RESTORING JEWISH HERITAGE TO THE YOUTH OF EUROPE

The Morasha (heritage) organization was started by the Rabbinical Centre of Europe in order to help be mekarev young boys and girls to a life of Torah and mitzvos. Throughout the year, the organization runs an array of programs by a group of bachurim who go from 770 to various European countries and get young people involved in Jewish activities. * The highlight of their program is a bar-bas mitzvah trip, which transforms the lives of many of the participants and their families

The Morasha program operates throughout the European Union under the auspices of the European Jewish Association, which is directed by Rabbi Menachem Margolin. Among their many activities there is a special program for b’nei and b’nos mitzvah. Boys and girls from all over Europe go to Eretz Yisroel and visit the holy sites and attend shiurim and workshops on Judaism. They also have plenty of fun. The shluchim who prepared them for their bar/bas mitzvah accompany them on the trip.

Two years ago, those involved were witness to a heartbreaking scene. One of the girls loved Eretz Yisroel and wanted to remain there and study in a Torah institution for girls. She was from Budapest and had attended secular schools and she now wanted to return to her Jewish roots.

This unusual reaction for such a young girl took the shluchim by surprise.

“We had a lot of convincing to do at the end of the trip to get her back on the plane to her parents,” recalls the director of Morasha, R’ M. M. Pevsner. “When she finally agreed to board the plane, it was moving to see her sobbing and saying, ‘I will go back to Hungary, to my birthplace, but it is no longer my land.’ This girl grew up in a totally secular home with no Torah and mitzvos.

“Since her return home, the shliach there reports to me now and then about the positive changes she is making. She began visiting the Chabad House regularly and started to observe mitzvos. At a certain point, the shliach told me she left Hungary for Milan where she attends the seminary run by R’ Sender Wilschansky.

“In the meantime, her parents also started changing and within a short time had followed their daughter and became baalei t’shuva.”

According to R’ Pevsner, this is one of many such stories, some of which you will read about in the coming pages. According to him, every Jewish young person who comes from an assimilated family and goes on this trip will change his entire outlook and understanding of his heritage to one which is deeper and more positive. “We cannot always follow up on each individual case to see the long term results. Nor do we pressure the shluchim to send us stories or updates about the young people who were with us on the trip. We are sure that every boy and girl returns home differently than the way they left.”

The bar/bas mitzva trip is just one pearl in a string of activities with children and youth throughout Europe run by Morasha. Every holiday, the organization flies a group of bachurim to the offices of the organization and they visit Chabad Houses throughout the continent and sometimes even far-flung places that have not been exposed to youthful energy and talent, and certainly not the kind that comes straight from the cauldron of Chassidus that is Beis Chayeinu.

“We design a program appropriate for the holiday and offer our programming to shluchim. There are shluchim who tried it and since then, use it for every holiday.”

THE REBBE SETS THE POLICY FOR THE ORGANIZATION

Morasha is part of an entire spectrum of organizations that were established a decade ago under the umbrella of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe, along with other organizations that were founded to deal with Jewish inmates, students, an array of shiurim, maintaining contacts with European politicians, and a branch of programming for women. Morasha was started to organize outreach activities with children and youth throughout the European Union.

“Our goal is to help shluchim and develop educational tools for them to use in their outreach to children and youth in their place of shlichus.”

When was the organization founded and how did you become the director?

Our organization was founded about a decade ago and I’ve been working here for seven years. I previously lived in Crown Heights and I was asked to come and run another organization in Europe which works to transfer Jewish children from public schools to Jewish schools. Before we left, we wrote to the Rebbe through the Igros Kodesh and asked for a bracha. The answer moved us very much. There was not only a bracha but clear guidelines as to how to operate.

The answer was in volume twelve, page 254-255. It was originally sent to Rabbi Dovid Chanzin regarding the children of the Reshet:

… as for your question, obviously 1) you need to utilize the yom hilula of 10 Shvat for a closer bonding of the Reshet schools to one another and to the administration, and to instill this in the students too. The best way to do so is to arrange a gathering as per your decision.

… I have already found in one place that teachers in particular need to expend effort to increase the number of students and if it is not possible otherwise, it is worthwhile that they agitate to visit parents’ homes in Zarnoga and explain to them the advantages of a school in the Reshet etc. This, even though it is in the middle of the semester, since there are new people living there. So too, I think in Nissan you can switch. There are surely boys and girls who are not yet registered for a particular school and there is room to suggest that it is possible to increase through this the number of students.

We accepted this shlichus offer before Yud Shvat and the answer spoke specifically of this date. We left on shlichus a month later.

As soon as we arrived we came up with a revolutionary program together with the administrators of the Jewish schools, who were desperate for additional students. Because of the rampant anti-Semitism in many European countries, many Jews have made aliya or moved to other countries. There are also many who are afraid to openly identify as Jews and so they send their children to gentile schools. For some, their connection to Judaism is weak due to assimilation. All these reasons greatly diminished the number of students in Jewish schools.

In many cases, what blocked the success of the program was the lack of finances. Jewish schools are private and cost money and if Jewish schools mean nothing to a person, why would he spend money on it?

R’ Pevsner initiated a project in which everyone takes part – the parents pay about 30%, the school 30%, and Morasha pays the remaining 40%.

“There were families that we knew were in financial distress and they were exempt from payment. Thanks to this campaign, within a few months we were able to transfer many children to Jewish schools, thus saving them from assimilation. The chance that a child receiving a Jewish education will assimilate is far less.”

R’ Pevsner tells of quite a few skeptics who told him that students would not leave in the middle of the school year. How moved he was to receive phone calls before Pesach from parents who wanted to switch their children to Jewish schools as the Rebbe wrote in the letter, to start operating already before Pesach.

“As soon as we succeeded in registering one child, there were requests to register more children. In many cases, when the child attends a school with Jewish content the entire family starts taking an interest in Judaism. In addition, this campaign saved some schools that had only a few students and were at risk of losing government funding.”

After three years of successful work, the organization folded because of the global financial recession. “But since then,” says R’ Pevsner, “there are many schools that are continuing with this campaign on their own and have enlisted various foundations to help them cover their budget shortfalls.”

The next job he took on was also in the realm of education which is close to his heart – Morasha. When asked about the organization, he divides it into two main parts.

“The first part is sending out bachurim to communities throughout Europe, sometimes to out of the way places, to do programs on Jewish holidays with children and youth in collaboration with shluchim in those areas. The second part is the bar/bas mitzva trip to Eretz Yisroel.”

SOUL CELEBRATION

The bar/bas mitzva trip began a few years ago. The shluchim who work with two or three children a year could not give them a powerful experience like this. The way it works is whoever wants to register for the trip has to participate in a weekly preparatory course with the shliach for at least three months. The goal is for these young boys and girls to receive a strong Jewish experience that will stay with them for the rest of their lives and affect their families too.

During the weeklong trip the children tour Eretz Yisroel, accompanied by the shliach from their country of origin. They enjoy a special program which includes visiting holy sites, outings to historic places and nature preserves. The children also enjoy an array of attractions connected with the history of the Jewish people and deepening their Jewish identity. The highlight of the trip is the last day, when the entire group goes to the Kosel where the boys are given t’fillin and the girls are given candlesticks. The gifts are given to them personally by one of the chief rabbis.

“For many of these boys, this is their only bar mitzva celebration,” says R’ Pevsner.

Those who join the trip are carefully selected by the shluchim:

“These children are usually in touch with their local Chabad House through Sunday school or Talmud Torah on Wednesdays, but there are some who do not attend these programs. We insist they have at least three months of preparation. For every trip we get feedback from the shluchim about the close relationship created with the children during this intense week. From the moment they return home, the relationship only deepens and their entire perception of Judaism changes.”

The project grows and expands every year. Soon after announcements are sent to the shluchim about registration, registration closes due to lack of space.

“The shluchim tell about children who return excited and happy and immediately broadcast that to their peers. Every trip creates ripple effects. Children returning home start putting on t’fillin and lighting Shabbos candles. We even had boys who decided to have themselves circumcised.”

The day marking a bar mitzva is moving and meaningful in the life of any boy. Whereas in Eretz Yisroel or any other established Jewish community there is the possibility to translate the excitement into a Jewish experience which will affect his entire life and shape his spiritual image, in many European cities with small Jewish communities, the experience can be underwhelming.

“One of the shluchim in Germany who brought a girl along on the trip told me that the girl’s mother is Jewish but not her father, and every Sunday she would go to church. After the trip, she stopped going there.”

75 YEAR OLD HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR CELEBRATING HIS BAR MITZVA

How do you make the trip special every year?

It’s really not easy. We work with various organizations in Eretz Yisroel and each trip requires a lot of advance preparation and a lot of siyata d’Shmaya (heavenly assistance).

The Rebbe’s approach is that you can celebrate a bar mitzva at any age. This year, we will have a 75 year old Hungarian Jew with us on the trip. He is a Holocaust survivor who is taking an interest in Judaism after years of estrangement.

You go along with every group. I’m sure you have moving stories to share.

It was a few days before the trip and a shliach from Nancy, France called me and asked me to include a boy from his city. His mother could not raise him and so she put him up for adoption by a non-Jewish family. The parents divorced and the father lives in Eretz Yisroel. The mother agreed to her son going to Eretz Yisroel and also meeting his father.

The boy’s story touched me and I worked hard to include him even though registration was closed. I was finally successful and the boy who was so distant from mitzva observance arrived at the airport with a ham sandwich. The shliach from Nancy joined the boy, and his biological father was supposed to meet him at the airport.

How shocked the shliach and I were when we arrived in Eretz Yisroel to see a man with a long beard and peios and wearing a kippa, approaching us because of the sign we held, and hugging the boy. He had no idea what the boy looked like and it was only in recent weeks that he sought a relationship with him. It was a very emotional meeting which demonstrates the power of the father-son bond.

Whoever saw them meet in the airport and later at the concluding banquet that we made in the Old City of Yerushalayim, had tears in their eyes.

The boy is 17 now, and since he returned from the trip he did not miss a single session of the Talmud Torah on Sunday. He committed to wearing tzitzis and he has followed through on that commitment. He is very involved in Judaism and I heard from the shliach that he dons t’fillin daily and eats only kosher. We saw how this trip to Eretz Yisroel brought a Jewish soul back into the fold.

WRITING TO THE REBBE ABOUT EVERY PROJECT

Morasha offers shluchim an array of activities for children throughout the year. For Chanuka this year, for example, the children made olive oil, built a wooden menorah and a decorative dreidel. They enjoyed the activities very much while learning about the holiday.

For last year’s Pesach program they had a large number of Jewish children participating:

“Thousands of children across Europe learned about Pesach in workshops. About ten bachurim made the rounds to various destinations in Europe. Coordinating with the shluchim, they did interactive fun activities in which the children learned about the holiday. The program included matza baking, explanations about Pesach and there was a play.”

The activities span the entire year, and every holiday has its programming, even the Yomim Nora’im. That program includes a shofar presentation, making a shofar, explanations about the holiday and more. The bachurim visit dozens of locations and reach hundreds of boys and girls.

The organization also does activities long distance. For example, for Shavuos, under the heading, “Receive the Torah, Receive a Gift,” children had forms signed about their participation. These forms poured in from many European communities right after the announcement that was sent to the shluchim. Whoever sent in a form got a package of prizes. There was also a raffle in which one child won a trip to Eretz Yisroel with his parents. In addition, whoever participated received a special medallion.

How do you get children to participate?

First, all the credit goes to the shluchim who work in their city of shlichus year-round. They do the hard work. We assist them by bringing chayus and simcha in activities that children enjoy and we are greatly helped in this by the bachurim. We constantly work on improving the format, but ultimately they are our representatives, they show up with the activities, the play they prepared along with the music, and they infuse new life into the Jewish experience.

Do you feel the Rebbe’s involvement in your work?

Before and after every project I write a report to the Rebbe, not to get an answer but trusting that by writing to the Rebbe we are blessed.

This kind of outreach entails great responsibility. Every holiday we have bachurim coming and we rent cars and they travel for hours on the highways, crossing borders; it’s a big responsibility and we feel that the Rebbe is with us.

What are your plans for the future?

We always seek to grow and do more. I have a dream of doing two bar mitzva trips a year. Assimilation in Europe is rampant and most of the children we work with do not attend Jewish schools, so every program they attend can save their Judaism. The shluchim tell us that this program strengthens the entire community to a certain extent, and the positive effect creates wider ripples. We need to come up with more and more programs to reach more children.