Jewish teens who participate in Temple Israel’s Teen JUST-US program have a unique answer to the universal question: “What did you do this summer?”
They can say: “I helped to change the world.”
The program is designed for socially conscious Jewish teenagers entering 11th and 12th grades, many of whom have aged out of summer camp and find themselves in a gray area between childhood and college.
They’re paired with local agencies (not necessarily Jewish) through on-the-ground work: This summer, teens made more than 20,000 medically tailored meals with Community Servings; worked with Discovering Justice to demystify the democratic process for first-time voters and raised more than $2,500 for sports-therapy nonprofit Doc Wayne through a basketball tournament, going door-to-door soliciting donations.
Amy Tananbaum launched the program in 2020 to fill a gap in Jewish public service for teenagers. Since its inception, CJP’s Jewish Teen Initiative has been proud to support the growth and success of the program.
“Amy acknowledged that kids drop off after their bar or bat mitzvahs. They have sports or other activities during the school year. She thought summer was a good opportunity to gather teens who maybe weren’t as engaged in their respective Jewish communities, or maybe didn’t even have a Jewish community they were involved in,” says teen program director Fallon Rubin. “She also recognized that a lot of teens don’t get internship opportunities until college, and if they do get internship opportunities or job opportunities, a lot of the time, it’s just filing paperwork.”
Not here: Teen JUST-US is hands-on—internships are less than 30% administrative work, and each participant receives a $1,000 stipend.
Temple Israel took over the program last year, with Tananbaum’s guidance. However, teens come from all over Greater Boston: This summer, just two of the participants belonged to the temple itself, Rubin says. The goal is to reach Jewish teens from various towns and synagogues; the uniting factor is simply a commitment to service and social justice.
And it is a big commitment: Teens report for work on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays and Fridays, teens spend time in cohorts, learning about social, environmental and racial justice and disability rights through hands-on trips. One week, they traveled to the Carroll Center for the Blind to participate in a signature fencing program; they also sailed with Community Rowing while learning about their efforts to make the water more accessible for people with all abilities.
On Fridays, they run Shabbat for one another, reflecting on their week. They also spend considerable time discussing how Judaism influences their commitment to social justice, reading ancient and modern texts on hunger, homelessness and environmental justice, often led by rabbinical speakers from Hebrew College.
“However, most of our organizations aren’t Jewish,” Rubin says. “There’s a notion that we can be Jews who care about social justice who are helping people who are not Jewish. It doesn’t need to stay contained: The reason we’re doing it is because of our Judaism, but it’s also showing [teens] that we don’t just have to help the Jewish community.”
Teens are chosen through a written application process and a personal interview, though Rubin says the program is highly self-selecting, drawing teens with a certain level of sophistication.
“The level of maturity required for this internship is more elevated than some other programs,” Rubin says.
Teens also need to be ready to work: They are responsible for commuting to their placement, which means they learn important skills like planning ahead and being on time (and communicating properly with supervisors if, say, the T is down).
They also need to be ready to grapple with difficult social issues: Teen JUST-US’s partner organizations confront some of society’s most difficult and entrenched problems. For instance, Boston CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates) trains volunteers to support youth in the foster-care system.
Lucy Targum, a rising junior from Arlington, was one of their summer interns, working at their Boston office three days per week to support a back-to-school fundraiser.
“Applying a Jewish lens to issues I care about has been meaningful for me because I view tikkun olam, repairing the world, as a pillar of my Jewish identity and beliefs,” she says. “I got to see how the staff recruit and support their volunteers. I also learned more about the foster-care system, something I didn’t know much about before this summer. My main project was organizing a back-to-school drive. I created a registry of items we wanted, posted on social media about the fundraiser and kept track of the donations we received. It was really gratifying to see the results of my work on the drive, and to know how many youth would benefit from the project.”
Rubin says Teen JUST-US benefits the interns just as much as their partner agencies. Teens appreciate feeling empowered in an instant-access era with lots of scary scrolling and so much bleak news.
“A lot of times, teenagers feel a bit helpless. They’re hearing that our world is on fire and that things are going terribly. We really want to provide them with opportunities to feel like they have power in their hands,” Rubin says. “A lot of them aren’t able to vote yet, but we want to show them there are ways of impacting their communities.”
