CultureShift

Through CultureShift, Moving Traditions helps dozens of summer camps, youth groups, and trip providers to support the wellbeing of Jewish youth. We provide staff with training that builds communication and boundary setting skills and helps counselors to better understand the most challenging aspects of adolescent socialization, sexuality, and power dynamics. Together, we can create healthier spaces for Jewish youth and professionals of all genders.

What sets Moving Traditions approach to these issues apart from others is that we delve into the underlying gender and social codes that influence behavior. We explore how Jewish values on personal spiritual growth (shleimut), inter-personal communication and healthy relationships (hesed), and social change (tzedek) can help all teens to thrive.

Want to learn more?

Want access to Moving Traditions’ CultureShift trainings and resources?

CultureShift Goals

We envision a world where every staff member working with Jewish youth can:

  • Listen to camper’s concerns with empathy and understanding
  • Model appropriate touch that is consensual, supportive, playful, comforting, and respectful
  • Challenge the use of sexist, homophobic, and transphobic language
  • Navigate questions about appropriate and inappropriate dress without shaming others
  • Help turn down pressure around crushes, romance, and hook-ups
  • Create inclusive communities that support diverse expressions of gender and sexuality
  • Communicate organizational policy by articulating the Jewish values that underly the policy

Training Opportunities

We offer plug-and-play programs for staff training—with activities, materials, and training scripts. Training units include:

  • Boundaries and Consent
  • Gender and Wellbeing for Every Teen
  • Healthy Relationships and Sexuality
  • Moving Traditions’ CIT Track: Helping CITs and first-time counselors to navigate the counselor-camper relationship

Partner with Moving Traditions to train your staff in whatever way works best for you:

  1. Do-It-Yourself Kit: We’ll train you to train your staff as we share highlights of our program activities, best practices, and facilitation tips.
  2. Online Training We’ll train you and your staff virtually at a time that works for you.
  3. In-Person Training: Bring a Moving Traditions staffer to your camp to train your staff on these topics (availability dependent on timing and location).

CultureShift Video Series

In 2020, Moving Traditions worked with BBYO and JCCA to develop a series of nine staff training videos on issues of inter-personal communication regarding sexism, harassment, consent, and boundary setting, which is just one of the extensive set of staff training tools that we now offer youth serving organizations.

Watch a sample video from the series:

CultureShift Initiative

Rabbi Daniel Brenner, Moving Traditions’ VP of Education, leads the CultureShift Initiative and has written extensively on issues of touch (Can We Hug Now? Returning to Touch in Jewish Spaces) and sexual assault (Teaching Teens Consent) with a particular focus on the challenges of educating teen boys and male staff. You can read more about the impact of CultureShift in the Jewish Journal, Jewish Exponent, and The Washington Post. Questions? Contact Rabbi Daniel Brenner at dbrenner@movingtraditions.org.


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