After completing the B Mitzvah program, Machar’s teen members have several opportunities for ongoing learning and growth within our congregation.
Teens can work as ozrim (“helpers”), serving as classroom aides for students in our Jewish Cultural School program. Teens can begin as volunteer ozrim at age thirteen, after completing their 7th grade year. Once they reach the legal age required for employment, they can move to paid status or continue to offer their time as volunteers. Sunday school program is run in collaboration with other congregations, so our post-b-mitzvah students can maintain friendships and make new ones with teens from other congregations and backgrounds who won’t view being a Humanistic Jew as “weird” or “other.”
For teens looking for social opportunities our collaboration with congregational partners provides an active teen program for our post-b-mitzvah members. The teen group meets monthly for an event, and the group’s coordinator develops the group’s programming in collaboration with the group’s members, rather than coming up with a fixed schedule and foisting it onto participants.
And of course, finishing the B Mitzvah program means that Machar’s teen members have access to many of the options our adult members have, including working on social action projects, co-leading or speaking at High Holidays services, and attending adult education programs.