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Theatre Guild Funny Girl V1


A memorable Relief Missions trip for local JSU teens

Julia Bigus holding a baby alligator.

 

By Meryl Feld \ Editor

These days they’re playing digital board games and coming together online to celebrate Israel’s birthday, but a couple of weeks before our world began to close, Midwest Jewish Student Union returned from a five-day Relief Missions trip to New Orleans. The theme of the weekend: building homes, building yourself.

There were 30 teens on the trip, six from the Kansas City area. The other teens were from Minneapolis and St. Louis.

The trip was part of NCSY Relief Missions. The program has run over 100 missions to over 20 different locations across America for Jewish teens. More than 1,800 teens have been involved in their trips.

According to NCSY’s website, the goal of Relief Missions trips is to help teens develop leadership skills, increase their compassion and awareness for the less fortunate and strengthen their Jewish identity.

For Julia Bigus, a junior at Spring Hill High School, this trip was her first experience with JSU. She said that volunteering in New Orleans and learning more about Judaism piqued her interest. She is one of two Jews that she’s aware of at her school.

“It was overall just a very well-balanced and fun and meaningful experience,” Rabbi Nati Stern, director of KC JSU and KCSY, said, “What we’re able to offer is having fun and unique full Jewish experiences. And this was an opportunity for kids to connect with their Jewish identity in a way that they’ve never thought about before.”


Volunteering

The group volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. The Kansas City teens were helping with the foundation of the house. For Bigus, this was one of her favorite parts of the trip. “It was really cool being able to do something that you knew would directly affect someone who needed it,” she said.

The group on the swamp tour.

After a day of teamwork, the house had the structural support for the floor. There was nothing there when they arrived. Rabbi Stern said, “You feel accomplished when you actually see the results of your hard work.”

The teens planted trees outside of schools and cemeteries, too. They joined the efforts of the NOLA Tree Project, which is dedicated to replanting over 100,000 trees lost during Hurricane Katrina.

“We had a lesson about how the tree gets planted and then gets sunlight… and kind of sits there and is happy and makes everyone around it happy. And how sometimes we need to be more like the tree. And just sit with our thoughts and try to understand them, because we don’t understand or connect with our thoughts as much as we think we do,” Bigus said.

That take-away-point is one of the main goals of the trip. “What JSU really prides itself on is having meaningful Jewish experiences. We wanted to volunteer, but also kind of have discussions on what does Judaism have to say about volunteering and about social action and about chessed and kindness,” Rabbi Stern said.

“When you volunteer more you see that the community really needs it and it helps you feel more connected. You want to give more, the more you give,” Bigus said.


Touring

The group was able make memories that will last a lifetime: a horse and buggy tour of the French quarter, live music, a swamp tour, bowling, meeting some alligators, seeing a Mardi Gras parade and enjoyed kosher beignets at the famous Café Du Monde.

A highlight of the trip was a spontaneous song session while waiting in line for a show. Rabbi Stern had his guitar and started playing. Soon the kids were dancing and singing from the top of their lungs – Jewish songs echoing through the streets of the French Quarter of New Orleans. “There was so much passion and connection to their Jewish identity,” Rabbi Stern said, “It was just a moment when people really connected. It was a very Jewish moment of singing and inspiration and uplifting melodies.”

One of the trees the teens planted.

The group toured one of the areas that was hit the hardest by Hurricane Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward. They saw that after 15 years, the area was still disheveled, full of debris and that houses were yet to be rebuilt. They also saw a section where hundreds of beautiful and funky new homes had been built with donated money.

This led to a discussion about priorities in charity, piecing through the idea that potentially thousands of less-beautiful homes could have been built for the same amount of money that built hundreds. Rabbi Stern put this idea into other words. “Is it better to give 100 dollars to one person, or one dollar to one-hundred people?”


Connecting and learning

Of course, the Jewish learning on the trip didn’t end there.

“We talked about the idea of love in Hebrew, Ahavah, the core of which is Hav, which means to give. At the core of love means giving to other people, not receiving from other people, not expecting anything from others, but rather what can we give to others. And through giving to others that’s how we build relationships and friendships.” Rabbi Stern said.

“It’s really cool that there’s so much diversity even within our own religion,” Bigus said. The group learned about various Torah lessons and how they were connected to what they were doing. Bigus appreciated all the different perspectives that were shared during lessons and conversations on the trip.

KC teens volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.

“We learn most often when we step outside of our comfort zone. Outside of our bubble. And this was an opportunity for kids to visit a cool place and really have an opportunity for experiential education,” Rabbi Stern said.

 Planning for the next annual JSU weekend-trip will hopefully begin in the fall, but Rabbi Stern wants to incorporate social action into the annual trip again. “It’s one thing to talk about kindness and volunteering, but it’s another thing to actually go ahead and volunteer and then talk about what volunteering means… Talking about it and having these discussions really internalizes these messages in a much more meaningful and profound way.”