Micah's B'nai Mitzvah Kids Featured in The Tablet

Sometimes we can get so distracted by the busy nature of our own lives that we miss all the myriad of ways that our wonderful congregation is reaching out to and affecting the larger community and world. Our Micah professional leadership is often just as busy around Nashville as they are at Micah, participating in boards, sitting on panels, and delivering lectures. But Micah's outreach into the community doesn't stop there. Even our religious school teachers and students are having an incredible effect on the larger community.  Check it out!

  

 

From Tablet Magazine - Written by Marjorie Ingall 

     "...At Congregation Micah in Nashville, Tenn., teacher Rachel Tawil Kenyon ensures that there's Jewish perspective and pedagogical value to mitzvah projects. She told me, "Stuff is more tangible to kids than money. We just did a collection for Children's Family Services and the YES program that ended up with maybe $1,000 in school supplies, but that doesn't mean much to kids. What matters to them is seeing the pencils, and carrying the backpacks out to my car. They can wrap their brains around that much more easily than [the abstract notion] of a dollar."

     Last year, Kenyon's seventh-graders did a project to help a local shelter for battered women. "We started with an education component, talking about domestic violence," Kenyon said. "What you learn about relationships as a teenager affects your relationships later. We've had a representative from a shelter and a former resident come speak. The kids learn about what you might need if you flee your house with nothing but a backpack. Even upper-income women may not have access to money. So, we make care baskets-personal hygiene stuff. The girls get really into getting hair products. Kids will say, 'iPhones!' and then we say, 'OK, if we can't give them iPhones, what can we do?' We get them calling cards. And we keep impressing on the kids that our projects are not about going home and asking your parents for money, though they may choose to give some of their bar or bat mitzvah money."

     Kenyon has her students do independent research and interviews, then do a Shabbat presentation to the group about their cause. "Suddenly they feel personally connected," she said. "I grew up in a theater family, and I know that for adults who don't go to the theater as a child, it's like pulling teeth to get them to go as adults. But if you start as a kid, you grow up to be a theatergoer. Doing something well now makes it become second nature."...."

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