Teen Programs

Congregation Beth El has a thriving teen program, which has included memorable collaborations in recent years with Israel Congregation of Manchester and Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams. These have included Jewish tours of Boston and New York, an overnight working visit to an organic farm in Manchester, tubing down the Battenkill River, and movie nights. We also have had bridge-building events with our teens and Muslim teens who are exchange students from abroad. Perhaps the highlight of our teen programming is the Teen Ascent to Israel (internal link) trip that we take every other year.
 
 The goal of our teen programs is to endow teens with positive associations with Judaism, but also to help build their qualities of menschlikeit – to give them guidance in what can be tough years in helping them become good members of the larger human family. Through partnering with other synagogues, teens will make memories “doing Jewish”, and building a network of friends in the surrounding towns that can “do Jewish” with them outside of our programming. The goal of our programming is to give our teens an expansive Jewish experience: a way to break down the distinctions between Judaism and their regular “secular” lives, and to offer them diverse and creative ways to plug into Judaism.