like it went on too long i never knew what to say i never knew why my parents were so awkwardly forcing me into this into this dynamic of a relationship with an uncle lou that i never really felt a connection with i never really felt i never really felt that that that he had anything meaningful to say to me and i certainly had nothing meaningful to say to him but at some point after i graduated high school my parents sat me down and they said let me tell you let us tell you a little bit about your uncle lou your uncle lou has been single-handedly financing every single blessing that you have in your life your uncle lou has been providing you the clothes on your back the education that you hold so near and dear the house that we live in the cars that we drive every single blessing that you have in your life every single need or want that's been taken care of since the day you were born it is all uncle lou you better believe that the next time i see uncle lou at a family simcha the dynamic in my mind at least is gonna change because i'm gonna look at uncle lou not as this awkward man that i have nothing to say to whom i have nothing to say and and that i'm not sure why he has anything to say to me but instead i'm going to look at uncle lou as truly the benefactor that he is who's looked after my every need my every desire my every want now it's still going to be awkward because i i've never built a relationship with him so i i i'm still not going to know exactly what to say he's he's probably going to say the same things but i'm not going to know exactly what to say it's going to be awkward but if i work at it i'm pretty confident that through that work i'll build a relationship because he's sure as anything been looking after me so all i need to do is recognize that first and foremost and then say i crave a relationship with uncle lou to express hakara satov maybe even to ask for things because how is uncle lou gonna know what i want the next time to praise him to express my thanks that's that's the uncle lou analogy that rabbi karsh speaks about and obviously it relates directly to the way we we think about god who anticipates our every need who takes care of our every want within reasonable parameters but that we always have this weird uncle lou like dynamic with we're not sure what to say to him and we're not sure why he wants to talk to us or or can even process what he's trying to say if the messages are even there but that's fila and we don't often talk with our kids or relate to it ourselves as the way to actually form a relationship with god as if there is an actual being that we can develop a relationship with and all relationships are difficult our relationships with our children require work our relationships with our spouse require work our relationships with our friends require work and with relatives require work why should our relationship with god be so simple we think it's supposed to just happen easily it doesn't work that way you have to work at a relationship and the words of the sitter are the tool not not the ceiling of what our prayer could be a could could express but the floor we could say anything we want in prayer express any desire any want any expression of gratitude but we it starts with a mindset of we're actually talking to the king of kings our father in heaven who loves us who cares about us who who sees to our every need it's hard enough for us as adults to think about tefila that way that as we we take those three steps forward to begin shimona esre that we're actually standing before the king of kings but calva komer how much more so it is for our children whose davaning is policed by proctors in school walking around grading whether they're actually having kavanah or not hmm what does kavanaugh look like to a proctor i wonder but the language of how we talk to our kids about tefila needs to start with are modeling it ourselves do we talk about god do we talk about when we're when we're about to dive in do our kids see that that we're we're actually working to build a relationship with god they're watching boy are they watching everything that we do when we sing smiros at the shabbos table when we bench do we actually demonstrate that we're forging a meaningful and and honest spiritual spiritual connection with our creator with the king of kings with our father in heaven the master of the universe so it starts i think with the mindset bringing god into the conversation and modeling it to our children that's one a second strategy second strategy is i i think thinking outside thinking outside the the uh the spiritual box we all barack hashem take vacations with our children we all barack hashem have opportunities to introduce spirituality into the conversation we're creative often in our business lives in our professional lives we're thinking how can we do something really interesting how can we change up the dynamic a little bit in our business lives and our professional lives we're thinking along those lines on a regular basis but how often do we think about that as it relates to our shabbos table or as it relates to our vacations so many of us thank god we take our kids on a vacation to israel and we think okay so that that isn't that enough and in many ways it is in many ways the rest of it does to an extent take care of itself but what are we doing with our kids when we take vacations in israel we're just visiting family which is important and nice are we going to see the sites which is important and nice are we also finding ways to do something that actually emanates from the kids themselves are we going to a food pantry to actually involve our kids in in real ma are we going down to communities where people are not as privileged as we are financially reaching out through programs that even oh you israel has in israel makombalev going to to places like lude and ramla and seeing what it's like for the people in those communities where we we run programs we meaning oh you israel run programs in those communities for for immigrant children coming from russia coming from ethiopia coming from countries where they they don't have the they don't have the financial wherewithal to do all the things that we have the opportunity to do with our kids and because socioeconomically in those communities those those israeli kids are more similar to palestinian children than they are socioeconomically to the jewish children in tel aviv and in ranana and in yerushalayim assimilation is rampant intermarriage even is rampant where those kids if we don't get them to jewish high schools they're going to be on their way towards dating arabs marrying rahman al-islam arabs that's its own problem but we can do something for our own kids by sensitizing them to these to these circumstances there are people who are less fortunate than us how do we do hesed like we really mean it how do we do outreach like we really mean it bringing our kids along on these excursions taking half a day on an experience that barak hashem we go for a week or two or three taking a half a day and going to a a food pantry a soup kitchen a a a makombalev program in ramallah or ludor or or another socio and economically challenged community what are we doing that's outside the box to wake our kids up to the reality that they're they're part of a world that they can connect to and feel like i'm somebody more than that what sort of creativity do we put into our shabbos table does our shabbos table literally look the same way it did five years ago and 10 years ago and 15 years ago and 20 years ago for many of us it looks exactly the same because it's comfortable and listen shabbos is incredible so shabbos on its own if we have a great shabbos table where we sing one zimmer and we talk about the politics of the week and maybe a little lush and hara hopefully no lesnara but that's the dynamic in most of our shabbos tables certainly and mine even and that's that's because we're not thinking outside the spiritual box what can we do that's gonna that's gonna change the dynamic if our kids prepare divreitaro automatically because we've been doing that every every week at our shabbos table what can we do to change the dynamic can an older sibling teach the dvar torah to a younger sibling have they have the younger siblings say it at the shabbos table and have a sense of pride that torah is shared between siblings at our shabbos table if we don't really sing regular regularly sings miros so what zemer are we going to sing this week leave it up to the kids have them think on arab shabbos about what this miros are going to look like at this shabbos table even have a rotating agenda written or not for the shabbos table conversation and have one child a week depending on the age of the children say what's what are we going to talk about a matter of importance to the jewish community that we're going to talk about at our shabbos table it makes shabbos more meaningful and it makes what what we're so good at i think at ncsy is that we make kids feel like they are on par with adults they are owners in the world instead of bystanders in the world that they can own these conversations these decisions this mirrors that they sing the dive torah that they share that it means something to us and whether every experiment works or doesn't work and certainly not every experiment will work and certainly not every experiment that might work in one household is going to work in every household but just the fact that we cared enough to think creatively is enough i remember one friday night when i say enough i mean it's enough to send a message to our kids that we care and what we care about whether they say it or not express it or not means a lot to our kids they're watching they're paying attention 24 7 recorded camera all the time one friday night this doesn't this doesn't happen often enough for any of us right one friday night i was feeling particularly inspired during kabbalah shabbas it was really it was a magnificent dominating i have to say i really i really felt like um as opposed to so many times would feel like i don't know who i was talking to i actually felt like i was talking to the reboner shalom i actually felt shabbos come in during luchadori it was it was magnificent and that doesn't happen often enough to us adults but when it does we better seize the moment um i walked home came into came into uh came into the the dining room and we all gathered around the shabbos table when i started singing shalom alaikum i don't know what got into me but it was definitely that the the residual of that kabbalah chavez i grabbed one son's hand and one daughter's hand said we're dancing dancing around the table for shalom alechem and they said abba you're so awkward and they laughed about it and they were reluctant participants but i watched how they told their friends about it the next day and they weren't just making fun of their father they were proud they thought it was cool kind of cool enough that it actually it showed them that something was different that friday night and they bring it up periodically it was like two three years ago they bring it up periodically abba who danced during shalom aleichem one time so i don't think my kids are the kind of kids that want to dance during shalom aleichem every friday night i don't think i'm going to feel it genuinely and passionately every friday night but when you do when you're feeling spiritually connected don't be ashamed to let your kids see that don't be ashamed to actually plan it out on your way home from shul or to plan out these strategies well in advance so that's the second that's the second tactic is to be thinking outside the box to actually employ some of the creativity that we express in our business lives in our in our spiritual lives i'm sorry our business lives and our professional lives into our spiritual lives when we go out on a date with our spouses which hopefully we all do periodically and obviously in my case not often enough but if we do that let's employ during during that during that time together take a few minutes and say what can we do for our kids spiritually instead of just talking about again the politics or what's going on in the in the in the world or the challenges we're having with our kids and being responsive instead of proactive to those challenges so-and-so needs this therapy and so-and-so's challenge that challenge this way in school and boy they know what i got from this teacher think proactively what could our shabbos table look like this friday night that's different what could our what could our our conversation about dominating look like this week that's different i think shabbos and davening are are good areas to start with is a good is a good other area because it turns out like nothing else turns turns our kids into owners instead of just bystanders the national president of ncsy i just came from yarchekala nationally i would have been here for shabbos if i wasn't there nationally akikawa in stamford connecticut was a magnificent experience with over 300 teenagers learning torah together intensively for four days they're still finishing over there as as i'm here with you this morning and during nationally archicada you have an opportunity it's 80 90 public schools public school students only about 10 20 day school students and if you have the opportunity to see kids who are just open they've they they're not they're not tarnished by having having experiences through their youth of of having their dominant proctored for example and so when you talk to them about fila they they they can actually start it's like a blank slate you're starting from the beginning you could talk about fila in a way that it actually frames the conversation in ways that they can relate to but this is another strategy i'm going to i'll demonstrate it by way of example our national president of ncsy this year is a young woman named tova sklar from from teaneck new jersey or from bergenfield she's a she's a terrific woman a 12th grade student at uh at maya note um and a a really fine example of of a leader she told me that she first her first experience at ncsy when i was interviewing her to be national president she told me her first experience in ncsy was a hassett experience it was an experience where eitan katz who today is is the new jersey ncsy regional director at the time was associate regional director has developed these hessed missions where we we and ncsy take high school students um in partnership between ncsy and the high school down to to new orleans in this case to other other places that there is a uh there's there's there's an organization based out of minnesota that does these tikkun ola missions disaster relief missions for jewish for jewish people to help jews and non-jews recover from disasters and in this case rabbi eitan katz has been running disaster relief missions together with tabc students with maya note students for a number of years and tovasclar who had never come to an ncsy event as a participant in her life came as a maya note student on a mission to to new orleans and was blown away by the opportunity that she had as a as a 9th or 10th grader to make a real difference in the world and after that she said i have to be involved in ncsy where i can do more of this the rest well the history is still unfolding but so far the rest is history now she's the national president of ncsy who when she got up to speak at charlottesville's yesterday with 315 pairs of of of teenage eyes looking at her as as as their role model somebody that they want to learn from was it extraordinary i thought her first activity in ncsy as a participant and it was was 9th 10th grade but she said yesterday she told the story about how she actually started in ncsy her first encounter with ncsy came far before that long before that she wasn't a participant in fact she was in fourth grade younger than any of the participants at ncsy and it was at nationally archicala eight years ago as a fourth grade student that she was just daving in qatar torah and romer where for many many of the past several years ncsy is yakikala while we've been in stamford at the stamford hilton during the week we come to t-neck for shabbos and stay stay in homes in the neighborhood and and have had dominant over shabbos and the program over shabbos at romer at qatar torah and there she was in the in the ezra in the women's section in romer blown away by the ruach blown away by all the singing blown away by these hundreds of people who had come from all over the country to experience shabbos many of them for the first time but what really blew her away she said yesterday was the following she saw as the gabba was calling up high school kids for the aliot and there was one who came up and the ganbai asked him do you know the blessing and he said no and she's witnessing this and he said have you ever had an aliyah and he said no so an advisor came up and said i'll help you with the aliyah a regional director was also standing there said wait and he stood up and made an announcement to the entire show because he said usually a young man has his bar mitzvah when he turns 13 and that's the first time he's called to the torah but it's never too late to have a bar mitzvah it's never too late to to accept the yoke of toro mitzvos upon ourselves it's never too late to be called to the torah for the first time and here we have anthony this young man who came from the former soviet union whose parents were not sensitive even though he was here when he was 13. didn't connect the dots didn't provide him that opportunity and here he's going to be called to the torah for the first time and the adviser helped this young man with the bracha and everybody sang simentova mazel tove and dance and it was magnificent the bar mitzvah in romer right there in teaneck in bergenfield teaneck for for this young man who at 17 was being called to the torah for the first time and it was great and i'm sure many people there were inspired but i wouldn't have thought necessarily that one of them was a fourth grade girl i wouldn't have thought necessarily that that was the inspiration that that was the spark that would be lit that then tova sklar sitting there that day would say i want to be i want to be part of this organization one day and now she's a leader in this organization the team leader in the organization and i think it's because somebody had the opportunity somebody had the forethought to connect those dots at that moment but more globally what sorts of experiences do we introduce our kids to that can that can get them to expand their horizons ncsy summer programs are among them camp experiences are certainly also among them ncsy or otherwise any any opportunity to develop a role model relationship with somebody who's not just their parents somebody who's not just us somebody who can embrace them unconditionally love them for who they are not also have to be an enforcer because we love our kids unconditionally but we also have to be enforcers and teachers and principals who i think are part of the solution they're not part of the problem in many cases they also love our kids unconditionally but they also have to be enforcers it's so much easier in an environment like ncsy or a camp or another youth group to have the opportunity to have our kids a be accepted unconditionally for who they are really gotten to know loved and not judged and also have their horizons expanded where they get to meet kids from different backgrounds in an appropriately supervised miscarriage in an appropriately supervised structure to get to expand their horizons to see how the other side lives the other side can mean the other side of the country the other side of the universe the other side of the socioeconomic spectrum the other side of the religious spectrum kids who are more religious than them less religious than them come from different backgrounds so i think that is that's the third strategy that we as parents can employ to recap those strategies are number one do we bring god into the conversation do we model this type of behavior ourselves are we excited or are we or are we just schlepping through ramosa feinstein i'm sure you've heard this story but i'll repeat it because it's worth thinking about freshly ramosha feinstein was famously asked the question what happened to all those jews those families who were most their nephesh for shabbos in the 20s 30s 40s in america who quit their job every friday afternoon and had to start looking for a new job on sunday morning what we don't have masira snefesh for shabbos today like they had then and yet our kids predominantly are from and their kids predominantly were not so how does that happen how does how does the example of masira snappish that parents were setting in those days how does it happen that then their kids are not interested or moshe feinstein famously explained he said it's it's because when they get home on friday night they slumped down in their chair and they say schweitzein yid being jewish is so hard it's so painful it's so difficult it's so oppressive so the message their kids got was not a message of mesiras nephesh of how much this means to my parents instead they got the message of this is tough who wants this in our own ways we deliver our own messages to our kids of schweitzein yidd when we fetch about tuition and we fetch about how difficult it is and we say at the shabbos table all i want to do is get through the meal so i go to sleep those are messages that nonverbal messages even that we're delivering so the first the first strategy to bring spirituality into the lives of our teens is to is to bring spirituality into our own lives and model it for them that they should see when we're inspired sometimes and we want to sing and we want to dance we want to be over hashem they want to see that when things are difficult in the community that we turn to our tehillim or to our sitter let them see that let them see instead of instead of policing our kids during shmona esrae to have a schmooze with them on the way to shul about what dominating is going to be like today and then model what a shimon ester should look like let's do it ourselves first and lead by example it's the first stress first strategy the second is to think outside the box what are the opportunities that we can plug our kids into cassette opportunities what are the opportunities to make our shabbos table different unconventional the opportunities for us to even give michelin for our kids i'll give you another great one from rabbi karsh again my mentor in tvla gives an incredible analogy it's a visualization that he heard from rabbits and twerskian in milwaukee you can use your own visualizations and our kids can use their own visualizations but this is a visualization that he told me once at a midwest ncsy and it worked for me the the the when i'm feeling zoned in enough to actually employ it what's going through our minds during those seconds those nanoseconds before we take our three steps forward for shimona esre what are we thinking about so rabbitson twersky and repeated by rabbi yoshua karsh explains as follows he says picture yourself standing before a magnificent palace picture these magnificent mahogany doors finely crafted standing before you 20 30 feet high that are going to open up to this incredible palace and the mahogany door is open and before you this magnificent marble floor and chandeliers like you've never seen and gold trim and platinum all over the room and there is nobody there it's just you the far end is the king you don't have to picture what the king looks like maybe picture the king's throne but you have an audience with the king with your father in heaven an opportunity to tell him how you feel to thank him to praise him to ask for what you need and that's what we that's what we can visualize before we begin shmona esre or whatever visualization might work for you of how you picture god maybe it's not a magnificent palace maybe it's it's it's a little closet the more intimate conversation but whatever visualization it is don't be afraid to actually employ them ourselves and then have conversations with our children about them let them see that this means something to us let them see that we're employing some of our creative energy some of our juices to to making a difference in their lives spiritually that we're thinking outside the box and the last thing is plug them into opportunities because we can't do it ourselves and our schools can't do it themselves opportunities where they can connect with role models opportunities where they can they can be accepted for who they are loved unconditionally and embraced nationally in ncsy we are as avi mentioned working over the course of the next five years to double the number of kids on whom we have an impact and we're we're taking a lot of time and attention to how we define impact impact in the yeshiva day school realm and impact in the public school realm because we have two simultaneous crises going on in america today there's a crisis of spirituality in our own community where our kids know how there are more kids learning torah today in actual schools yeshiva day schools and and uh and the such than ever before in jewish history the quantity of people learning torah is unprecedented ever ever but the quality of their spiritual experience the way they actually connect to god is at a terrible low and when our kids go off to college campuses if they don't go to yeshiva university touro another judaic studies institution then the chances of them genuinely staying spiritually connected are greatly diminished and if they don't go to a campus where there's if they go into a secular campus they're not going where there's a jlic or another inspirational role model that they can connect to again greatly diminished but our own graduates of yeshiva high schools overall even including those to yeshiva university turo et cetera and even including those who go to campuses where there there's jlic predominantly they are the pew study says 18 of those are not even defining themselves as orthodox just a few years later and many more are defining themselves as orthodox but aren't practicing and many more than that are defining themselves as orthodox but aren't feeling because that's the challenge for us so it's for of course the challenge for our kids that's one crisis in america today that ncsy is trying to do something about and the other crisis you know about full well it's the other part the major part of the pew study that says 72 percent intermarriage in the last 12 years outside the orthodox community that assimilation is rampant and it's getting harder and harder because the low-hanging fruit the conservative movement those kids who at least know how to read hebrew at least know what shabbat is who used to make up the bread and butter of ncsy's public school recruits the conservative movement has hollowed out their numbers are down they're redefining their mission on an ongoing basis they're not sure what they believe they change usy international convention you may have read this was this week and at usy international convention the kids made a subtle change in their minds it was subtle but a subtle change to say that interdating among regional board members and national board members in usy is no longer is no longer prohibited now it happens to be these are kids who actually want kids to date jewish they were trying to take something that was phrased negatively thou shalt not and phrase it positively we value the ideal of dating of jews dating and marrying jews but by changing that language they've de facto then said regional board members national board members national officers in usy and date other could date gentiles and still be still be leaders in the organization and so that subtle change was caught by jta the jewish telegraphic agency and now he's you're going to see all over the internet and appearing in jewish newspapers because that change represents the fact that that they're not sure what they believe that's a digression but the the the reality is that as orthodoxy gets stronger in numbers and conservative gets weaker in numbers and the left reform and unaffiliated get stronger in numbers we have these two challenges and so we've laid out a five-year strategic plan of how ncsy is going to double the number of kids that we impact in the next five years not double the number of kids that we see but number double the number of kids that we impact through high quality experiences what are we doing for yeshiva day school students in co-ed yeshiva day schools in places that we in places that we traditionally haven't drawn heavily from but they're experiencing the same crisis of spirituality in frisch and sar and ramaz and kushner and hafter and yula in l.a and ida crown in chicago single gender yeshiva day schools who again their parents we care enough i send my kids to single gender yeshiva high schools but i know that the crisis of spirituality is not any different in a single gender yeshiva high school than it is in a coed high school what meaningful experiences are we creating for our kids so in ncsy we're targeting those schools as well to launch pilot projects over the next five years first in the next two years pilot projects in these two for these two audiences co-ed yeshiva high schools single gender yeshiva high schools to say what can we do to engage an audience that's traditionally not been engaged by ncsy the co-ed the co-ed issue of high school audiences we get five percent if that from half to ramaz kushner sar fresh in the in the single gender yeshiva high schools we work with those kids in the summer but not during the year the kids at tabc and maya node and mta and central and drs and ska and skokie shiva and and and uh uh eula should have been in this example i meant shell heaven in the co-ed example in los angeles we see those kids in the summer they make up the majority of ncsy colell of michelet of give of our sum our single gender summer programs but during the year what's happening with them and what pilots can we launch in conjunction with those schools to think creatively for how we're going to address this crisis of spirituality and another three pilots in the realm of public school outreach you can ask me about if you'd like but really in in this conversation we're doubling down our efforts to raise more money to structure our management more strategically and to shut down programs that we think are nice but are not having the degree of impact that they need to be having for in order for us to accomplish our goal of doubling the number of kids that we impact in the next five years in many cases it's the public school kids who are wide-eyed who feel this sense of spirituality and a connection that we in our own in our own communities don't feel and we need to reawaken it by thinking strategically and creatively about it there was a young woman i worked with in midwest ncsy when i was regional director there a young woman named morgan who went on tjj our our our hallmark ncsy summer program in israel for public school kids this will be my closing story and morgan went on tj and she came back so inspired so ready to connect but then she went back to her public school in st louis missouri and it dissipated as these things sometimes do without without ongoing relationships so one day in november she wakes up and she says i need to i need to connect to that feeling that i had in the summer it's gone she couldn't concentrate the rest of the day thinking through spanish class and history class and trigonometry what is she going to do to reawaken the spirituality that she felt in the summer and finally at the end of the day it occurs to her she's going to bring her bencher to school the next day and she's going to bench and that's in public school and that's what's going to reconnect her to that spiritual feeling that she felt on tj in the summer she's so excited she goes home she gets her benches she puts it in her backpack she can't wait till the next day the whole morning she can't concentrate either but this time she's so excited for lunch to go to the cafeteria i hope she ate kosher food i really do but to go to the cafeteria to eat and to bench so she went takes out her bencher at the end of her meal her friends say what are you doing she said you could go ahead i need another couple minutes so they leave her and there she is sitting in the cafeteria of clayton north high school in st louis missouri with her ncsy bencher in front of her so we're very good at ncsy about teaching kids to bench but what we don't do is teach them that you don't have to sing it so here she goes she opens it up and from behind her she hears eloqueno melecholum she turns around you're jewish you're jewish neither of them can believe it because they sit next to each other in homeroom every morning but they didn't even realize the other one was jewish let alone that the other one knew how to bench and so they finished benching together and from that point forward they had a havrusa in benching for every lunch period for the entire year that's the magic of what one can influence another awaken a connection public school kids often feel that wide-eyed openness our own kids don't they they've grown up with it baruch hashem they've grown up with it but unless we're willing to employ strategies that will actually make our kids be as excited to bench as morgan was in st louis strategies of ourselves modeling it of thinking outside the box and connecting them to experiences through ncsy and other other organizations that will help our kids horizons be expanded and connect them to kids who who they otherwise would not have the opportunity to be exposed to then this crisis of spirituality and our community is only going to get worse so we're committed to that effort and each of us in our own households need to be equally committed thank you all very much we do have uh a couple of minutes for questions yeah um i mean i would much rather get an email every day from you telling me to know what's going on in iran on a regular basis of what we do in our own homes to increase spirituality that's very well said i think there are others from the ou who are listening i i think we should uh we should absolutely uh make that an agenda item for discussion yes excellent so that's a good suggestion we don't have all the in the world at the ou or in ncsy um we grant that why you also shares it with us yutoro.org is a great destination i say that tongue-in-cheek with with uh my review of shakhtar in the room that's uh that's unquestionably there are there are many addresses but as much as uh as much as it's it's the internet is not so it's not so difficult to find it's not so difficult to find uh places to go but i the point is fully taken that uh the initiative should come should come from us to share those opportunities outward yes is despite that so it's a great question question about uh for the benefit of the camera for the question about starting earlier um then ncsy traditionally starts the the truth is there for many decades ncs we had a very strong junior ncsy program that started in in fifth grade and in or sixth grade and in some regions it is still strong um but in many ways in the last couple of decades we moved away from that focused on i i think high school years are the prime years for kids to be making decisions that affect the rest of their lives so we've been focusing on the prime years i'll tell you the downside to that in addition to the ones you know though the downside to that is it's become harder and harder to recruit high school students who have increasingly busier and busier lives and if we can engage them in in sixth seventh or eighth grade then it's going to be that much easier to retain them later and in addition kids kids uh maturity and decision making is now in certain ways they're much more immature than they've ever been but in other ways they're exposed to so much more than they've ever been and one of our pilot areas actually will be expanding back in certain regions expanding in the junior ncsy realm to see what what sorts of programs ncsy can uh implement and that if it works if in fact we engage these students effectively as as fifth sixth seventh eighth graders um to replicate that elsewhere it doesn't fully address your question though and i think to fully address your question i i think uh i i want to come back to uh to to to the point that i made about modeling because it's it's not going to be possible i think for us always to have to have at every at every age of of of potential engagement exactly the right organization we can each work to start it hopefully ncsy can be a piece of that solution but some organ some communities needs are different than other communities needs and some households needs are different than other households needs and i i think uh i i think in many in many cases i i've had so many conversations with parents um about uh about the spirituality challenges that they're having with their children and and uh i i'm certainly as guilty of this as anyone um and and they look everywhere else but but themselves they're looking to blame the shul they're looking to blame the school they're looking to blame the media they're looking to blame the internet they're looking to blame everywhere else except starting except starting at home obviously it's easier for me to say this to you your daughter's three and a half so i i don't think the i don't think the problem starts at home i i think but as you're you're you're here or you're asking the right questions to say what am i going to need to be doing when my daughter's when my daughter's in fourth grade and third grade and second grade i i think the answer is um partially finding the organizations that you can connect and connect her to and i hope hope ncsy can be a part of that but it's also it's also what strategies am i employing what sort of modeling am i doing okay i think that's all the time we have for uh for questions thank you all once again