Teens at High Holydays - A History  

For the past seven years, Kehilla has sought to engage our youth and teens (ages 11-17) during High Holydays services. Our goals for this are four-fold: 1) to provide a meaningful, engaging and age-appropriate experience in the context of our holy days; 2) to ensure that youths’ and teens’ activities are compatible with the worship experience of those in the main services; and 3) to ensure everyone’s safety during the High Holydays; and 4) to ensure that the facility suffers no damage.

Over the years, we have tried to reach these goals with a combination of programming, hang-out space (youth lounges) and teen-oriented services. Some years worked better than others. Overall, we found that the youth and teens preferred “hang-out space” to programming such as music, poetry, art, Torah discussion, and tzedakah workshops. In 2010, the Youth Lounge was well-received by those who participated.

However, each year up through 2009, only a small number of the youth and teens who attend High Holyday services actually registered and paid to be in the youth lounge. That presented us with three problems: First, it left us with inadequate resources to staff the youth lounges. Second, it meant that when those youth not registered for the lounges got tired of sitting in services, or wanted to socialize with friends, they did so in the hallways, staircases, and lobby, often becoming loud enough to disturb worshippers in services. Third, each year a small number of youth without parental supervision destroyed some Scottish Rite Center property, and/or engaged in risky, dangerous behavior. While it is tempting to think that this last problem was an anomaly, there has been at least one serious incident involving our youth every year for the past five years.

In 2009, budget constraints led us to conclude that unless the youth lounges were supervised by parent volunteers, we could not cover the expense. Only three parents volunteered to cover a one-hour shift. Given that services stretch over a total of 19 hours, we were forced to cancel the youth lounges. We received many complaints, and again we had problems with youths’ natural exuberance disturbing services, destruction of Scottish Rite Center property, and ensuring the safety of youth and other worshippers. In 2010, as a direct result of the problems of 2009, we made the Youth Lounge mandatory for the first time. We had none of the problems of previous years. Most importantly, everyone was safe.