Approximately 10% of the young men, and 70% of the young women participants, come from families who may never have organized a Bar or Bat Mitzvah for their children. The Masorti Movement provides these youngsters with an opportunity to experience this irreplaceable rite-of-passage. The NOAM Youth Movement and Camp RAMAH NOAM grooms the next generation of Masorti leadership; young people who are passionate, knowledgeable, and active participants in their growing love for Judaism.

Children in Avivim help us promote the egalitarian environment we wish so much to introduce to all the children at Camp RAMAH NOAM. Furthermore, participants in Avivim are often retained through Masorti’s Bar and Bat Mitzvah Program for Children with Disabilities.

Camp Avivim is a specialized, fully integrated program, providing Israeli children with both physical and developmental disabilities, the opportunity to interact with their peers in the welcoming, egalitarian environment. Avivim affords its participants the opportunity to experience the benefits of integration with all campers, and vice versa, allowing each to learn and grow in shared experiences and goals.

As a program of the Masorti Movement in Israel, Avivim is filled with the values, practices, and education of Masorti/Conservative Judaism. Each day includes tefilah (prayer), as well as activities centered on religious practice, such as making tallit (prayer shawls), wrapping tefillin (phylacteries), even a special Bar and Bat Mitzvah day. Avivim participants are fully integrated in each and every activity, in line with the Masorti belief that all Jews are both capable and welcome to fulfill mitzvot.

Education, training, and practice for Bar or Bat Mitzvahs are seldom designed for children with disabilities, either physical or intellectual. By using a specially-created siddur (prayer book) with both Hebrew and sign language symbols, integrated with intuitive technology, the Masorti Movement fills a crucial unmet need and makes better the lives children, their families and all Israel.

SHIN-SHIN:  Many former NOAM participants choose Masorti’s “shnat sherut,” a service year done prior to the army, and known colloquially as “Shin-Shin.” Masorti’s Shin-Shin is a year-long community living program, focused on providing educational and community service opportunities.  It is a social service program of the NOAM Youth Movement.

Garinim members devote a year to serving the community, during which they live together in a development town or on a kibbutz. They teach in schools and in absorption centers to help new immigrants better assimilate into Israeli society. The Garin members also have their own educational program, overseen by experienced NOAM staff.

Garinim cultivates Israel’s future educators and leaders, and enables young NOAM members to learn through action and role modeling.

MAROM provides a platform for a wide cross-section of Israelis to share experiences, network and develop their sense of belonging to the Jewish people. It also creates a framework for members to lobby for change in Israeli society that currently favors Orthodoxy to the exclusion of other forms of religious practice.

MAROM is actively involved in the absorption of immigrants who are students, holding joint activities with other organizations of student olim. MAROM provides a natural home for immigrants from North and Latin America, who are already well acquainted with Conservative Judaism. It complements Masorti in Israel by providing a bridge for young people, graduates of NOAM and other youth organizations who are not yet ready to join a congregation (kehillah).

MAROM is the Movement’s young adult community, from which springs its future leaders, including many who choose to pursue rabbinic ordination, eventually serving as rabbis and in other key positions of spiritual leadership.