Article III: Membership (From SAFTY Constitution)
- Section A: Any 8th-12th grade member of the Temple Beth-El congregation may be a full member in SAFTY by paying the appropriate dues, and is entitled to all the rights and privileges of that group. A member of SAFTY in good standing is a member who has paid the appropriate dues and is a member of the congregation.
- Section B: Any 9th-12th grader in our community with one Jewish parent may join SAFTY, and therefore NFTY, by meeting the following requirements:
FROM NFTY.ORG's About NFTY page
For over seventy five years, the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY) has offered thousands of young people the opportunity to explore and live Reform Judaism. NFTY is a movement that builds strong, welcoming, inspired communities through teen-powered engagement. Together, we pursue tikkun olam, personal growth, youth empowerment, and deep connections, all rooted in Reform Judaism.
Stemming from a historic tradition of both Jewish and non-Jewish European youth movements, the North American Federation of Temple Youth (otherwise known as “NFTY”) is the Reform Jewish youth movement that fosters leadership at the North American, regional and congregational level. Today, over 500 Reform congregations throughout North America sponsor Temple Youth Groups, bringing the NFTY experience to more than 6,000 high school-age young people in grades 9 thru 12. Additionally, NFTY welcomes Jewish teens in grades 6-8 through an initiative called NFTY 678.
Through opportunities offered by congregations in the 19 NFTY regions, and on the North American level, NFTYites strive to forge an identity in consonance with the goals and values of Reform Judaism....
Whether functioning as an organization, program, or youth movement, NFTY is a Reform Jewish community for all high school students who are interested in connecting to their Judaism. Teens forge a build friendships, lifelong Reform Jewish identities, and leadership skills through community building, worship, social action, and experiential youth-led Jewish educational programming. Many NFTYites serve as NFTY leaders on the local, TYG, regional, and even North American levels. Many NFTY Leaders continue on to become both lay and professional leaders of the Reform Jewish Movement.
“They’ve Given You a Number, and Taken Away Your Name”
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman
Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (Numbers 1:2)
l’ve never been great at math, but I‘ve always had a fascination with numbers.
“Who knows one? I know one!” we sing at the Passover Seder—the same event that boasts four cups, four children, four questions, three matzot, and ten plagues. Come to think of it, Jews are obsessed with numbers. We even have an entire book of the Torah called Numbers, though in Hebrew it has an entirely different name--Bemidbar, “in the wilderness," which is also the name of this Torah portion.
Bemidbar contains a count of the Israelites. It is very rare for the Bible to contain a census, or count, and Jews have always been a little nervous about such counts.
But wait: how could a tradition so obsessed with numbers be so afraid of counting people?
Here’s the answer.
We don’t want to turn people into numbers.
…It is saying something very big and very valuable: a human being is more than the sum of his or her parts. We can’t be reduced to merely our statistics: our age, our phone number, our Social Security number. We are more than all of that.
We can learn this, terribly, from the Nazis. When the Nazis Wanted to totally dehumanize someone, what did they do? They assigned him or her a number, and they tattooed that number on the person’s arm. After all, if you can reduce an entire life to a number, then it makes it that much easier to erase that entire life.
As someone who loves sports, I look closely at statistics, but I know that while a player’s stats can be impressive, they never tell the whole story. A basketball player’s scoring averaging doesn’t tell us whether he can block out, set picks, or make a perfect pass. For me, the number “twelve” will always remind me of my favorite quarterback, Tom Brady, and “fifty-six” is Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak, but we cannot measure the accomplishments of these players in numbers alone. When we rate someone’s looks numerically (“She’s a ten!”), it may be flattering, but we have just turned that person into an object.We are more than our numbers.
There is an urban legend about violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, who taught that lesson by happenstance when he played a concerto at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City with a broken string. One might think it impossible to play with just three strings a concerto written for violin, but Perlman did it and did so with great fervor. Upon completing his dazzling performance, he (so the story goes) said humbly to the audience, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.” Perhaps this is true for all of us, not only artists. Losses can lead to inner strengths and life changes that we did not dream were possible. We are more than the sum total of our parts. (Cantor Rachel S Spilker, http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/making-our-communities-inclusive/#)