Summary: Objectives: Identify the various types of conflicts that participants experience with friends; Reflect on the ways that participants feel about conflict and how they usually react to conflict; Understand ways to work through conflict in order to create positive relationships
Objectives: Identify ways gender pressures and norms influence how teens interact with and post on social media and group messaging platforms; Reflect on how social media and group texting affects their individual lives; Apply Jewish ethics and values around speech and interpersonal communication to posting
Summary Objectives Identify the messages that Judaism sends about friendship Practice active listening and empathy in their friendships
Objectives: Identify the areas of miscommunication, tension, and conflict in parent/child relationships in general and around the b-mitzvah preparation process. Reflect on how parents and teens communicate with one another. Use Jewish wisdom to help them think about issues of communication.
Objectives: Explore Jewish and cultural ideas about friendship; Clarify their beliefs about friendship; Identify the different kinds of friends they have their lives; Feel grateful for positive friendships in their lives
Objectives: Reflect on the relationship between their Jewish identity and other aspects of their identities, including their male identities; Respond to the questions “how am I Jewish?” and “what makes me Jewish?”
Summary: Objectives: By the end of the session, participants will be able to: Explore how food and eating connects to Jewish cultural identity and religious values; Consider the role food has played in their own families; Encounter and critique cultural ideas and stereotypes about Jewish women and girls and food
Objectives: By the end of this session, participants will be able to: Recognize that moving from childhood to adolescence involves physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual growth. Identify that becoming a teenager and a b-mitzvah involves balancing between personal growth and receiving and giving support to others.
Objectives: Introduce participants to Jewish feminist approaches to God; Explore personal feelings and ideas regarding spirituality and God
This session focuses on how “Simcha,” one of the core values of celebration in the Jewish community, might be in conflict with the average preteen’s b-mitzvah experience. The preteens are helped to identify and embrace the variety of feelings that they might associate with elements of their b-mitzvah—particularly during the pandemic.
