Shalom Chaverimot!
From the end of April to the beginning of May, our Tochen Mazkira and Shnat Rakezet / Mazkirut Yo’eitzeit, Dani Beswick and Rachael Sara respectively, were in Israel for these important global conferences for the youth. Here’s what everyone excitingly had to say:
Veida Olamit 2023 (27 April – 2 May)
We stayed at Kibbutz Ein Hashofet, which was a trip down memory lane for me considering I lived there for a while on Shnat. People from sniffim all around the world were there: Australia, the UK, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, Israel and Costa Rica. Our days were filled with peulot and ma’amadim by each snif, interesting discussions (some might say debates), inspiring speakers, voting on our constitution and we even went to a pro-democracy protest near the Kibbutz. We voted in some incredibly important things into our Chukkah (constitution), such as using gender neutral language when speaking about people and the type of education we do about Israel and Aliyah Nemshechet. The most important aspect of Veida for me was definitely the relationships I created with people from pretty much everywhere, comparing how our sniffim run, what our lives are like in our respective countries and just generally bonding. I felt so inspired by these incredible people as well as the passion, drive and ambitions they all have for this movement.
Dani Beswick
Tamar Veida (2 – 3 May)
TaMaR – Tnuat Reformi Magshimim – our Progressive Jewish Young Adult movement has existed in many branches for some time, however, we have not quite been integrated as one Global movement. This year, right before our Connections conference, we managed to gather the leadership from all of our existing Tamar branches as well as some prospective branches to come together to understand the existing forms of Tamar around the world, what we want our global movement to look like and what the important and connecting values are to us all. We now have some focus groups working on various aspects of defining Tamar and creating a global structure and framework within which we can operate.
Rachael Sara
Connections (3 – 6 May)
Connections, our Global Conference for the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), was a spectacular week of learning, praying, singing, dancing, meeting, questioning, engaging and shaping the Global Progressive Jewish Movement as we wish to see it. This conference provided us with the important space to build relationships between the Youth and Young Adults and the Global leadership of our communities. The youth were quite involved with services and prayer spaces which is so important for us to showcase the passion and investment that we have in the global movement and the leadership thereof. There is very clearly a fire and drive within the youth to be involved in the leadership of our global communities and we cannot wait to see where we go next.
Rachael Sara
We have some exciting things coming up, including our Cape Town Youth Day Netzer service and sleepover in June as well as our Winter Programming and Winter Camp in July! For any parents in Gauteng who’d like to hear more directly from us, please join our WhatsApp group here. For more information about future events, please visit our social media: @Netzer_sa on Instagram and Netzer South Africa on Facebook.