Like Dawn Skimming the Horizon: Riding the Changes in NFTY

Home » Like Dawn Skimming the Horizon: Riding the Changes in NFTY

By Michelle Shapiro Abraham, RJE, MAJE, Maya Levy & Fletcher Block

In the last five years, like many Jewish organizations, NFTY: The Reform Jewish Youth Movement has been making gradual, intentional changes. Faced with falling numbers at overnight events and navigating new models for teen engagement in our synagogues, we realized we needed to clarify NFTY’s purpose.

Through many conversations with teen leaders, stakeholders, and staff, we have seen more and more bright spots in recent few years as NFTY has started focusing more heavily on local events, engaging middle schoolers, holding joint events with URJ camps, and more. The change was slow, but the future was coming into focus, and it looked bright.

Then COVID-19 hit.

In a matter of weeks, NFTY’s intentional, methodical change process was kicked into overdrive. Due to our new financial reality, NFTY faced significant staffing changes and needed to quickly embrace a new organizational structure. Change is always difficult, but it’s especially difficult for an 80-year-old youth movement whose millions of alumni make up the current and future leadership of our Reform Jewish Movement.

Read the rest of this piece on EJewishPhilanthropy.org

A Roadmap Forward: Striving for Accountability and Repair

A Roadmap Forward: Striving for Accountability and Repair

The URJ’s ethics accountability efforts over the past year have included a key commitment to accountability and restorative justice for all victims-survivors of abuse and misconduct in URJ spaces. In order to ensure that the URJ engaged in a serious restorative...

read more
NFTY North American Leadership: A Transition

NFTY North American Leadership: A Transition

This winter, we embarked on an examination of NFTY’s leadership selection and training process that led us to a bold and intentional new structure for selecting the North American leaders of the Reform Jewish Youth Movement, which we are excited to share with you!...

read more
The Jewish Youth Pledge

The Jewish Youth Pledge

At NFTY, we are the Jewish future.  As members of the NFTY community, we strive to impact and strengthen Jewish life.  By taking the Jewish Youth Pledge through NFTY, we are taking our passion for the Jewish people and turning it into commitment. As teens, we are not...

read more
NFTY B’Yachad 2023

NFTY B’Yachad 2023

NFTY B'Yachad: A Virtual Gathering for NFTY Teens Across North America March 4th & 5th, 2023   B’Yachad (ביחד) is the Hebrew word for together or “as one.” With this being our first NFTY North American weekend-long event of the 2022-2023 year, we named and...

read more