CTeens take Manhattan

“I don’t know any place other than the International CTeen Shabbaton in New York City where so many Jewish teens from around the world can converge in one space to observe and celebrate Shabbat through prayer, song, ritual, and learning,” Lucy Volfson of Franklin Lakes said.

Lucy, a sophomore at Ramapo High School, belongs to Chabad of Northwest Bergen County’s Chabad Teen program — CTeen for short. CTeen is open to students from ninth through 12th grade. Lucy’s been an active member for the past few years. “From Thursday evening, February 27, through Sunday evening, March 2, our chapter engaged in programs with other CTeen participants who support the mission of Chabad,” Lucy said.

CTeen groups from across New Jersey — to be specific, from Basking Ridge, Cherry Hill, Closter, Fair Lawn, Franklin Lakes, Hoboken, Holmdel, Manalapan, Randolph, Short Hills. Teaneck, Ventnor, Wayne, and Woodcliff Lakes — flocked to the Shabbaton in Crown Heights.

After four days of nonstop activity and very little sleep, Lucy, like all the thousands of other participants should have been exhausted. But that Sunday, when she got off the bus at Chabad of Northwest Bergen County in Franklin Lakes to greet her mom and Mimi Kaplan, the Chabad rabbi’s wife, all that was on her mind was how she could sign up for the next one.

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The Chabad headquarters office in Brooklyn works with rabbis and their wives all over the world. “Every Chabad house is a nonprofit organization that survives on locally based funding,” Avi Winner said; he’s the director of marketing and media relations at CTeen International and Chabad headquarters. He is also the rabbi at Chabad Young Professionals on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but he’s been a part of the CTeen Shabbaton as a volunteer since he was a student.

After Shabbat, the teens had (chaperoned) fun in midtown.

“What’s unique about teens is their energy, vibrancy and sense of idealism,” Rabbi Winner said. “They tend to think about what could go right versus what could go wrong; they take pride in their Judaism and the future of the Jewish people.”

CTeen was inspired by the late Lubavitch rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. “He believed that with appropriate guidance, teens should be given the responsibility to lead important initiatives,” Rabbi Winner said. “There are 824 local CTeen chapters. They make up the largest network of Jewish teens in the world.

“Organizing the logistics for this four-day event was a huge undertaking. From meals and accommodations to security and public transportation to selecting an array of programs for boys and girls to choose from to targeting a myriad of venues to accommodate the participants while ensuring the safety of more than 4,000 Jewish teens in Crown Heights and Manhattan, there were many logistics to cover.”

He continues to be struck by how passionate these teens are about their Jewish identity. “It’s impossible not to be moved,” he said.

In many cases, students who participate in CTeen are the only Jewish teens in their city, in their school, or even in their class. The international Shabbaton is an opportunity for Jewish teens to connect with their peers. “During our Teen Talks given by CTeen participants, students listen to students their age who may be facing similar challenges to theirs, whether online, in school, or in the community,” Rabbi Winner said.

Jewish influencers, celebrities, thought leaders, and rabbis talked to the teens throughout the weekend. They included Jesse Orenshein, a proud Jew who performed on the television show “American Ninja Warrior”; Chana Horowitz, an Israeli beauty influencer who spoke on #DayInMyJewishLife; Noam Buskila, an IDF paratrooper and musician, who performed “A Soldier’s Song”; Dr. Binyomin Abrams, a researcher and director of general chemistry at Boston University who spoke on Torah and chemistry, and Molly Resnick, a former Israeli and American television producer who now lectures internationally about Judaism and gave a talk she called From Hollywood to Holy Wood.

“Teens are encouraged and inspired not to back down or compromise their values,” Rabbi Winner said. “An American teen at a public school is most likely having a different experience than a religious student at a yeshiva. Yeshiva students don’t face the challenge of having an athletic event or extracurricular activity planned on Shabbat, but public school students run into this all the time.”

CTeen aims to respond to teens who find themselves in a quandary about what to do if competition is scheduled on a Jewish holiday. “One teen, who provides wheelchair assistance to disabled and elderly passengers at Tampa Airport, was uncomfortable wearing his kippah or bringing his tefillin to work,” Rabbi Winner said. “His attitude about expressing his Jewish pride changed while standing alongside 1,240 Jewish teenage boys in one room wrapping tefillin on Friday morning. It was extremely powerful for him.” CTeen’s Instagram page reports that these teens set a world record for wrapping tefillin in a group setting.

Chabad of Northwest Bergen County was established in Franklin Lakes in 2000. For the past 25 years, the vibrant North Jersey community has been led by Rabbi Chanoch Kaplan and his wife, Mimi, who are the parents of six children. As the leader of their CTeen program, Ms. Kaplan has sought to inspire teens to become ambassadors in their communities. “I have seen them come back year after year from the International CTeen Shabbaton with a stronger sense of Jewish identity,” she said. “They want to share what they’ve heard, learned, and experienced with others their age and ultimately, they galvanize the teens around them.”

The Franklin Lakes CTeen chapter that traveled to New York at the end of February included 20 people; two were chaperones. “Some chapters are as small as three and some as large as 50,” Rabbi Winner said.

CTeen members have fun in the city.

“Most kids are coming from towns where Jews are a real minority,” Ms. Kaplan said. “Jews worldwide are connected no matter what. We are one family. We take responsibility for one another.” She believes that this four-day event is an example of the power of unity and connectivity. “We are creating the Jewish leaders of tomorrow.”

“There are other teen youth groups in the community, but kids who aren’t involved in Chabad are inspired to join CTeen when they learn about the annual Shabbaton,” Lucy said. “My younger siblings are eager to join as well.”

Lucy’s parents, Anna and Ariy, were born in Moscow and moved to the United States when they were teens — her mother was in Westfield and her father in Brooklyn. They met by chance at a park in Wayne and connected through mutual friends. They married and moved to Long Island, and then, in 2013, to Franklin Lakes.

“Before immigrating, they lived in an area of the world where it was not safe to express their religious identity,” Lucy said.

“It was while driving home from work on Yom Kippur that my dad felt the need to stop in at the Franklin Lakes Chabad. He was hesitant about coming in during the high holidays, not knowing anyone who was attending, but Rabbi Kaplan greeted him with open arms. We’ve been loyal to the community ever since.” Lucy attends Shabbat services every Saturday morning and supports the Hebrew school staff as a volunteer.

On Sunday morning, CTeen members posed for a last picture.

Lucy was aware of how little her peers were using their cell phones throughout the four-day weekend. “We were focused on the powerful bonds made throughout the weekend with Jewish girls and boys from all over the world,” she said. “As Jewish teens, there are real life challenges we face socially, athletically, and personally in school and beyond — I’m still texting and talking to people I connected with throughout the Shabbaton.”

Inspired by Chabad’s mission to give back and fight hate, Lucy serves as president of the Jewish Culture Club at Ramapo High School. “We celebrate all the Jewish holidays and coordinate fundraising events — tzedakah — to support those in need throughout the United States and in Israel,” she said.

“Some members are hesitant, when introducing themselves to people they don’t know, to say their last names because it sounds too Jewish,” she said. “Others refrain from wearing a magen David on a chain. There’s a heightened sense of worry and fear, not just among Jewish students, about outward expressions of racism exhibited in the schools in our district. It is an extremely challenging problem for the administration to solve.”

Lucy, like the rest of the more than 4,000 teens in town for the CTeen Shabbaton, felt extremely safe throughout their four-day stay— while with host families in Crown Heights, riding the subways to and from planned events, and singing, dancing, and shouting Am Yisroel Chai in Times Square. Nine buildings there had billboards that displayed photos of CTeens, she said.

Ms. Kaplan agreed. “The photos don’t do it justice,” she said. “It was hard to quantify the magnitude of such an event.”

Lucy’s connection to Judaism continues to grow and evolve. “I want to take advantage of all of the rituals, traditions, and religious experiences that my parents couldn’t,” she said.