NCSY


NCSY is a Jewish youth group under the auspices of the Orthodox Union. Its operations include Jewish-inspired after-school programs such as "Latte and Learnings"; summer programs in Israel, Europe, and the United States; weekend programming such as FNL, shabbatons, retreats, and regionals; Israel advocacy training; and disaster relief missions known as chesed trips. NCSY also has an alumni department focused on empowering its alumni on campuses across North America to be able to live with a Jewish identity on college campuses. Over the past several decades, NCSY has been the subject of two child sexual abuse scandals involving chapter advisors and directors. NCSY, and its parent organization, the OU, have taken significant steps to address such abuse from an organizational standpoint.

History

NCSY is the organizational successor to the National Union of Orthodox Jewish Youth, established in 1942 as an Orthodox youth movement similar to a synagogue men's club or sisterhood. Over time, its emphasis moved to providing positive religious experiences to adolescents.
Though outreach to public school youth has been around since the early Young Israel movement, NCSY's most relevant precursor is the Torah Leadership Seminar, created in 1954 by the Division of Communal Services of Yeshiva University under Dr Abraham Stern, which developed the Shabbaton model. There was a core of NCSY from two early founded regions Midwest Region and Southern Region.
In 1954, Harold and Enid Boxer donated the money to create a national organization from the already-existing Southern and Midwest Regions.
In 1959, NCSY hired Rabbi Pinchas Stolper as the first National Director.
In the 1960s there was an emphasis on NCSY Publications with many volumes written by Pinchas Stolper and then later the Aryeh Kaplan Series. They also put out the NCSY Guide to Blessings and the NCSY Bencher.
In 1962, NCSY received outstanding praise from Rabbi Meir Kahane, after his having participated as an advisor to the NCSY annual convention.
During the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, the Orthodox youth of NCSY strove to temper social change through religious tradition. In this period, at least one NCSY chapter took public action on this point, passing a resolution rejecting marijuana and other drugs as a violation of Jewish law. At the 1971 NCSY international convention, delegates passed resolutions in this vein, calling for members to "forge a social revolution with Torah principles."
In the mid-1970s, NCSY started a boys camp at Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, MD. It was originally known as "NCSY Goes to Yeshiva," and later changed its name to "Camp NCSY Sports".
In 1970, the Israel Summer Institute for Jewish teens was founded. Rabbi Stolper assisted NCSY in expanding internationally into Canada, Israel, Australia, Chile, and Ukraine.
By 2015, NCSY Summer Programs included The Anne Samson Jerusalem, NCSY Kollel, NCSY Michlelet, NCSY GIVE, NCSY JOLT, NCSY BILT, and other summer programs. There were 1097 participants in NCSY Summer in 2015.
The organization has produced many Jewish children's entertainers who have remained in outreach work, including Uncle Moishy and the Mitzvah Men and Zale Newman.
According to the Orthodox sociologist Chaim Waxman, there has been an increase in Haredi influence on NCSY. Waxman based this on NCSY's own sociological self-study.
David Bashevkin is currently the NCSY director of education.

Organization

The organization possesses an International Director within the Orthodox Union, and is subdivided into national, regional and local chapters.
NCSY is divided into geographic regions throughout North America. They are New England, Upper New York, New York-Long Island, New Jersey, Atlantic Seaboard, Central East, Southern, South Florida, Greater Midwest, Southwest, West Coast, Northwest, and Canada. Additionally, NCSY runs programming branches in Israel and now Chile and Argentina. Each Region is divided into chapters. A chapter is typically a city, or a group of surrounding towns. In heavily populated Jewish areas like New Jersey, counties may have several chapters.
Many chapters in NCSY appoint or elect a group of NCSYers to serve on a chapter board, who work with the advisors or city directors to assist with programming or outreach. Many regions do the same thing, and have a regional board, who do similar things for the region. The International Board consists of representatives from many different regions.
NCSY's programming is divided into two age groups, "junior" and "senior"; these generally encompass 5th–8th grades and 9th–12th grades, respectively. Some programs span both age groups, but most programming is unique for each.

Programming

NCSY's original model was to create the regional Shabbaton, a weekend-long social and educational Shabbat experience based on learning sessions, following in the model of Abraham Stern of Torah Leadership Seminar.
Currently, while on Shabbatons kids are treated to skits, learning sessions and ebbing, where participants sit in a circle around the "circle guy" where they sing songs and do "funny" routines. They are housed either in hotels, camps, or grouped with sponsor families who take them in for the weekend.

NCSY Summer

NCSY Summer runs 18 different trips to Israel, Europe, and North America. The trips have fluctuated every year, with new programs released and other programs cut.
Boys Trips:
Girls Trips:
Coed Trips:
Baruch Lanner is a former director of NCSY convicted for sexual misconduct with minors whom he had contact with through the organization. The investigation began on July 12, 2000, he was indicted in March of that same year and surrendered to authorities and entered a plea of "not-guilty" on April 20, 2000. Lanner was convicted on one account of fondling a student on June 27 of 2002.
Baruch Lanner was hired by NCSY's founder Pinchas Stolper in 1970 , and remained his superior until 1994. Lanner was already threatened with suspension for sexual contact with two teenage girls in 1972.
At the time, in 2000 one journalist, Gary Rosenblatt of The Jewish Week argued that the Orthodox community had failed to deal with Lanner properly, and argued that NCSY workers often put the ends above means, sometimes with insufficient regard to the family dynamic or the alienation of teens from their parents. It also sometimes tends to a charismatic quality.
In response the Orthodox Union set up a special commission of investigation. A 54-page public report summarizing a much longer document of investigation, found the following.
The report cited "profound errors of judgment" in the way OU leaders dealt with Lanner and also noted a larger problem of "poor management practices" in the OU, including a lack of accountability by professionals to volunteer leadership, lack of involvement by lay leaders in matters of governance, lack of financial controls and a "total absence of any policies regarding basic ethical issues" in both the OU and NCSY.

As a result of the Lanner scandal, NCSY conducted a thoroughgoing internal review and reformed its structures and running. It created conduct standards, and published a manual on behavior. NCSY has also established an ombudsman hotline.
Menachem Chinn is the former leader of the Twin Rivers chapter of NCSY who was convicted of molesting two children under his supervision. Having taught at Shalom Torah Academy in East Windsor and Morgansville, New Jersey, Chinn was first arrested on April 20, 2017 after a former student of his accused him of molesting him in Chinn's home. A week following the initial arrest, a second accuser came forward, revealing that he, also a former student of Chinn, had been repeatedly molested throughout his education at Shalom Torah Academy. Menachem Chinn admitted to both instances of rape and pleaded guilty, thereby serving only a suspended 5-year sentence of prison time.

Lawsuit

In October 2011, NCSY was sued by a former advisor and employee for violation of the US Fair Labor Standards Act. The class action lawsuit claims that she had to work much longer hours than the allowed 40-hour work week.