Jewish youth

Shabbat Shalom,


My name is Samantha Levinson and I’m here today as the International President of BBYO, but more importantly as Jon and Diane Levinson’s granddaughter. It’s because of BBYO that I was able to share this thanksgiving with my West Coast family and I’m very thankful to be able to be here today with all of you.





So how does a Jewish girl from Northern Virginia get to be spending her Thanksgiving here in California? Well, I suppose the story of how I’m here today dates back to my grandmother, who as a teenager attended BBYO dances, and then my father who credits his best high school friends to BBYO and the memories he made in the Penninsula BBYO chapter. It was only natural that when I hit my second semester of 8th grade I too joined BBYO. A a time when so many Jewish teens see their bar/bat mitzvah as an exit point from Jewish life instead of an entry point, I saw BBYO as the best way to continue my connection to my Jewish Heritage. I ended up getting a whole lot more than just that.







BBYO is 87 years old and the largest Jewish youth movement in the entire world. BBYO engages over 30,000 teens every year, in over 15 different countries, with more than 500 chapters, and 43 regions. BBYO prides itself with providing more Jewish teens, more meaningful Jewish experiences. I ended up getting leadership abilities, confidence, networking opportunities, the opportunity to see the world, and lifelong Jewish friends. I joined my local BBYO chapter.







Eventually I became President of my chapter, Vice President then President of Northern Virginia, International Vice President in charge of Jewish heritage, social action, and community service, and this year I’m serving as International President of BBYO.







I ran for President and was voted on by hundreds of my peers in Los Angeles at our International Convention.







I manage a board of 10 teens from around the country, 43 counterparts around the world, and sit on BBYO’s board of directors, to help move the movement. We have 5 different teen priorities for the year that are at the core of everything we do.







1. Total Involvement and Growth, making sure that more teens are getting to have the experience of BBYO. We’re also expanding into the middle school demographic and ensuring that middle schoolers have a positive Jewish experience that will lead to a positive Jewish experience in high school.







2. Stand UP, BBYO’s service, philanthropy, and advocacy campaigns. We empower teens to find something they are passionate about, then give them the tools to actually affect change and fulfill the Jewish responsibility of Tikkun Olam. Teens have access to a database of everyone’s campaigns so a teen in Australia can work with a teen in Florida to create a greater impact.







3. Programming Excellence, At a time when teens are incredibly overextended and hyper engaged BBYO is committed to ensuring that we are providing programming that competes with whatever else a suburban teen in Dayton, Ohio has going on on a Saturday night along with whatever else a city teen from Chicago, Illinois has going on as well. Just two weekends ago we had BBYO Shabbat which engaged thousands of teens, in over 30 different communities, and 7 different countries, in hundreds of different services all on the same day.







4. Globalization, BBYO and our partnership with the Joint Distribution Committee (the JDC) allows us to have BBYO chapters in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, France, Ireland, England, Latvia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, South Africa, Israel, Canada and Argentina. North American BBYO teens recognize that while we are privileged to be able to celebrate our Judaism openly many of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are not as fortunate. We care deeply about the Jewish future of all Jewish teens and work to strengthen our overseas communities,







5. Israel, as AIPAC’s teen partner, a partnership with the I-center, and the belief that Jewish teens must commit to Israel as a people, state, and culture we are educating our teens on Israel and then giving them the tools to advocate on behalf of Israel. BBYO is the largest high school Israel trip provider which instills a love of the country in thousands of teens. Multiple times a year we send BBYO teens to Washington DC to get educated on the issues, and lobby on Capitol hill. BBYO is training the best Israel activists around and creating a direct pipeline of teens who will be the strongest activists on their college campuses.







Besides furthering our 5 teen priorities, I deferred a year from college and have been spending this year acting as somewhat of a traveling consultant. I got a luggage set for graduation and besides a day or two in DC at our International offices, I’ve been living on the road and out of a suitcase.







I’ve gone to Philadelphia and New York City and seen how much harder it is for a Jewish teen to want to engage in Jewish life in places where it’s so easy to be Jewish. I’ve gone to New Jersey and Tennessee and seen how keeping the Jewish community close knit can make Jewish teens feel like they are truly part of a people. I’ve been to Long Island where I’ve seen hundreds of Jewish teens coming together on Saturday nights to spend time relishing being Jewish. I’ve been to Atlanta and seen the struggles a distant Jewish community has to face. I’ve been to Boston and seen what Jewish service really looks like. On Tuesday I’ll be flying out to Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg in Canada and seeing what being Jewish in a small town looks like. After Canada I’ll be home for a day and will then fly out to the UK, Ukraine, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Israel and experience the true meaning of global Jewry.







Maybe the most meaningful thing I’ve gotten to experience all year was a summit that happened two weeks ago in Boston. After months of traveling and seeing community after community that was working in silos and attending the Jewish futures conference at the General Assembly and hearing about the worry the adult Jewish community had for the future of the Jewish people, the Jewish teen community decided to take matters into our own hands. For the first time ever BBYO, NFTY (the URJ’s youth movement), and Young Judea met for a summit in Boston. We spent shabbat getting to understand each other and where each movement was coming from. We then created three priorities that will unite us for the entire year; Tikkun Olam, Israel, and inter-movement work. From this summit with created the Coalition of Jewish Teens (the CJT). A continental congress or Jewish teen conference of Presidents if you will. At a time when the adult Jewish community seems to struggle with a plurality of opinions and in many cases has opted to work individually, the teens have decided to understand that we do differ on many issues, but at the end of the day we all have the same mission of keeping Jewish teens Jewish and that there are issues that can unite us. We hope that our work together will set an example for the Jewish community at large and will be a model that the adult Jewish community will replicate.







Following the Coalition of Jewish Teens summit I attended another summit in Boston through the Panim Institute of BBYO. 3 years ago Panim which was a Jewish, service learning organization merged with BBYO and became the Panim Institute of BBYO. Panim had the curriculum and we had the teens, a perfect marriage. The summit in Boston was themed around equality. It dealt with LGBTQ issues, racial equality, ability equality, and socioeconomic equality. We had speakers from a myriad of prominent Jewish and non-Jewish organizations come engage us in a dialogue of how we could help achieve equality for all peoples today. The BBYO motto is that we are the leaders of today and at this summit we were treated as such.







From Boston I came to the Bay Area, which is one of our strongest regions and as the third largest Jewish community in the United States, one of the places with the highest potential for growth. The program here is in the North, East, and South Bay with 20+ chapters and 500+ teens. The teens here just ran shabbat services at synagogues around the area which I was privileged enough to attend. The teens here meet every weekend and throughout the week, they put on huge service projects, conventions of hundreds of teens, and send large delegations of teens to Israel and on the March of the Living (a two week program through the concentration camps in Poland and Israeli Independence day in Israel). If anyone would like to know more about the local program I’d love to talk during the oneg and get you in touch with our offices here.







I expected that going from city to city the teens would be wildly different from each other. That being Jewish would feel funny and that connecting would be a challenge. But, I’ve realized that the BBYO teens have the same ties to their Jewish community that I grew up having. I’m able to get up in front of a congregation wherever and comfortably lead services (in fact I did that just last Friday at Congregation Beth David). Besides, the prayer service what connects the BBYO teens is their strong sense of Jewish identity.







Before BBYO, I knew I was Jewish because my great grandparents were Jewish, my grandparents are Jewish, and my parents are Jewish. But through BBYO I learned that being Jewish was so much more than just being born into a religion. I was given the tools the be able to articulate the answer to the question, “why are you Jewish?” And for me, the answer is the values. Values like caring for your fellow Jew, valuing life above all else, repairing the world, a connection to Israel, not standing idly by, values that I’d been raised with, but had never understood that they were inherently Jewish values. Values that have convinced me that the Jewish people must be around for generations to come, values that I feel an obligation to make sure are perpetuated. Values that are being perpetuated through BBYO, because at the end of the day BBYO’s about making Jewish leaders to create Jewish continuity. With over 250,000 alumni all over the world, and I a product of a BBYO household, it’s a program that’s been proven to work. At a time when an estimated 75% of Jewish teens celebrate their bar/bat mitzvah, but only half of these 75% continue to be involved in Jewish life in high school, BBYO is changing the narrative. BBYO is positively impacting young Jews, cultivating Jewish pride, creating enduring Jewish connections, fostering leadership and community service, creating lifelong Jewish friendships, building a commitment that reaches the next generation, and doing it all in a safe and pluralistic environment for growth.




To me, those results make it a no-brainer that I’d commit a year of my life to living out of a suitcase and make me confident in the future of the Jewish people. Thank you and Shabbat Shalom