{"id":34427,"date":"2014-01-09T21:57:55","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T21:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=34427"},"modified":"2014-01-10T16:18:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-10T16:18:02","slug":"sights-sounds-ncsys-yarchei-kallah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/sights-sounds-ncsys-yarchei-kallah\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sights and Sounds of NCSY’s Yarchei Kallah"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Teens<\/a>
Teens learn at NCSY’s Yarchei Kallah. The week-long program takes place over winter break.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the Stamford Hilton\u2019s ballroom \u2014 now transformed into a rather crowded shul \u2014 NCSY advisor Ayelet Roller led a discussion about the story of the Tower of Babel. Why, she asked, did Hashem, in the words of the parsha, \u201ccome down\u201d to the people building the tower?<\/p>\n

The seven teens who surrounded her tossed around various answers, until Roller, 20, a junior at Brooklyn College, gently guided them to what she thought was a possible answer, a point she extrapolated from her own experience as a counselor on NCSY\u2019s The Jerusalem Journey program. It had to do with refraining from judging others.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of focusing on the negative, just be open-minded to the people around you,\u201d Roller told the public school students listening to her.<\/p>\n

Across the auditorium, another advisor, Josh Karon, a student at Yeshiva University, whose two younger brothers were participating at Yarchei Kallah, posed a startling question to the teens gathered around him: Which generation was worse: the generation that drowned in the flood or the generation that built the tower? One teen, dressed in a long-sleeve hooded t-shirt and black low-top Nikes, explained his argument using a midrash he\u2019d just learned, carefully pronouncing an Aramaic term for less than a cent.<\/p>\n

These were the bustling sights and sounds of NCSY\u2019s Yarchei Kallah program. Yarchei Kallah takes teens from all across North America and provides them with intense and fun yeshiva-style learning for a week during the public school break between Christmas and New Year. This year marked the largest Yarchei Kallah to date with 313 dedicated NCSYers learning from some of the best advisors and educators NCSY has to offer.<\/p>\n

And true to form, Yarchei Kallah was anything but quiet.\u00a0 In the corner of another auditorium, a group of boys relearned how to put on tefillin that they hadn\u2019t worn since their bar-mitzvahs, and Marc Fein, Upstate Regional director and one of the organizers of Yarchei Kallah, hustled NCSY staff and participants alike to their next session. \u201cDovid,\u201d Fein told one advisor, \u201cyou\u2019re giving shiur in two minutes. You should probably go there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"379694_10151837696947997_2026259180_n\"<\/a>
This year’s Yarchei Kallah was the largest to date with 313 teens in attendance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year the program also had a focus on what it called \u2018Mini-Masters,\u2019 where participants were able to attend several lectures on a single topic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe teens appreciated the opportunity to focus on substantive topics that were relevant to their lives,\u201d Fein explained. “They come out feeling a real ownership of the ideas.”<\/p>\n

Debbi Stone, associate director of education for NCSY and a Yarchei Kallah organizer, led a wide-ranging Mini-Masters course on Holocaust Theology that veered from the Rambam\u2019s conception of God to watching scenes from Elie Wiesel\u2019s God on Trial.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>\u201cThe teens were inquisitive, questioning and passionate in their responses and participation,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n

In addition, carrying on a new tradition launched last year, teens were able to begin their very own Jewish library. Free books made available to the teens through a sponsorship by Touro\u2019s Landers Colleges included volumes of Artscroll Talmud and Tanach; books of mussar like Derech Hashem and Mesilat Ye\u2019esharim; various works by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, and Rav Joseph D. Soloveitchik\u2019s Hagaddah.<\/p>\n

For Sarita Weltman, a senior at Wolfson High School in Jacksonville, FL, the Yarchei Kallah experience was preparation for her next adventure. \u201cI feel more excited to go to Israel next year and be in the same type of environment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The week of learning concluded with a Shabbaton at Cong. Keter Torah in Teaneck, NJ.<\/p>\n

\u201cYarchei Kallah exposes teens to a caliber and quality of Torah learning that they\u2019re not exposed to regularly,\u201d explained Rabbi Micah Greenland, international director of NCSY. \u201cIt plants the seeds for a love of learning that can blossom over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scattered among the hundred of public school students were several yeshiva high school teens who were also basking in the spirituality.<\/p>\n

Ari Zwiren, who attends a yeshiva high school, explained that going to Jewish schools his whole life, he \u201ctook for granted\u201d the opportunities in front of him.\u00a0 \u201cYarchei Kallah is not just a place for public school teens to learn Torah, but a place for all teens to recognize they are lucky for what they have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Stamford Hilton\u2019s ballroom \u2014 now transformed into a rather crowded shul \u2014 NCSY advisor Ayelet Roller led a discussion about the story of the Tower of Babel. Why, she asked, did Hashem, in the words of the parsha, \u201ccome down\u201d to the people building the tower? The seven teens who surrounded her tossed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Sights and Sounds of NCSY's Yarchei Kallah - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/sights-sounds-ncsys-yarchei-kallah\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Sights and Sounds of NCSY's Yarchei Kallah - OU Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the Stamford Hilton\u2019s ballroom \u2014 now transformed into a rather crowded shul \u2014 NCSY advisor Ayelet Roller led a discussion about the story of the Tower of Babel. 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