NFTY National Convention '05: A long trip for five great days

Shabbat services have just ended at the national convention of the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY, pronounced like nifty). Everyone is dressed in their best dress clothes to celebrate the holiday. As the last few notes of the soft, melodic Shabbat melodies die out, I grab my folding chair along with 1,300 other NFTY kids and shove it into a massive pile.

Soon, a band playing on stage starts in with the opening chords of "The Na Na Song," a song no NFTY event would be complete without. Everyone quickly starts jumping up and down in time to the music. From my spot, 50 feet from the stage, the crowd seems to be one gigantic writhing mass, and the guitarist on stage jumps up and down as well.

NFTY is an affiliate of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), which acts as a nationwide youth group for teen members of Reform Jewish synagogues. NFTY's membership currently consists of 10,000 high-school teens from over 450 different Reform Jewish congregations from around the nation.

NFTY Convention - Group Shot

Photo: A massive song session at the NFTY national convention 2005.

Photo courtesy of Rachel Ross.

A massive song session at the NFTY national convention 2005.

Photo courtesy of Rachel Ross.

As an active member of NFTY, I was able to attend the national convention from February 18-22 in not-so-sunny Los Angeles, California, along with about five other Blazers.

NFTY goes to LA

Only a few short days before the Shabbat services, the plane with the members of my Temple Youth Group (TYG), Temple Shalom Temple Youth, or TaSTY, touched down six long hours after we left BWI airport. I arrived by bus at the hotel booked almost exclusively for the convention, claimed my name tag and folder and went up to my room, shared with fellow Blair junior Louis Weil, BCC senior Nathan Kingery and Wootton junior Nathan Bossie, ready for a great few days, and NFTY national convention certainly delivered.

As I wandered amongst the crowd as the event, I was astounded and a little disappointed to see all the kids walking around who all seemed a lot like the familiar members of the Mid-Atlantic Region (MAR) of NFTY, which the D.C. Metropolitan-area is part of. I didn't hear one actual southern accent the entire weekend out of the NFTYites purportedly from all over the nation. It seemed that NFTYites regardless of where they were from, really acted and dressed the same.

Senior Blazer and TaSTYite Rachel Ross says that NFTYites from all over the country have similarities but are brought together by NFTY. "People from elsewhere in the county are completely different, but we're all united under NFTY. You really see how we all look different, but we all have the same love of NFTY," Ross says.

NFTY?

NFTY exists on a local, national and regional level. At the local level, individual TYGs hold events for teens in their synagogues. On a regional level, each of the 19 NFTY geographic regions holds events annually. NFTY national includes NFTY in Israel programs, Mechina, a leadership convention for the board members of the individual regions and the national convention every other year. The Washington, D.C., area is a part of the Mid-Atlantic Region (MAR) of NFTY.

The convention has several purposes in the NFTY world. It serves as an assembly of the general board of NFTY, consisting of the national board and all of the regional boards. National board members for the following year are elected at the convention. The most important purpose of convention for most NFTYites is the chance that the convention gives them to come together with many hundreds of other Jewish teens to pray, learn and have fun together.

In addition to the social and religious aspects of the event, the event includes several workshops that are designed to be both educational and a lot of fun. NFTY events always include programming, as it is called, with the topics at the convention ranging from "Church and Shul: Looking At Christian-Jewish Relations," to "Where My Boys At? Judaism for Men" and "The Genesis of Relationships and Dating."

The convention switches coasts every time it is held. Two years ago, it was in D.C., where it will be held again in two years.

Convention '05

For many NFTYites like me, NFTY offers a refuge from the regular drive of everyday life. NFTY is a chance to relax, get away from everyday pressures and take some time for careful introspection, aside from just being a high-energy blast. At a NFTY event, the one thing you can always expect is amazing amounts of spirit or ruach, as it is called in Hebrew and at NFTY. After being at some NFTY events where the ruach made the event, I was thrilled to find that having 1,300 kids at an event as opposed to 200-300, the usual at a NFTY regional event, really did up the ruach level as much as I had hoped.

NFTY Convention - Blazer closeup

Photo: From left to right, Blake Freshman Micah Harrison, SCO staff writer Alex Gold and Louis Weil on a bus near Universal Studios at the NFTY convention.

Photo courtesy of Rachel Ross.

From left to right, Blake Freshman Micah Harrison, SCO staff writer Alex Gold and Louis Weil on a bus near Universal Studios at the NFTY convention.

Photo courtesy of Rachel Ross.

For Weil, song sessions, where all 1,300 teens were crowded into big rooms and sang their hearts out to the likes of well-known (to NFTYites) Jewish musicians like Dan Nichols and Steve Dropkin, were especially moving. "It was a glimmering mass of jumping, spirited, sweaty Jews. It was a lot of fun," Weil states.

NFTY also provides an opportunity to connect to other people and make life long friends. Weil says he made many friends at the convention, but interestingly, most were from near by. "I had to go all the way to convention to meet people from my own region. [The convention was] a regional bonding experience," Weil says.

For me, one of the greatest parts of convention was Sunday night, when NFTY rented out all of the lower part of Universal Studios in California and allowed NFTYites free reign, including free food and arcade games. I truly felt like a kid in a candy store, and with only 1,300 kids in a park made for many more, lines were next-to-nonexistent. Weil, Kingery and I took particular pleasure in riding the "Revenge of The Mummy" roller coaster. I rode it 10 times, and both Weil and Kingery rode it nine. Even the constant downpour on our heads could not dampen our high spirits, and a huge dance took place in a central plaza in the midst of the storm.

As my plane took off, bringing me and my fellow TaSTYites home to cold and snowy Maryland I thought about all the NFTYites who had been brought together for five days of excitement, ruach and fun. I thought about all the people who had been gathered together only this morning and were at that moment high above the ground leaving to go back to their homes and wait there for another two years. Then I reconsidered and remembered the "To be a NFTYite" poem someone had made up that I had found at runboard.com that said to be a NFTYite is, "To know that the word 'goodbye' is merely a code for 'see you later.'"