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social justice

Westchester Youth Alliance: Fostering Connection Among Youth & the Community

April 24, 2023 by Pamela Brown

Building bridges. Creating diverse communities. The youth in Westchester are coming together to learn about themselves while creating the world they want to live in. “We’re looking to help kids as they graduate high school to have a bigger world view when they enter college or the workforce, so when they move into a community and meet someone from a different background they can have a positive knowledge base to draw on and interact in a respectful and compassionate manner,” said Nisa Geller, Executive Director of the Westchester Youth Alliance (WYA).

Established in 2012, WYA connects high school students from diverse communities of faith, race, and identity and engages them in conversation, mobilizes them in community service, and empowers them to create a better, culturally informed world. “We feel it’s important for teenagers to have civil conversations with people who are different from them – different towns, different socio-economic backgrounds, different racial and religious backgrounds – and to have empathy and compassion for them,” said Geller. “This allows students to make friendships outside of their community. We facilitate the conversations using ice breakers and a curriculum that’s designed to break down stereotypes and stigma.”

For Monday Lerner, a sophomore at Scarsdale High School, spending time with the WYA is the best part of the week. “The community and social justice work we do inspires me to be a better person and think more about my community every day,” said Lerner. “The community of people I’ve met in WYA has been a lifeboat in the rough sea of high school and I’m grateful for their support.”

WYA’s THREE PILLARS

WYA has served 425 teens from 28 Westchester high schools and over 25 religious institutions and is growing in Southern Westchester. WYA’s curriculum of programming includes community service, educational opportunities, social justice activities, and recreational events, all based on three pillars: Nurturing Voice (active listening and respectful disagreement); Building Community (designing a better future); and Taking Action (working collaboratively to be agents of change). “We also teach these pillars so when students leave they feel they know who they are, how to get along with other people, and they’re a clear communicator in getting their message across in a civil and respectful way,” explained Geller.

The teens learn with and from each other through productive dialogue and engaging events and activities that include service projects, art projects, and regular gatherings to connect, reflect, and plan. Also, WYA organizes a variety of large-scale events, focused experiences, and guided discussions based on themes determined by teen members. Events are open to all teens at no cost. Recent issues of importance include mental health, food insecurity, gun violence, and climate change.

Emiliana Knauer, a senior at The Harvey School in Katonah, describes her time at WYA as a phenomenal experience. “While I may have initially joined the group as someone very hesitant to assume leadership positions due to lack of self-confidence, I’ll be leaving with the experiences of displaying a photography project at the Bedford Playhouse, working a booth at the Yorktown Pride Festival, speaking at a fundraising event, and even starting my school’s first feminist club,” she said. “I have so many fun and meaningful memories associated with WYA, and I’m incredibly grateful I had the chance to be part of the organization.”

WYA partners with a variety of not-for-profit organizations to offer hands-on community-service events. Students have cooked meals to feed the homeless, sorted toys for Toys for Tots, harvested vegetables at Hanover Hilltop Farm, and built affordable housing for low-income families. Throughout summer, members attend local events to share the WYA mission.

“We want students to be agents of change in their community,” said Geller. “We want them to realize they see a problem in their community they can take action on it, or if they see a need in their community, they can help make things better.”

Michelle Jones, a senior at White Plains High School, shares how the nonprofit has provided her with opportunities to collaborate with her peers and help the community. “I’ve learned to manage my time better and assume more responsibilities,” said Jones. “My first encounter with WYA was at a gardening event. I was quickly accepted into the group and felt like I belonged. WYA is a great place to find friends all the while bettering your community.”

That’s the goal of WYA. “We want to expand the students’ possibilities and network of people,” said Geller. “It’s very exciting for the teens and for the organizations that we help as well.”

Upcoming Events at the WYO

May 7 – Planting day at Hilltop Hanover Farm, Yorktown Heights

Students will be helping the farmers in the fields, weeding, picking (and sampling) fresh produce, making signage, pruning, and more. Experienced kids, passionate about plant care, will help care for more delicate plants.

June 11 – Yorktown For Justice: Pride 2023 Festival

All students welcome! Gather for the march and from 3-6 p.m. enjoy performances, speakers, vendors, food trucks, and activities.

June 18 – 12th annual Juneteenth Celebration at Depew Park, Peekskill

Juneteenth Tabling with the City of Peekskill’s Youth Bureau Celebrate the day as local performers are joined by youth groups who will will proudly strut their talents throughout the afternoon.

TBA – September – Bonfire Open House kick-off for the 2024 season at Pound Ridge Reservation

Register at westchesteryouthalliance.org

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Building Bridges, community service, High Schools, Service Projects, social justice, Westchester Youth, Westchester Youth Alliance

Sing Sing Prison Acquires a New Story and Preps for Museum Opening

February 22, 2020 by Jennifer Sabin Poux

Archival image of the Powerhouse Photos courtesy of Sing Sing Museum

In 1929, the New York Yankees played an exhibition game in an unusual location. It wasn’t a major league stadium or even a famous park. And Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and their teammates weren’t playing a team known for its athletic prowess.

That game on September 5th was between the Yankees and the Ossining Orioles. The venue? Sing Sing Prison.The Orioles were the best team in the Mutual Welfare League, a.k.a. a prison team.

The Yankees toured the prison before playing in their iconic pinstripes. One man who was incarcerated at Sing Sing was too ill to watch the game, so Ruth autographed his cell wall. Apparently, the Yankees signed a number of baseballs and handed them out. One ball from that momentous game, signed by Ruth and Gehrig, was acquired by Sing Sing Prison Museum just before this past New Year at an auction in Seattle.

The baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during a game between the Yankees and the inmates. The ball was recently acquired for the museum.
Photo Credit: MBA Auctions

Brent Glass is the Interim Director of the museum which will open in part in late 2020. He says that ball, which will be on exhibit along with its history, is significant to the museum because it connects several prison stories.

The ball will “help us tell the story of one approach…to try to encourage men who are incarcerated to partake in recreation, and to become integrated in society when they leave.”

It also helps tell the stories of Sing Sing in popular culture.

Glass says Warden Lewis E. Lawes, who was in charge of Sing Sing at the time of the game, implemented a progressive theory about the importance of rehabilitating the men under his watch in part by making life more interesting for them and giving them recreational and athletic opportunities. He was also connected to Hollywood; Lawes had written several screenplays including, “Over the Wall,” about a man incarcerated at Sing Sing of course.

Over the prison walls is where three Ruth homeruns landed that day in 1929. The Orioles wore hand-me-down NY Giants uniforms to face their professional opponents, but that didn’t help. No surprise– the game was a rout. The Yankees won 17-3. And they gave the men of Sing Sing a great show.

A rendering of the powerhouse
Photos courtesy of Sing Sing Museum

A New Cultural Institution

When we think about Westchester’s many cultural institutions, Sing Sing Prison does not come to mind. It doesn’t make any Hudson Valley must-see lists, yet. But that will change in this next decade, with the creation of the Sing Sing Prison Museum, opening in full in 2025. The museum’s founders are on a mission to make the museum one of Westchester’s great cultural tourism destinations.

You might go for the history, or you might go to gain a greater understanding of America’s prison complex. You might be interested in the more macabre aspects of the fabled penitentiary. Or you might go for the baseball.

The Sing Sing museum will be devoted to telling stories like the Yankees game, as well as the full story of the institution and its evolution. It will highlight stories of its brutal past and most infamous prisoners like Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and those of the ordinary men incarcerated there, as well as their families, and the rehabilitation work occurring there in the 21st century. And the museum’s installations will be designed to encourage visitors to examine the greater social justice issues of the prison system.

“That’s one of our major goals for the museum is to challenge people to reimagine the criminal justice system and to take action to create a more just society,” says Glass.

Glass, who is also Director Emeritus of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, says all stakeholders will be included in the creation of the museum. “We want to tell the story of how incarceration has affected everyone at Sing Sing. We want to talk to the men who are incarcerated. What stories do they think are important to tell? We want to talk to people who have been victims of crimes. We don’t want to leave their stories out.” And he says the museum will include the stories of the people who have worked there over the years.

Why build a museum at Sing Sing now? Glass says, “Every chapter in criminal justice history has a few pages written at Sing Sing.” Unlike a popular museum like Alcatraz, Sing Sing is still operating. And he adds that its proximity to New York City and historic sites in the Hudson Valley makes it a perfect location. It will also bring tourism and millions of tourist dollars to Ossining. The museum founders estimate that 260 jobs in the museum and the wider community will be created, as well as 100 construction jobs.

The Sing Sing Prison Museum will open a preview center in 2020 at the Powerhouse on the prison campus. The Powerhouse provided electricity to the prison from the 1930’s to the 1960’s and will be repurposed with the construction of exhibition spaces, classrooms and a theater, as well as space for re-entry programs to help released prisoners acclimate to society.

When the full museum opens in 2025, Glass says visitors will be able to enter the historic cellblock. “We would break into the prison in effect through a secure corridor that would connect the Powerhouse to the historic cellblock which is about 100 yards south of the Powerhouse. The historic cellblock, built in 1825, would be the centerpiece of the visitor experience because it is an extraordinary ruin that nobody gets to see at this point.”

Sing Sing has a notorious past–including 614 executions in the 20th century–but it is working to bring a sense of humanity to its prisoners through a variety of arts and educational programs. Rehabilitation Through the Arts provides year-round theater workshops and performance to the prisoners of Sing Sing. They also run workshops in dance, visual arts, music and creative writing. Hudson Link for Higher Education provides college educational opportunities to prisoners through private funding. The correctional facility has a garden and a professional master gardener, Douglass DeCandia, who works with the prisoners. There are also programs for the families of prisoners.

Perhaps some of the families of early twentieth century prisoners might still have their signed baseballs from the 1929 game against the Yankees. Glass is hoping the museum might be able to acquire a few more. In the meantime, this one will be on view at Sing Sing’s new museum later this year, a wonderful testament to the idea that people who are incarcerated benefit from the occasional diversion and a reminder of what’s possible on the outside.

Six Tidbits About Sing Sing

  • The 1,200 cells in the historic cellblock built in 1825 were seven-feet long, six-and-a-half feet high, and three-feet, seven inches wide.
  • In the 19th century, some prisoners were subjected to punishments like the “shower bath,” similar to waterboarding.
  • David Berkowitz, aka “the Son of Sam,” was incarcerated at Sing Sing.
  • Some Hollywood movies filmed scenes at Sing Sing including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
  • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed at Sing Sing
  • Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Harry Houdini and B.B. King have all performed at Sing Sing

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Babe Ruth, Criminal Justice System, Lou Gehjrig, Museum Opening, Mutual Welfare League, Ossining, Ossining History, Ossining Orioles, Prison Stories, Sing Sing Museum, Sing Sing Prison, Sing Sing Prison Museum, social justice, Stories, Victims, Visitor Experience, yankees

Ten Reasons to See What Temple Beth El is All About!

December 1, 2019 by The Inside Press

Courtesy of Temple Beth El

1. Temple Beth El welcomes all who wish to participate in Jewish life with an inclusive and enriching community, led by our award-winning clergy: Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe, Rabbi Maura Linzer, and Cantor Elizabeth Sternlieb.

2. Our vibrant Religious School emphasizes experiential learning and family education, with a wide array of programming that includes trips to Washington, D.C. and New York City.

3. The TBE Early Childhood Center provides children of nursery school age with a fun, exciting, and developmentally appropriate program in a warm, nurturing preschool environment.

4. Attend our monthly Tot Shabbat and Family Worship Services that engage our younger congregants. Save the date for our Scout Shabbat on February 28!

5. Holiday and festival celebrations for all ages – Join us for the Vodka & Latkes Adult Social prior to our Chanukah Service or be part of the cast for our upcoming Purim Spiel: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel!

6. Deeply meaningful High Holy Day services filled with reflection, prayer, celebration, and community.

7. Numerous Adult Programming and Education opportunities that range from an annual Scholar-In-Residence program featuring prominent figures in the Jewish spiritual, intellectual, and political arenas to Sunday morning classes with our clergy.

8. Deep commitment to tikkun olam, social action, and social justice with our new Year of Mitzvot programs. Volunteer for our Emergency Shelter Partnership, Cooking for Neighbors Link, or our annual “Soup’er Bowl” Sunday!

9. A commitment towards inclusion and outreach to individuals and families of all backgrounds and needs, as well as a welcoming approach to interfaith families.

10. Making connections with our friends and neighbors in the broader community through Interfaith initiatives and creating joint programs with Antioch Baptist Church and the Upper Westchester Muslim Society.

Visit us at bethelnw.org

Filed Under: Health and Wellness with our Sponsors Tagged With: community, connections, Enriching, High Holy Days, Inclusive, Outreach, Prayer, reflection, Social Action, social justice, Temple Beth El, Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester

A Local Rabbi’s Journey for Justice

October 21, 2015 by The Inside Press

jj torah
Rabbi Jaffe with NAACP President Cornell Brooks

By Matt Smith

They say in order to fully understand someone–and their cause–you should walk a mile in their shoes. In an effort to reconnect with the roots of Reformed Judaism, understand socioeconomic issues, celebrate Jewish history, and strengthen relationships with congregates outside the local community, Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester did just that…and then some.

On Thursday, August 27, Rabbi Jaffe took part in the Journey for Justice, an 860-mile (in total) march from Selma, Alabama to Washington, DC, in commemoration of the March in Selma and the Voting Rights Act’s 50th anniversary this year.

Organized and led by the NAACP, in association with the Religious Action Center–“the very first political advocacy group by the Reform Movement in Washington, DC,” noted the Rabbi–the march aimed to promote awareness for a variety of social issues and unite people of different faiths, religions and backgrounds under a common agenda. Members of the Reform Jewish Movement were asked to sign up and march for the cause. One of 200 Reformed Rabbis from all over North America, who marched in support of social justice and education reform, among others, Rabbi Jaffe joined the group in Columbia, South Carolina, and marched for a day.

“The experience was wonderful,” the Rabbi said of the event. “I met people from the NAACP I would have never encountered [otherwise], and heard about what they’ve been doing, and shared our stories as well. It’s a wonderful bonding experience for two communities that seldom come into contact with one another.”

Among the highlights of his day was walking with Cornell Brooks, current President of the NAACP. “It was wonderful watching Mr. Brooks literally walk the talk along with the many volunteers,” the Rabbi continued. “He even carried the Torah…all the while taking time to speak with the volunteers.”

Rabbi Jaffe also noted that the march was significant because it solidified for him the idea that, in certain areas of the country (and of course, the world at large) people still hold great prejudice against others–especially chilling to encounter considering the inherent purpose of the march. “You see the best and worst of people in these times,” he stated. He recalls one instance where “as we were walking, there was a service station where [shopkeepers] went inside and then ran up Confederate Flags. There was [also] a motorcycle that buzzed by us a couple times and was definitely keeping tabs on us.”

However, he was also touched to see others’ outpouring of generosity and kindness during later rest stops throughout the journey. Specifically in the “one-gas-station town” of Bethune, “one of the shopkeepers saw that we were coming and ran inside and quickly cooked hot dogs and put out salad and provided lunch, ‘cause she wanted to do something to support the marchers. That selflessness was quite amazing and inspiring to see.”

But the exposure to the different people and other areas within the country are just two of many reasons behind the Rabbi’s decision to embark on this journey. At its heart, as he reinforced, the event the march is acknowledging is “a very strong part of the history of reformed Judaism.”

And, in fact, it’s also a strong of part of the history of Temple Beth El: Rabbi Murray Saltzman, one of Beth El’s Rabbis during the 1960s, participated in many protests throughout the Civil Rights Movement, alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and was even one of the rabbis jailed for his participation in the St. Augustine Movement. With this centralized connection to the Chappaqua community, coupled with the history of the Jewish community and the general call for rabbis’ involvement, “I jumped at [the chance to join],” exclaimed the Rabbi. “It seemed like an amazing opportunity.”

Not only does it seem like it was indeed an amazing opportunity, but the day’s events seem to have struck a chord for Rabbi Jaffe. He expressed interest in finding ways to continue supporting the issues protested during the march on a more local scale, as a way to get the community more involved. (Specifically, he mentioned working with the Antioch Baptist Church in Bedford Hills, NY, with which Temple Beth El maintains a close relationship).

America’s Journey for Justice took place between August 1 and September 16, where it ended at the nation’s Capitol. For more information on
Temple Beth El, please visit
www.bethelnw.org.

Matt Smith, a proud graduate of Skidmore College, is a regular contributor to The Inside Press.

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: education, Inside Press, Judaism, Rabbi, Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe, social justice, theinsidepress.com

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