Tenafly high school student Molly Stein said she has always liked “leading things.”

As mazkira (president)–elect of Young Judaea, Hadassah’s peer-led Zionist youth movement, the 17-year-old will have ample opportunity to exercise her leadership skills.

A graduate of the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford and a member of Englewood’s Kol HaNeshamah, where she leads children’s services, Molly has been active in Young Judaea’s Bergen County group since 2007.

As president of the national organization, her job will be to maintain a close relationship with Hadassah, the group’s parent association, as well as with alumni.

“My job will be to make sure Young Judaea’s voice is heard in Hadassah,” she said, noting that she has attended the movement’s camps for six years. She went to Camp Sprout Lake from 2004 to 2006 and to Tel Yehuda from 2007 to 2009.

“I became active in the year-round movement when I entered high school,” she said, detailing her involvement in twice-monthly activities ranging from “bowling nights raising money for Israel to making dolls for Darfuri refugee children.” The group also participated in a recycling program to collect funds for Haiti.

Currently the Bergen County group’s point person for communications, Molly said the local chapter “is in the middle” nationally in terms of its size and level of activity.

She is hopeful that will change.

“I plan on trying to work with [all the regional groups] so their clubs can grow,” she said.

“I would like to strengthen, to unify, the year-round movement. Different places have different ways of working,” she noted. “My job will be to oversee the different regions and make sure their practices and programs can run.” Her job, she said, is to try to ensure that all the groups can do their jobs with help from the national office.

Ultimately, she wants to create “more activism in terms of Israel and other issues.”

While Young Judaea occupies a good deal of her time, Molly has found time for other pursuits as well. Just before Pesach, she was scheduled to play Mrs. Harcourt in her school’s production of “Anything Goes.”

“I’ve been in the school musical every year,” she said. “I like theater.”

The new YJ president believes strongly in the organization she will lead.

“Young Judaea is important not just because it gives Jewish teens something to do but because it teaches them how to do it. You learn how to take action on issues you care about and how to be a leader, working towards goals as well as meeting other Jewish teens.”

Molly said that while attending Solomon Schechter was important to her personally, “you don’t need to be a day-school student” to participate in Young Judaea.

The youth movement, she said, “has helped make me into a better and different kind of leader. It’s made me more aware.”

And if there’s one thing that people should know about the group, it’s that “Young Judaea is alive and well, moving into its second century with just as much passion and excitement as there was in the first.”

“I’m excited,” she said. “I feel good about the upcoming year.”

Captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is the focus of two Jewish youth events with New Jersey connections in a single week.

On April 7, some 250 students on the Young Judaea Year Course in Israel were to stage a “Freeze-Out” in Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall to publicize Shalit’s plight and advocate for the International Red Cross to visit the young man, who was seized by Hamas in Gaza in June 2006, two months before his 20th birthday.

And NCSY, the international youth movement of the Orthodox Union, is sponsoring “Learn for Gilad” on Sunday, April 10. More than 200 teens across North America will study Jewish texts exploring freedom, dedicating their learning in Gilad’s merit with the hope that this Passover he might be able to celebrate his freedom back home with his family in Israel.

Preparing for the “Freeze-Out” for Gilad Shalit are, from left, Yossi Akrish (Haifa), Jon Karp (East Brunswick), Joel Srebrenick (South Orange), and Ayal Pierce (Demarest). courtesy of ayal pierce

Among those spearheading the Young Judaea effort was Demarest 18-year-old Ayal Pierce.

“My friends and I felt we needed to do something meaningful with our free time, and wanted to raise awareness about Gilad’s situation among Jews in America, who don’t know much about it,” said Pierce.

They decided on a “freeze-out,” where 250 of the 320 Year Course students were to don “Free Gilad Shalit” T-shirts, gather with placards at the downtown Jerusalem spot, and freeze in place for five minutes — symbolizing the nearly five years that Shalit has been in captivity.

Pierce noted that as of April 7, Shalit would have been imprisoned for 1,745 days without any basic human rights. This adds up to about 250 weeks, the same as the number of expected participants.

He and two co-coordinators from Scotland and South Orange arranged the event through their leadership to be educational. “As a non-partisan international youth movement, we cannot advocate,” he explained, “and because the Year Course gives a year of college credit, the courses [missed during the event] had to be rescheduled.”

They arranged for bus transportation to the pedestrian mall for Year Course students in Bat Yam and Arad as well as Jerusalem, said Pierce.

As president of New Jersey Young Judaea last year, when he was a senior at Northern Valley High School in Demarest, Pierce took part in a rally against nuclear Iran in Manhattan and raised money for victims of rocket attacks in Sderot.

“One of the pillars of Young Judaea is social action,” said the son of Robin and Fred Pierce. Another of his projects was Change for Change, which raised about $1,000 for child refugees in Israel and was replicated by Young Judaea chapters in other parts of the country. He hopes the idea of the Freeze-In will similarly spread throughout the youth movement’s chapters.

“Our aim is to put more pressure on Hamas and, at the very least, for them to allow the International Red Cross to check on Gilad’s health and well-being,” he said.

Rabbi Steven Burg, NCSY International Director, said the NCSY study project seeks to “remind our community and the world that we will continue to advocate, pray, and learn on his behalf. As our Jewish brother and as a Jewish hero, Gilad Shalit is always on our minds and in our hearts.”

Participating students will be paired based upon skill level and interests submitted on the online registration form (there is a link at http://www.ncsy.org), and will be e-mailed source materials compiled by NCSY member Shaul Yaakov Morrison of Bergenfield with the assistance of New Jersey NCSY Regional Director Rabbi Yaakov Glasser and NCSY Associate Director of Education Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin.

The concept for the project arose during NCSY’s last National Yarchei Kallah, a week-long winter vacation event for public high school students. NCSY International Teen President Amanda Esraelian of Roslyn, N.Y., and NCSY teen leader Phil Katz of Upper Saddle River were brainstorming ideas with Glasser to unify NCSYers across the nation with a singular goal to make a difference for the Jewish people.

“As we discussed many different possibilities, our thoughts began to drift to the plight of Gilad Shalit,” said Glasser. “Since he was not much older than our NCSYers when he was abducted, our teens all felt overwhelming compassion for him, but were unsure of how to contribute toward his ultimate release.”

Glasser said the idea of a day of learning in association with Passover is hoped to “galvanize all of the NCSY regions in a unified project ... and be an expression of personal and religious growth on the part of teens across North America to stand in support with Gilad and his family.”