Leadership Programs
The one year seminar program organized with Steve Israel, is based on communication, leadership models inspired by the Jewish leaders in the history and a complementary base of religious, cultural and historical lectures.
TUJS – Turkish Union Of Jewish Students – Eujs 25TH Summer University
In the summer of 2009 the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) organized its 25th Summer University, the single largest European Jewish event to occur on an annual basis, in Istanbul, Turkey hosting 500 Jewish students and young adults from 42 countries in Europe, Israel North America and Australia. In cooperation with its Turkish member Union – Turkish Union of Jewish Students (TUJS), EUJS hosted a weeklong event that offered a cutting edge program and activities, offering a series of lectures and workshops addressing a variety of broad issues such as; leadership, study abroad programs in Israel, trends of global anti-Semitism and Israel advocacy.
As Summer University for the first time in the history of European Jewry, EUJS organized a milestone event by gathering 500 Jewish activists in a Muslim country, running a program which raised the urgent and critically important theme of intercultural and inter-religious dialogue.
The concluding speech was given by the President of the Turkish Jewish Community, Mr. Sylvio Ovadya.
This one-of-a-kind event provided a unique opportunity for around 500 young European Jews to interact, while attending a week-long educational program, allowing students to raise and voice their concerns to a roster of internationally renowned speakers, ranging from political representatives, leaders of international organizations, academics, and religious and cultural figures.
The Sepharad Project
Since 2008, as a part of the Speharad project, we organise “education trips” to different countries in Europe in order to learn “The Jewish Heritage” in Europe. In the schedule of every trip, we plan a Shabbat dinner and Shabbat services with the local community. A whole day for discovering the Jewish heritage of every city that we visit. The countries that we already visited are Spain,France,Portugal,İtaly,Greece .
These educational trips give us the oppportunity to present the Hadracha College to our new candidates and prepare them to take some responsabilities in the community.
Purim Party On the Jewish Museum
On the march of Purim 2014, we organized a Purim party, on the former Quincentennial Museum of Turkish Jews. It was a first time that the Jewish young adults had organized a Purim Party on a former synagogue and museum. The former synagogue located on Karaköy district was totally decorated with music, sound systems for this event. La Casa Catering organized Kosher Food delivery and service in the museum during the party. We also invited “ Tektekçi” a very known entertainment company for organizing shot services and shows during the night. The event was very successful within a participation of 140 young adults. For the first time, the formerly Zulfaris Synagogue hosted so many young adults and was able to make more awareness for the Jewish Museum.
Here below the photos of this incredible night.
Educational Trips
We regularly organize educational Jewish heritage trips in different parts of İstanbul and Turkey to make an awareness of our history inside of our community. We work closely with The Jewish School, our young clubs and the communities in Anatolia where we have less population. We already organized trips to Galata,Balat,Hasköy,Bursa and İzmir as a part of our yearly program.
Witnessing the Holocaust Reality
Since 2014, within the precious support of Claim Conference, we organise one year program of Holocaust Education Seminars and a trip to Poland in order to visit the Concentration Camps and witnessing the Holocaust Reality. Our tour guide in Poland, Mr Doron Hari shares with us in every trip many details, documents with our youngsters and we say together “Never Again” while visiting the Auschwithz-Birkenau and Majdanek Concentration Camps.
On their return home, the participants of the project give lectures to the new candidates and share their feelings with articles and photos published on our local newspaper Shalom.
Participation on Educational Seminars & Project Development Programs in Europe
The Hadracha College – Generation Next group members, had the opportunity to present their projects in various platforms in Europe. Each year, we send at least 2 members of our group to the Paidea Project Incubator in Sweden in order to develop their project and represent it on their way back to the Jewish Community. Here below, a short list of platforms that we represented the Hadracha College :
Paiedea Jewish Institute Sweden – Paiedea Project Incubator
European Union of Jewish Students gathering – Switzerland
ROI – European Jewish Gathering
ROI Regional Summit
Yound Jewish Leaders Seminar London
European Jewish Fund
Galata Tours Project with the larger society
Started in April 2009 by the Beyoglu Jewish Rabbinate Foundation with the support of the Delegation of the European Commission to Turkey, the project “Introducing Jewish Culture and the Jewish Community of Turkey” aimed to reach the larger society in order to make an awareness about the Jewish Community of Turkey.
The longest running event of the project has been the ‘Jewish Cultural Tours in the Galata District’. By giving a tour of the venues that belong to Jews, we aimed to introduce the participants to our history and culture at the tours organized on Sundays once in every two or three weeks, depending on the demand. Mois Gabay worked as Jewish tour guide on the project during the years 2009-2010.
Hosting different Jewish organisations from all over the world
The Turkey Jewish Heritage project hosted since 2009 many organisations from all over the world and had the opportunity to present them the Jewish Heritage in Turkey.
The Pardes Jewish Institute, The Europan Center for Jewish Students,The Bnei Brith France,The World Confederation of The Jewish Community Centers, The Joint Distrution Committee İstanbul’s visits were hosted by the Generation Next group.
Hadracha Seminars
The goal of the Turkey Jewish Community was to create an initiative where the Community Youth will have a special possibility to explore and develop its identity, while absorbing Judaism with its different aspects such as history, religion, culture, literature, poetry and philosophy.
In order to realize this vision Hadracha Seminars were organized twice a year with an up to 120 participants – out of which is the Hadracha group selected. These seminars are a living laboratory for young people of the community future generation who are going to serve community and keep this project going. The other main goal of this project is to remind that Jewish identity is a whole entity with its religious education, with its music, literature, its intellectuals, its obscure periods and its philosophy.
The creators of the Hadracha Seminars with the generous help of EJF wish to fulfill the lack of information in the field of Jewish Education, to advance one step towards intellectuality. The lecturers are various and “hand-picked” from such a broad perspective. In addition to the group’s main concerns, Turkish Jewish Community also planning to add personal improvement programs which will bring to light young people’s leadership qualities.
GN TALKS : Ideas worth spreading inside of Jewish Community
The GN TALKS concept was inspired from TED TALKS with the same idea of powerful talks (18 minutes or less) but within combining the actual topics with the Jewish issues.
The idea was developed by generation next brainstorming meetings and started to implement since 2015 december. From science to business more than 20 speakers were invited on the four GN TALKS event in one year.Our maing goal was the same as the Ted Talks : How can we best spread great ideas in our community? The anti-Semitism and the role of the media was one of the most attractive topics of our last GN TALKS session.
