Ask some typical suburban teenagers how they spent their weekend, and you’ll likely get a range of answers along the lines of shopping at the mall, hanging out at the beach, or maybe catching a movie.
But for some 40 Jewish young adults from Boston’s northern suburbs, one recent weekend outing was anything but typical. By travelling to the Brooklyn, N.Y., enclave of Crown Heights in time for the beginning of the holy day of Shabbat, they experienced a taste of religious life among a community of Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidim.
For high school freshman Dennis Averin, the best part of the trip – which included prayer services at Lubavitch World Headquarters, a post-Shabbat tour of a Crown Heights matzah bakery, and the usual compilation of New York tourist sites – was seeing so many religious Jews in one place.
“It was really cool that you could be Jewish, wear a yarmulke and not feel weird,” said Averin. “There was a real Jewish vibe.”
“We got a peak into Orthodox life,” added 14-year-old Lilly Cummings, who like Averin, is a member of Chabad of the North Shore’s Jew Crew teen program. “I really got to see how different people celebrate Judaism.”
The group of visitors, who spent the holy day with several hosting families in Crown Heights, represented the gamut of Jewish life. Some attend Jewish day schools, but most go to their local public school with just a few Jewish classmates. A draw of the program, said attendees, was the chance to take a trip with a group of friends they don’t normally see on a daily basis.
“It was a great experience to be with Jewish friends that share a similar background and values,” said freshman Sasha Matusevich.
Rachel Heerter, a high school sophomore, said the high point of the weekend was definitely spending Shabbat in a neighborhood where most of the businesses close on Saturday. She explained that while her family keeps Shabbat, they live far from a synagogue; her friends don’t live within walking distance, so they rarely have guests.
“It was just so refreshing to see a shul on every block, to see kosher restaurants and stores,” said Heerter. “We don’t have that at home.
“The message I got was one of community, this togetherness,” she continued. “It didn’t matter who we were, [our host families] welcomed us in like they knew us, as if they saw us just last week. To them, we were really one of their own.”
For Rabbi Yossi Lipskier, director of Chabad of the North Shore, the goal was to have the teenagers experience Shabbat in a traditional setting.
“I wanted the children to see how Shabbat can energize an entire community, to see the physical difference between a weekday and Shabbat,” explained Lipskier. “And there is no place better to see that many Jews together with the singular purpose of keeping Shabbat than in Crown Heights.”
David Nathan, director of the Jew Crew and other teen programming at Chabad of the North Shore, said that by seeing the community in Crown Heights, people can walk away with a feeling that the religious possibilities are endless.
“Being Jewish is not all or nothing and each [deed] has its own value even if you don’t keep Shabbat or kosher,” he explained. “That is the message we wanted to get to the kids.”
At the end of the weekend, Nathan saw a change in the teens.
“What grasped me was how the kids became one solid unit,” he said. “They really learned that they have a role, a place, in the Jewish community.”
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