The German Teens Who Sang and Danced Their Nazi Resistance

By Abby Sher for Jewniverse

In a time of rising authoritarianism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and fear, a group of young people insisting on their freedoms expressed themselves through dance.

Donning checkered shirts, shorts and stockings, and signature edelweiss floral badges, this group of teenagers in Nazi Germany called themselves the Edelweiss Pirates.

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Song Of Life

Lauren Ishay for Fresh Ink for Teens

Childhood came, only to so quickly disappear
Time rolled unremittingly on, with each passing year
But my time of youth, always remembered oh so well
And in the remembering there is a story to tell

My days of being young were mostly happy and carefree
Blissfully ignorant of life, were my friends and me
From chasing butterflies and picking flowers at 3 years old
To a trip to the doctor discovering my first cold

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A March To A Fresh Perspective

Eva Schottenstein for Fresh Ink for Teen

I heard music. I heard people sing prayers overflowing with emotions while marching through some of the most unholy streets imaginable. I heard children sing songs to mourn the deaths of their soldiers — their brothers, fathers and uncles — who all died fighting for their rights to their homeland. I heard crying, and not just sad crying. I heard crying that sounded like it was coming from people who had nothing left inside of them. I heard silence, and that was the first time that I understood what it meant for silence to be loud. I saw, I heard and I witnessed the historic recollection of inhumane acts of hate, discrimination, genocide and dehumanization; the shame of the German nation.

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My Kind Of Jew

by: Gabi Friedman for Fresh Ink for Teens

When I was very little, I would go to a prayer meeting, or minyan, with my dad every morning. I remember munching on rye bread and bagels at the small breakfast afterwards while my dad talked with the others in attendance. My mom says that the sweets they fed me for breakfast at the shul ruined any hopes she had of convincing me to eat a regular, healthy breakfast. I remember, too, when I first began to realize that not everybody was Jewish. My mom absolutely forbade telling the other girls in my kindergarten class that I knew Santa wasn’t real. I can’t remember if I listened or not.

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Identity In, ‘Spirituality’ Out For Jewish Teens

by Hannah Dreyfus for JeducationWorld

What do the Jewish members of Generation Z — the one right behind the millennials — want?

Not conventional “spiritual” practices, including synagogue attendance, it turns out. What they do want, according to a major report released last week by the New York-based Jewish Education Project, is to be better human beings.

The study, based on the views of 139 teens between the ages of 12 ½ and 17 and from four cities — Atlanta, Boston, Denver and Los Angeles — found that while Jewish teenagers take deep pride in their tribal Jewish identity, they are largely checking out of traditional kinds of Jewish engagement.

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Jewish teenagers want to engage. Just ask them.

From The Blog, jewishva.org

Welcoming teens into Jewish life is both one of the most important and seemingly challenging endeavors of the Jewish community. The rapid decline in teen engagement in Jewish life post-b’nai mitzvah is well-documented and depressing. It’s also an entirely reversible trend, but only if the Jewish community approaches teen engagement in a new way — one that recognizes the whole teen and values her or him as an equal partner in creating experiences that add meaning to her or his life.

In general, Jewish teens (like non-Jewish peers) today are deeply thoughtful, inquisitive and ambitious. Also like their peers, they can be narcissistic and attached to technology. Most of today’s teens are vastly different than a generation ago, and in many ways different than a decade ago. These changes are due in large part to the changing world in which we live, the central role of technology and the nearly endless opportunities for personal customization a click away.

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Incantation - A Novel for Teens by Alice Hoffman

Review by Linda R. Silver for Jewish Book Council

The burning of Jewish books in the town square is the first portent that life for sixteen-year-old Estrella is going to change. Set in Spain during the Middle Ages, the story is about secrets and self-knowledge. Estrella’s family are Conversos, who practice Judaism in secret at home and in a church where all of the congregation plus the priest are like themselves. As the persecution of Jews draws ever closer to Estrella’s own family, she is told about their secret, given a ring to buy herself safe passage to Amsterdam if need be, and taught the rudiments of kabbalah by her learned grandfather. This unlikely act is undoubtedly a gesture toward the current popularity of  kabbalah and it does little to mar the credibility of the plot, consisting only of a few “kabbalistic” customs like wearing a red thread and learning the names of the ten gates of Paradise.

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