JTeen: Where It’s Hip to Be a Jew

Believe it or not, at one time, Rabbi Daniel Bortz, a 20-something, energetic, newly ordained Chabad rabbi, wasn’t so Jewishly observant.

“I was definitely a teenager searching,” says the rabbi of his adolescence. “It was kind of a lost time a little bit.”

As a child and teen, Rabbi Bortz attended, at one time or another, San Diego Jewish Academy, Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School and Chabad Hebrew Academy, as well as public school, searching for a solid, meaningful Jewish connection that evaded him until he finally found his elusive inner Judaism in college at — of all places — UC Santa Barbara. “My joke is that I became observant [there],” he quips.

“To me Judaism was never cool, and I don’t know if I was ever challenged,” he recalls. “I did have good experiences, and I used to go to the original Hebrew High, but [I never had] somebody cool I could relate to [Jewishly] and who I could speak to about anything.”

From UCSB, he headed to yeshiva in Israel, where he was ordained as a rabbi. He then worked at a New York yeshiva for about a year before the rabbi’s path would bring him back here, to San Diego.

“I decided I wanted to come back here and start doing what my passion was, which was to do outreach to teens, something I felt I had needed [when I was a teen] and that I didn’t necessarily have.”

In college, the rabbi explains, programs like campus Chabad centers and Hillel serve as a Jewish outlet, and a home away from home for Jewish students. But before students get there, in high school, those programs don’t exist. Unless a strong Jewish connection is established during the formative adolescent years, there’s no reason why a student should maintain Jewish values in college.

“That’s why I came back,” the rabbi says. “I really wanted to [establish those connections].”

The result of that desire is JTeen, a non-denominational program started in spring 2011 and led by Rabbi Bortz for San Diego Jewish teens and pre-teens, especially those who are unaffiliated or attend public schools. It’s aimed at providing Jewish social connections, Jewish wisdom and learning, and social action.

“Anyone can join, anyone can be a part of it, and they do all sorts of activities,” says Skyler Witties, who graduated in spring from Canyon Crest Academy, a public school, and was involved in JTeen during his senior year there. “Everyone is really open and accepting, and it’s great.”

The rabbi, who’s young and modern enough that you sometimes have to remind yourself that you’re speaking with an actual ordained rabbi (save for the tzitzit and kippah he dutifully wears), is trying to be that cool, fun, proud Jew role model to teens that he himself says he never had. To appeal to as many Jewish teens as possible (and he does, drawing those from all denominations and no denomination at all), Rabbi Bortz has created three main programs under the J-Teen umbrella: Teens for the Community (TFC), a social action/tikkun olam branch; Hebrew High, his re-creation of the for-credit Hebrew language and Judaism school that existed in San Diego during his teenage years; and the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Clubs, boys and girls clubs for kids leading up to and just following their b’nai mitzvah.

Since its beginning, JTeen has attracted about 50-60 different teens to its various events, activities and classes, a good start, but “I’m not really satisfied with that,” the rabbi says. “I feel that with so many Jews in the city, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot of room for growth, and this is only my first year.”

In addition to these three sub-groups, J-Teen also includes two summer day camps for boys and girls ages 8-13 in summer (older teens can serve as volunteer counselors), where Jewish teachings are incorporated in a fun, no-pressure way with common summer camp activities.

Additionally, JTeen also includes activities that are simply designed to get Jewish teens hanging out together: havdallah beach bonfires, its annual trip to New York City for a Shabbaton, holiday parties and other fun gatherings.

Much of JTeen’s success is thanks to its constant collaboration efforts, with such groups as BBYO, United Synagogue Youth, StandWithUs, the Lawrence Family JCC, various San Diego-area rabbis, Jewish clubs in public high schools, and Chabad of University City, who have all, at one time or another, worked with JTeen to offer activity space, share resources, provide a speaker, offer a volunteer opportunity, or increase involvement and participation.

So what does the future look like for JTeen?

“It’s looking really exciting,” the rabbi says. “I see amazing potential, and I feel like it’s a crucial need for the community to make sure we don’t loose our generation, but on the contrary, that we have a greater connection, and that teenagers see that Judaism isn’t just sad times in history, persecution, the Holocaust. Judaism is a vibrant thing, and it gives us direction in how to live life in the best way possible.

“I would love to have a place, like a café or lounge, where teens could come to have events. It would be a place where they could hang out and we could have classes, we could have dinners there. We could even have prayers there. We could have a place that would be a cool location to hang out and to really connect.”

Connecting and hanging out, the rabbi explains, would mean they could have fun while focusing on the spiritual side of Judaism, and they could channel their teenage energy into positive actions. The rabbi quotes author Rabbi Simon Jacobson in Jacobson’s book, “Toward a Meaningful Life: The Wisdom of the Sages”: “The rebellion in young people is not a crime. On the contrary, it is the fire of the soul that refuses to conform, that is dissatisfied with the status quo, that cries out that it wants to change the world and is frustrated with not knowing how.”

“That’s what I was hoping we could do,” the rabbi says. “Help to give a meaning and a direction to that passion.”