“The mission of the Jewish Student Union is to get more Jewish teens attending public high schools to do something Jewish! That’s it! It’s that simple!” This is the opening statement on the website for the national Jewish Student Union program, jsu.org. The social and educational movement began includes a topic to discuss and, of course, free kosher pizza: “Food for the body and the soul!”
The organization has a board of teens who decide on programming and events – a process that also provides leadership opportunities. Wednesday night learning sessions at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at Tatum and Shea are open to all in Los Angeles in 2002 and has quickly grown to more than 200 public school campuses throughout North America, reaching more than 12,000 teens annually. The parent organization is the Orthodox Union-sponsored NCSY, whose mission is “to connect, inspire and empower Jewish teens and encourage passionate Judaism through Torah and tradition.”
Though the roots of the organization are planted within the Orthodox community, JSU is open to all Jewish students and hopes to be particularly meaningful to those who are otherwise unaffiliated. “We don’t ask or care what kind of a Jew you call yourself – just that you are Jewish and want to be connected in some way,” says Shmuli Josephson, who has been running the Valley programs for two years. The local program is now available in eight high schools, and Shmuli oversees them all.
“Some of the groups meet every other week, and a few of the smaller ones meet once a month,” he explains. Each meeting teens. Shmuli overflows with enthusiasm for the work he does. He was born in England and lived in Israel off and on for a number of years. In 2009 he married and moved to Los Angeles to work with the West Coast NCSY.
“We had 20,000 teens,” he says. “I could see we were really making a difference – getting the kids to connect and even hearing of parents who lit Shabbat candles for the first time.” When it was clear that the Valley was ready for JSU clubs, Shmuli was happy to make the move. He and his wife, Devorah, who is a second-grade teacher at the Torah
Day School, live in central Phoenix with Ahuv, their 4-year- old daughter, and Dovi, their 2-year-old son. Shmuli makes the rounds to the public high schools of Chaparral, Saguaro, Desert Mountain, Horizon, Sunnyslope and Pinnacle as well as private schools Brophy Prep and Tesseract. It generally takes 15 interested teens to start a new group.
Contact Shmuli at shmuli@dojsu.org or 201-362-2074.
