Classes meet once per month
Click here to register for our Rosh Hodesh or Shevet programs.
Congregation B'nai Yisrael is proud to partner with Moving Traditions to create a safe, open environment for teens to explore their place in the Jewish world post B'nai Mitzvah and as teens in today's society.
Rosh Hodesh
Rosh Hodesh is an experiential education program currently touching the lives of 3,500 girls across North America.
The program uses Jewish teachings and practices — in a five-year cycle of curricular materials — to give girls a place to feel safe, articulate their deepest concerns, consider the impact of gender on their daily lives, have fun, and be ‘real’ with their peers.
Moving Traditions partners with synagogues, schools, and JCCs to operate the program. We train adult group leaders to facilitate Rosh Hodesh groups, which meet monthly for girls of one grade — for girls between the ages of 13-18.
Through discussion, arts & crafts, creative ritual, games, and drama, the girls and their leaders draw on Jewish values and a gender lens to explore the issues the girls care about most, such as body image, friendship, relationships, family, competition, and stress.
Shevet
Moving Tradition’s program for teen boys, Shevet, grew out of three years of research. Seeing that boys were disconnecting from Jewish life after bar mitzvah, at a time when the guidance, friendship, and sense of purpose that Judaism could provide were most needed, we set out to re-imagine the transition from being a boy to being a young man. (Read more about our research in the report, Engaging Jewish Teenage Boys: A Call to Action.)
Teen boys who participate in Shevet groups tell us that they enjoy spending time in a “guy space,” where they can explore what masculinity and being Jewish means to them. The boys report that the experience offers them a more “honest,” “relevant,” and “cool” way to participate in the Jewish community. The adult mentors who Moving Traditions has trained as group leaders tell us that in Shevet the guys “decompress” from their stressful lives and that they balance clowning and horseplay with deep discussions of what Judaism has to say about the ethical challenges of their every day lives.
Moving Traditions is currently partnering around the country with over 120 Jewish institutions – synagogues, JCCs and Jewish day schools – touching the lives of more than 1,300 post-bar mitzvah boys.
