USCJ Review - Spring 2006
Project Reconnect Reunion
Scratch the surface of many a sober, seemingly all-grown-up Conservative Jew, and you'll find a USYer, ready to sing, ready to study, ready to davven, ready to joke, ready to stay up all night and talk and talk and talk.
And USY, of course, is just one of the movement's youth programs; all have ardent advocates among their alumni.
More than four years ago, realizing that its alumni, whose ages range from their early 20s to solid middle age, were hungry for some of the emotional commitment they'd had as teenagers, a group of United Synagogue leaders founded Project Reconnect, the alumni association for United Synagogue's youth, college age, and young adult programs, including USY, Nativ, Koach, Atid, and the Conservative Yeshiva. Alumni of other United Synagogue and Conservative movement programs, including Camp Ramah and the Solomon Schechter day schools, are welcome as well.
During the convention, Project Reconnect's leaders sponsored a reception at the biennial convention in Boston.
The reception, like the convention of which it was a part, was held during the week, so unfortunately many out-of-town alumni who were not at the convention could not make it; still, about 200 people crammed into the busy suite where it was held. Guests included USY director Jules Gutin, Koach director Richard Moline, and national Ramah director Rabbi Mitchell Cohen, who themselves are movement alumni and Project Reconnect members.
The alumni - many of them Jewish communal professionals - ranged from those who had belonged to USY in the 1950s, when the organization and they were young, to recent college graduates.
Project Reconnect is planning a trip to Israel. Kesher L'Yisrael is set for June 12 to 19. All alumni and friends are invited. The itinerary includes both those Israeli features that all visitors to the country crave seeing and special meetings and activities that make the trip unusual.
Teatime will come before Shabbat that week. Divided into small groups, visitors will go to Israeli homes, where they'll sip nanna and shmooze. After that, they'll greet the Shabbat Queen with Kabbalat Shabbat at the Kotel; they'll be able to choose between egalitarian services at the southern section of the wall or non-egalitarian services at the Western Wall. Lonely soldiers - that is, soldiers who do not have family in Israel - will be Kesher guests for the entire Shabbat weekend, and Israeli Project Reconnect alumni will be there too.
Other trip highlights include visits to Israel's new Palmach museum, activities at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism's Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center, trips to the Dead Sea, Ein Gedi and Masada, and a tour of the Supreme Court will include a meeting with the justices. The travelers will meet with President Moshe Katsav, who invited them to tefillot at the synagogue on the grounds of his official residence. They will meet as well with the United States' ambassador to Israel, Richard Jones, and with Jerusalem's Mayor Uri Lupolianski. For more information, go to uscj.org/projectreconnect/kesheriibrochure.pdf.
Everybody from every part of the Conservative/Masorti movement is invited to a private concert by David Broza, who has been called Israel's Bruce Springsteen.
Last fall Project Reconnect partnered with the North American Association of Synagogue Executives on a High Holiday initiative called "Come Home for the Holidays." Seventy congregations across North America, from Massachusetts to California and from Maine to Florida, offered free High Holiday tickets to alumni who were either new to their area or there just temporarily, and many congregants invited Project Reconnect visitors home for holiday meals. Most congregations hosted a handful of alumni, but Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, D.C,. seated about 80 visitors, and served them communal holiday meals.
The partnership between the two groups is continuing; they are planning a Pesach project for the same target population. Congregations participating in this program will see that alumni new to the area are invited to seders in homes of members, or, in some cases, to a communal seder at the synagogue.
If you are an alumni of any of the programs mentioned in this article, please go to www.projectreconnect.org and sign up for Project Reconnect. You can find out more about the Kesher II mission to Israel on the website as well.
Elizabeth Pressman of Lexington, Massachusetts, chairs the Atid committee for United Synagogue.
