Check out this URJ article by Ellen C. Burchine:
With more than 150 years of youth-focused service to its credit, scores of young adults across Texas recount that stipends from the Jewish Children’s Regional Service afforded them the opportunities that led them to discover their chosen professions. In the greater Houston area, 9,100 young people, annually, receive financial assistance for overnight camp, college, and a variety of special needs from this long-established agency. Houston native, Dallas’ Rabbi Jeremy Schneider (Temple Shalom) is one of its many successes.
The Jewish Children’s Home, created in response to the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1853, was the springboard for the current New Orleans-based organization. Today, as the oldest and only regional Jewish child welfare agency in the United States, JCRS leads the way in a variety of youth-assistance projects. Youth in the southern states of Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas are clients. Responding to community needs, JCRS, renamed in 1945, has expanded its services to include stipends for youth rehabilitative services, such as various therapies, tutoring and special education. Assistance for medical appliances, professional social work services, a Chanukah gift/card program and supplemental help for those extended family members serving as guardians, are some of the programs offered, with a myriad of far-reaching, positive results.
Rabbi Schneider said he was “raised at Greene Family Camp through assistance from JCRS.” His father’s furniture sales income was a casualty of the mid-80s oil crash, sending Jeremy’s mom scouting for help to enable Jeremy to attend camp. Rabbi Schneider commented, “The beauty of it was that, at camp, nobody knew who was on scholarship and who wasn’t. Everyone was treated the same. I definitely credit those experiences as having a profound influence in my choice of career.” Agency director, Ned Goldberg, shared that, though past aid recipients have chosen a variety of careers, an overwhelming number have chosen some venue of Jewish communal service as their life’s work.
Poised to graduate from high school, Schneider contacted JCRS for a second round of assistance when he was accepted to The University of Texas in Austin. It was there he earned his bachelor’s degree in education, focusing specifically on Jewish education. Supplementing his college curriculum, he worked at the campus’ Hillel, a local Reform congregation in Austin and returned to be a part of Greene Family Camp’s staff in the intervening summers. So transformative were these combined experiences that he followed up his UT degree with Jewish studies at Hebrew Union College’s Cincinnati campus for the next three years. He earned rabbinic ordination at its Los Angeles campus in May 2006.
Matched with Temple Shalom and hired as its assistant rabbi shortly thereafter, he continues to serve as the congregation’s rabbi and, along with his wife and young son, is happy to call Dallas home. Close enough to his childhood stomping grounds, he remains on the faculty at Greene Family Camp, as well. So strong is his gratitude for the JCRS assistance that brought him to Greene and, ultimately to the pulpit, that he and his wife have discussed sponsoring a camper. “I find it extremely meaningful to give back. Interacting with kids, I can be a part of inspiring a fire of Judaism within them and my congregants, as well. I am happy that JCRS is an organization that has always supported Jewish youth.”
JCRS is funded primarily by private donations. Other income has come from one-time grants or gifts funded by families and foundations seeking to make a difference in the lives of Southern Jewish youth. Prior to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, JCRS funded approximately 450 Jewish youth each year. Afterwards, however, many philanthropic New Orleanians were unable to give. By 2007, record JCRS service assists surpassed 67 percent of prior amounts, growing to accommodate many of the hardest-hit Southern families with necessities, such as food, clothing and school supplies in an effort to get those most affected back on their feet. JCRS’ past services were not only maintained, but expanded in response to the hurricanes.
If you are missing those delicious foods you made in cooking class this summer, check out the cooking class recipes. Try cooking them at home for your family and friends.
Check out this URJ blog article about the famous USA Olympic swim team - turns out one of the team members is a URJ camp alum!
We have received so many great messages from families about their campers' amazing summer experiences. Check out some below. And feel free to send us your own stories...
"We had to pick (our camper) up early from camp, but we could NOT pick her up before Shabbat, because she could not miss services! Wish we could bring some of that spirit of wanting to attend services back home!" DC
"I am very happy to share the amazing experiences that (our camper) had at camp this summer. Thank you once again for such a wonderful experience." KK
"I would like to thank you for a wonderful summer and to tell you that (our camper) enjoyed camp so much that it is hard to describe how much! To be in the URJ Greene Family Camp was a great present for her and a deep breath of air. In your camp she has found a new point of view of the world in a wonderful creation. She was proud of belonging to our synagogue and liked so much the way you sang Shabbat songs. She still demonstrates to us the beautiful way you did it! She is happy to remember every small detail from the great time and events you have given her and can't be happier than to remember all her experiences. She is busy during part of the days looking at the pictures from the camp site and writing in ''facebook'' to her new friends from camp. So, many thanks for the beautiful month you have given her, that strengthened her and gave her a new approach to life, a new spirit and a new way of thinking, which she could never have before!" KI
"It is with our deepest appreciation that we thank you and everyone that made this such a wonderful experience. It was our hope that (our camper) would have fun! Talk about an understatement and a life changing summer. He has matured and blossomed into a young man with great confidence and greater spirituality, a true mensch. He has been in touch with friends from camp since he came home, because he is so "camp sick". We hope and pray that he will be back in 2009." GK
"(Our camper) had a great time at camp. He wants to be a counselor when his time comes. I wanted to share with you an interesting comment he made. I asked him on the way home what some of his more memorable moments from camp were. I am thinking he might say meeting new friends, playing ball, maybe he kissed a girl who knows - wrong. He says, 'I would have to say when (the rabbi) came and showed me how to put on a Tallet and say the prayer.' Then he went on to say he can't wait until his Bar Mitzvah so he can do that. I was stunned - pleasantly stunned, but nonetheless stunned. Maybe through my son I can regain some of those feelings for my religion that have slipped away." DM
/logo.gif){kind=logo}
