NCSY at 60!, Havdalah, What? I'm Not Unique?!

It's hard to believe that NCSY National Conference of Synagogue Youth of the OU is celebrating sixty years of activities and bringing Jewish youth closer to Torah, G-d and the Mitzvot.  I became religious, shomeret mitzvot, aka Orthodox through what I saw, felt and learned in NCSY in the mid-1960's.

When I went to my first Shabbaton in the fall, early winter of 1963 I knew nothing of Torah Judaism.  Of course I knew that I was Jewish.  My family didn't celebrate Christmas or Easter, but we didn't observe kashrut, Shabbat or most of the Jewish Holidays and certainly none of the fast days besides going to shul on Yom Kippur.

The Judaism I became acquainted with, under the instruction/supervision of Rabbi Pinchas Stolper and Rabbi Chaim Wasserman, who jointly headed NCSY at the time, was a full-time religion.  It would be a lie to claim or imply that I was smitten by my first introduction to Torah Judaism.  The truth is that I was more attracted to the social and organizational life I discovered in NCSY.  In direct contrast to my new life in Great Neck where we had just moved to the summer of 1962, in NCSY I found friends and approval.  Yes, nobody shunned me for wearing the wrong clothes, even though my tops were sleeveless which I knew was against regulations.  The administrators and advisors knew when and where to pick their battles.

As I worked my way up as chapter and regional officer, nobody forced a sweater on me, even at National Convention 1965. I had very carefully and "davkally" chosen my wardrobe without a sleeve or sweater, pushing limits even as I enthusiastically participated and listened to every session/lecture and every event. I also stood out as an energy-filled dancer at all meals and opportunities.  The effect of the mantra-like lyrics of the songs we sang must have sunk in very deeply, though I was unaware.

עבדו את ה' בשמחה

Ivdu et Hashem b'Simcha

Worship G-d with Joy

Nobody was more surprised than myself when during the Havdalah, which ends Shabbat, Rabbi Stolper's words finally "cracked" my resistance and suddenly I was in tears vowing to bring Shabbat and all of the other Mitzvot to my everyday life.

Please don't think it was an easy, quick path or battle. I had many hurdles in terms of family, friends and school.  Of course even almost fifty years later I consider it all worth it.  I can't imagine my life without the Torah, Mitzvot and living in Israel. Friends I made in NCSY are still my friends, and I do my best to be a credit to NCSY.  This picture is up in my home for all to see.

I had always thought that my story about Havdalah being the key to my neshama soul was unique, but apparently it isn't.  Havdalah is the ceremony that separates the Holy Day of Shabbat with the other days of the week.  It's the reality check.  We can't have Shabbat if we don't do the weekday chores and preparations. In This World we have to balance the two.  It takes six days of work to create and prepare for Shabbat.  Listening to Rabbi Stolper speak, and I don't remember after all these years decades what he actually said, it was clear to me that I couldn't continue living without my weekly dose of Shabbat.  From the short video/film that NCSY produced, I wasn't the only one whose spiritual vulnerability was touched by Havdalah.


After that Havdalah, my life was never the same, and I will always be grateful to NCSY and the amazing staff it had at the time for that.

NCSY, What We Didn't Know

My husband was sent a book to review, Living From Convention To Convention: A History of the NCSY, 1954-1980. I grabbed it immediately.

"I'm the NCSY'er. I'm the one who must read it and review it."

At first I read the book quickly and with great enthusiasm. It began with a Forward by Rabbi Pinchas Stolper. It hit my emotions like many of his talks had done when I was in high school.

Lag B'Omer in Bear Mountains, NY, 1963, was the first NCSY event I ever attended. Less than six months earlier on a wintry Saturday or Sunday night, my father drove me to the Great Neck Synagogue to attend a "Teen Club" get-together. We had only moved to Great Neck late August, just before school started, and my parents had decided that my getting involved in the synagogue youth activities would be the best way for me to make more friends. I was suffering severe culture shock after our move from Bell Park Gardens, Bayside to Great Neck, New York.

The Teen Club meeting was in a large old house in the woods behind the synagogue's building. I immediately felt at home with the kids. It was under the auspices of an Orthodox Synagogue, but in those days there was very little to differentiate teen programming between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism. We were just Jewish kids who lived in Great Neck. There was a youth director, either Stan or Hal Greenberg. We met weekly, and at some point, we were informed of trip to Bear Mountains, and I went.

Honestly, I don't remember anything very "Jewish" about those early events. It could have been the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. I certainly had no idea that these fun activities would end up totally changing my life. And even when I began attending Shabbatonim, conclaves and conventions I just thought of them as fun social activities. That included the constant singing and dancing to Hebrew songs during the meals.

It seemed to me that this organization was well-established, well-oiled and very experienced. Only now after reading Zev Eleff's book have I discovered that in essence I was part of a grand experiment led by Rabbi Stolper.

Rabbi Stolper was out to prove that if you exposed ordinary American Jewish teenagers to Torah True Judaism, they would accept it. It took me a few years, but in the end I did. By the time I graduated high school, four years after that picnic, I was as Torah observant as I could be in a totally non-religious home.

Now, about the book. On one hand, it was like reading personal, disturbing things about your parents, things children don't need to know. Rabbi Stolper and Rabbi Chaim Wasserman, his Assistant National Director and my Regional Director, always gave the impression that they were fronting a strong movement. Even though I was a chapter, regional and finally national officer, I had no idea of the organizational difficulties they constantly faced from the OU. Now that I've read the book, cover to cover, I appreciate more, if that's even possible, how much they did.

The book itself is badly organized and doesn't project the passion of the NCSY experience. After a while I found it difficult to read, because there was no clear timeline. The narrative skips all over the place, maybe because the young author has no personal knowledge. It became tedious reading. I doubt if anyone unconnected to NCSY during the times discussed could get through the book without suffering total confusion.

I was very disappointed. Regardless, I plan on lending it to other NCSY'ers who are still close friends. Yes, I still maintain strong friendships with people I met through NCSY. Yesterday I showed it to one who is anxiously awaiting her turn to read the book. We discussed writing our own NCSY history through the eyes and memories of former NCSY'ers.

NCSY was established at the time when all experts were predicting the demise of traditional, strict Torah Judaism. It was the first kiruv, Orthodox Jewish outreach, organization. I don't have sufficient words to thank the idealistic, daring pioneers who ran NCSY in those early days. Who and what would I have been without NCSY?