NCSY: Recruiting in Public Schools Through Deceit
The Jewish Student Union: Part 1
The Orthodox Union’s NCSY (National Council of Synagogue Youth) is recruiting public school kids to Orthodoxy through an ecumenical front, the Jewish Student Union(JSU). Rabbi Burg, the “dean� of JSU, is also the national director of NCSY. Therefore, the ideal goal is to make high school students from secular and liberal Jewish backgrounds Orthodox.
But NCSY’s Jewish Student Union does not reveal its true identity anymore than it does its true goal.
NCSY/JSU declares that,
The mission of Jewish Student Union is to get more Jewish teens attending public high schools to do something Jewish! That’s it! It’s that simple!!!
In fact, it is not quite that simple; that is most certainly not “it.� JSU strives to do much more than “something� Jewish.
Their website may not be for high school kids primarily, but more to ease potential concerns of parents and school administrators who may have interest in the position of this youth group.
As part of NCSY/JSU’s deceptive attempts to suggest they are an ecumenical organization without a specific religious bent, JSU offer links including the Conservative Movement’s youth group, United Synagogue Youth, as well as Hadassah’s Young Judea.
This is an intentional red herring. Every one of the “cool advisors� of JSU is Orthodox, such as Rabbi FE, the charismatic west coast director of NCSY. But NCSY attempts to conceal this fact from the casual observer. On their “cool advisors� page, they do this two ways, both quite clever. They have more than half of the “cool advisors� in costume or choosing superhero photos for their picture. But there is a picture of a woman wearing a short sleeve shirt. However, as clicking through her link will reveal, she is not actually a JSU advisor. Only NCSY approved Orthodox Jews are “cool advisors.�
NCSY maintains control over these unions in order to recruit to NCSY proper, and of course, to offer solely Orthodox approved content. But that isn’t the reason they offer for the purpose of the cool ones. Rather, a cool one,
* Spends time working with the President to develop programs and program resources.
* Meets on a regular basis with all of the officers of each club to work on developing leadership skills and help them learn to work together as a leadership team.
* Meets with the faculty sponsor and/or the school administration to keep the lines of communication open.
* Provide after school engagement activities such as Latte ‘n’ Learning discussion groups and other programs.
* The most important thing that the Advisor does is maintain contact via email and phone with all of the JSU teens who come to meetings. A weekly call to a teen to say “Shabbat Shalom� goes a long way in cementing that relationship and reinforcing the Advisor as a positive Jewish role model.
* The number of hours necessary per week, based on 5 clubs, is forty.
Nothing about Orthodox proselytizing.
Rather, JSU claims the expected content of these clubs is:
* A club business meeting
* Speakers from other organizations
* Visitors from Israel
* A discussion or debate on current events
* Holiday celebrations
* Falafel-eating contests
* A rousing game of “Jewpardy�
* In addition, and most important to some teens, is the free pizza or falafel! Teens may come for the food, but they stay for the discussions and sense of community.
Maybe that’s why the kids are there, but those aren’t the reasons NCSY is. NCSY wants to recruit secular and liberal Jews to Orthodoxy. JSU is a gateway into NCSY proper. Rather, JSU is NCSY proper.
This may not be understood by parents or students, because NCSY prefers they do not understand this, and is taking great pains to hide this fact.
Additionally, NCSY has a grim view of the best colleges, and prefers all NCSYers go either to “dual curriculum� schools (such as Touro, a third tier college NCSY is heavily allied with) and to ultra-Orthodox institutions that discourage all full-time secular studies.
The Orthodox Union, the parent organization, is quite proud of NCSY’s success in discouraging Ivy League schools specifically (which NCSY refers to as “poison ivies� in their eponymous essay on the subject in their educational guide) and through their haredi partners, discourage college generally, to even the brightest public school students for after they graduate, and have boasted of this in their house organ, Jewish Action. Note how they declined to name their “clubs� by the official name (Jewish Student Union), even as they boasted how so many of them declined to go to Ivy League Schools because of their influence.
The fact that they brag about this to Orthodox Union members means that they feel comfortable their members will approve of NCSY’s desired results. To be fair, the Jewish Action article did not reveal the deceit employed by NCSY facilitating their entry into the public school system.
Do not expect these policies of NCSY’s JSU to be discussed in your local Jewish weekly if it has any ties to the UJA (United Jewish Communities).
The Jewish Student Union –- though a deceptive Orthodox outreach program seeking public high school converts — is a beneficiary of many local federations, and these newspapers rarely are critical of Jewish Federation beneficiaries, because they depend on the Federation for funding and their circulation, and are expected in return to promote the Federation’s specific beneficiaries as well as the umbrella organization generally.
According to the Fall 2005 Jewish Action article, NCSY has over one hundred public high school clubs across North America. JSU is a major source of (deceitful) recruitment of Jewish teenagers into their general NCSY programming. Parents may have no knowledge ( never mind interest) that their teenager is facing proselyting efforts to become Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox in his or her public school, by an organization that disapproves of secular college attendance, and advocates and negotiates full-time study at ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and seminaries in Israel after graduation.
But this only happens if they listen.
Update: NCSY is apparently beginning to work with BBYO in Chicago. They are protecting their recruitment clubs through such partnerships. These clubs will continue to recruit to NCSY regular programming — first latte learning, then shabbatons, and we know where they seek to take kids from there. They are absolutely not content to throw pizza parties for publics school kids, or for them to just do “something” Jewish. They want more, and that’s fine. The problem is what they really want, and what they’ll really do, if they can have their way with them. “It’s that simple!!!”
18 comments
I hope the NCSY aware that overused slang such as “cool” and “Are you ready to rock?” won’t exactly cut it with the kids.
You need something more real than what you overhear at the pizza shop in order to “break shit with the hooligans”.
Personally, I think you’re creating a mountain out of a molehill but good blog nonetheless.
Check out mine.
While you certainly point out that NCSY and JSU are tied together, what is your actual point? That these public school kids will be “lured” into Orthodoxy? I understand from your previous posts that you feel that is a horrific fate. However, what are you basing your posts on? What proof do you have that living an Orthodox lifestyle is detrimental?
Akiva,
Does NCSY have a right to recruit people to Orthodoxy through deceptive techniques? That is what is going on here. They are recruiting by pretending to be a different entity.
Is that okay according to you?
Sholom, the overuse of the word cool is for the parents. It says secular, and it says “we are trying to make being Jewish cool.”
Do not underestimate these people.
Alert the superintendent of schools, because they are allowing this fundamentalism into the classroom. Please, ALL JSU clubs must be supervised by a public school teacher, to make sure what is being taught is cultural. The free pizza is not limited to “the chosen people”, it is solely an enviroment so kids can learn a little jewish culture. If kids by choice approach the advisor for more, is it being forced on them?
That these public school kids will be “lured” into Orthodoxy?
No. They are not being lured into “Orthodoxy”. NCSY pushes (specifically) Ohr Somayach and Aish, institutions which present a strongly right-leaning, exclusionist, extreme form of Orthodoxy. And even that wouldn’t bother me if they were upfront about what they were. Instead, they go out of their way to mislead parents and potential students, portraying themselves as something very different than what they are.
I am not an avid fan of NCSY nor of the Orthodoxy they preach and while I do think that on the face of it, their recruitment isn’t honest, their “cover” is pretty transparent who anyone who takes a even a momentary glance at the organization.
I found out about JSU by reading about it on Jewlicious a few weeks ago. It sounded too good to be true. I went to their site, read about two sentences, saw the photographs of their advisors, and realized that it was an Orthodox organization and that it was connected to NCSY. I realize that students or parents may not visit the website, but any person who sees the advisors - all Orthodox, wearing Orthodox garb, including kippot on men - will probably say, “hey, these guys are Orthodox!” It will also occur to them from context of the discussion. Surely they will be able to distinguish a more observant denomination of Judaism from a less observant form. I mean, if these advisors were asked anything about gay rights, pre-marital sex, etc - all issues that are front and center with the teenage crowd - they would probably be able to identify that this is Orthodoxy talking and not say, Reconstructist Judaism. The way that the JSU markets itself in schools - basically with more “sexy” campaigns as opposed to “learn the parshat hashavua” or “let’s talk about orthodoxy” is just that, marketing. I think you have to give students more credit than that - they realize who these people are. Perhaps they feel accepted in the crowd, perhaps they like the easy answers they are being offered, but I am certain that with a little interaction, they know who they are dealing with.
We’re promoting JSU? I had to go and look. Hannah is referring to this post where a JSU organizer plugged the organization in one of our posts.
http://www.jewlicious.com/?p=2999
Sorry - I should have been more clear - it wasn’t a Jewlicious post, it was a Jewlicious comment.
I think its perfectly fine. Fine, that is, if Orthodox day schools would have the intellectual honesty they claim public schools should have and let Conservative and Reform youth programs operate on *their* premesis.
DK,
What is your opinion of Chabad? Would classify them as a much better organization than Aish, NCSY, and Ohr Somayach?
Shabbat Shalom,
Wondering?
Wondering,
I do not know Chabad well, so do not usually speak about them.
…But if you’re looking for the dirt on Chabad-Lubavitch, DK would probably recommend that you don’t click here.
The preceeding has been yet another shameless self-promotion.
Wow.
Such vile talk from someone who from what I understand has never even seen JSU in action.
I’m the “guy” who posted on jewlicious, and I happen to be the Director of JSU in Chicago.
Let me first off tell you that I am NOT an NCSY person - never have been, never will be. I appreciate what they do, I recognize the success they have had - but I am not an NCSY employee nor do I recruit kids specifically for NCSY programs. I consider myself Conservadox, if you will.
Using BBYO as a cover? Please!! They e-mailed US about putting out a press release! Pretty soon, NFTY will follow suit. Are they a cover up for us as well?
I advise all of you naysayers who are spewing vile hatred about an organization you know nothing about to visit a JSU club after school and then tell me how “proselytizing” it is.
The fact that a majority of current JSU employees come from the Orthodox world doesn’t mean that these people are completely incapable of being plualistic and trans-denominational when it comes to the overall well being of world jewry.
I also ask you - if JSU is an NCSY organization, would it sponsor homosexual students who to attend LGBT events? Would we give scholarship money for kids to go on USY on wheels? Would we seriously currently be considering 3 potential employees with NFTY and USy backgrounds?
All of the above has happened.
If you are going to slander someone, check your facts before you open your mouth.
I am happy to meet with anyone one on one or speak with them on the phone about the great work we do for Jewish youth in Chicago.
FYI, the “sleeveless woman” of whom you speak happens to be a high level administrator of JSU’s - and GASP - she’s reform
Brad,
Do you deny NCSY is using there presence in the public school system to recruit kids to NCSY programs?
Do you deny that NCSY has used public school clubs in the past to recruit Jews to haredism?
I also ask you - if JSU is an NCSY organization, would it sponsor homosexual students who to attend LGBT events? Would we give scholarship money for kids to go on USY on wheels? Would we seriously currently be considering 3 potential employees with NFTY and USy backgrounds?
You would if you were running an ecumenical front. You would if that is what it takes to survive.
If you are going to slander someone, check your facts before you open your mouth.
My “facts” are from your own writings, buddy. Deal with your own history, and come clean on your haredi partnerships . Stop misrepresenting who you are, Brad.
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