Over the past few years we have spoken with Jewish community leaders from camps, congregations, and organizations who struggle to find songleaders for their specific programs or events. Even more concerning, we have learned that the wider local community in many parts of the North America are lacking a pipeline of songleaders for day camps, overnight camps, religious school music, early childhood programs and youth events. 

 

In response, we are pleased to launch a New York cohort of our Teen Songleader Fellowship for the 2023-2024 school year. 

​

This cohort will include:

• Monthly sessions between November and May: a few will be on zoom for all the teens in the NY Cohort, and the others will be hyper-local gatherings of teens by borough; working with local mentors and artists, visiting congregations or great singing gatherings, or gathering to jam and share repertoire
   

• February 3-5, 2024 Weekend retreat at Woodlands Community Temple in White Plains: home hospitality, leading worship for the congregation, hours of learning things like how to successfully teach a song, learn new repertoire, create programming, gain confidence, and lead religious school music. *This will include time with our friend and teacher Rachel Chang.
   

• Mentoring and teaching from local experts in songleading, worship leading, religious school leading and community building.

​

Thanks to generous underwriting from clergy partners, the cost for the NY Cohort Fellowship is $100, which includes attendance at the retreat in February as well as all the learning sessions throughout the year. Apply here.

While the retreat is not required, it will be a great opportunity for a mid-year gathering to improve skills, connect teens to the larger community, and lead a dynamic congregation commited to teens and Jewish music.

​

More about the Fellowships:

SUG Regional Teen Songleader cohorts are designed to provide on-site mentorship from a local songleading mentor who can visit each teen where they songlead, work with each teen to establish success metrics for the year, and, most importantly, connect their mentee with organizations, institutions, and communities within their region to support their professional development.

 

A key component of each regional fellowship is that each host community will use their cohort of teens to provide music in more communal gatherings. This has the dual benefit of giving teens more on the ground experience leading with people, and it increases the amount of singing that happens in Jewish communal spaces.

 

All of this means that teen songleaders, supported in growing skills to lead religious school music, will be better trained and better positioned to fill a need in a local JCC camp next summer, to lead musical experiences for the Federation's Israel program, give a more complete Taste of Camp, or deepen the meaning of a communal day of action.

​

The support for our staff, teachers, programming on the ground, outreach and mentorship is made possible from generous gifts from clergy who are passionate about pipelining and nurtuing young songleaders.

​

We thank: Rabbis Michael White, Rob Nosanchuk, Ken Chasen, Judith Siegal, Ben David, Micah Greenstein, Peter Berg and Dan Levin and Cantors Danielle Rodnizki, Brad Hyman, Irena Altshul, Jennifer Frost, Alexander Kurland, Tracey Scher, Lori Shapiro, Amanda Kleinman, Ross Wolman, Billy Tiep and Shanna  Zell.

​