1st January 2016

Liberal Judaism’s youth movement, LJY-Netzer, has enjoyed a year to remember – with ground-breaking campaigns, innovative education and incredible events, tours and camps. Below, we pick out five key LJY-Netzer moments from 2015:

1. A new route for Kayitz Netzer Europe Tour

http://www.thejc.com/community/community-life/145092/netzer-tour-takes-teens-cable-street-croatia

LJY-Netzer’s summer Europe Tour, held jointly with the Reform youth movement RSY-Netzer, took a very different route in 2015 – visiting key cities in Bosnia, Croatia and Austria. Movement worker Tom Francies told the Jewish Chronicle: “Although our previous route of Prague, Budapest and Berlin was unique when Kayitz Netzer began, it is now very well serviced by lots of Jewish youth organisations. This new route saw those in school year 12 visiting the former Yugoslavia for the first time, as well as Austria.”

2. Campaigning for action on climate change in Paris

http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/young-voices-stewards-of-the-land-head-to-paris-summit/

Young Liberals joined the call for action on climate change alongside other youth groups including RSY-Netzer, NOAM, FZY and the UJS at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, from November 30 to December 11. Movement worker Sam Alston told why in The Jewish News, writing: “One of the first things we find out in Genesis, is our responsibility to improve and protect the world. Some people show their Judaism by the way they pray or the food they eat, but for LJY-Netzer, a very important part of our Judaism is how we treat others and the better world we want to leave for our children.”

3. Studying the history of the Holocaust

www.ljy-netzer.org/2015/04/reflections-on-march-of-the-living-2015/

Five members of LJY-Netzer joined 11,000 people from around the world taking part in the March of the Living in April. The annual educational program brings students from all over the globe to Poland, in order to study the history of the Holocaust and to examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance and hate. Writing a blog on the LJY-Netzer website, Daisy Bogod reflected: “Before my trip, I had a decent but somewhat basic understanding of the events of the Shoah. During my trip, I learnt how it worked; I walked through the routes taken by the two groups of prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau: the group that was taken straight to the gas chambers and the group that was were stripped, shaven, disinfected, tattooed and crammed into a barrack of a thousand people to await their almost inevitable death.”

4. A whole summer of Judaism

http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/two-voices-q-how-can-youth-connect-with-their-judaism-over-the-summer/

With 135 young Liberal Jews on Machaneh Kadimah summer camp, and our older youth touring Israel and Europe – it was a very busy summer for LJY-Netzer. Writing in The Jewish News on the importance of such schemes, movement worker Anna Craven said: “A summer spent with a youth movement is a way to get a Jewish experience and identity that doesn’t happen in term-time.”

5. And one of our members even stars in a hit TV show!

http://www.liberaljudaism.org/news/1076-ljy-netzer-member-stars-in-hit-tv-show.html

LJY-Netzer member Miranda Robshaw starred in one of this year’s most popular TV shows. Three million people tuned in each week on BBC2 to watch Miranda and her family in Back in Time for Dinner, a time-traveling culinary show. Miranda – along with mum Rochelle, dad Brandon, sister Rosalind and brother Fred – showed how they would have eaten as a family living in each of the post-war decades in the 20th century. Miranda said: “It was an amazing experience for the whole family, and one I will never forget – I really feel as thought I’ve lived through the 50s, which is quite a unique feeling for someone born in 1996!”