Shinshinim Program

Lia (left) and Shahar (right), our 2024-2025 ShinShinim

Narayever Has Re-Joined the UJA ShinShinim Program

The Narayever is proudly back in the UJA ShinShinim program this 2024-2025 school year. Our pair of teen Israeli Emissaries, Lia and Shahar (above) are excited for what this year will bring.

Narayever views our participation in the ShinShinim program as essential to our community's Israel Engagement. Each pair of ShinShinim over the years have been a link in the chain helping our congregation feel tethered to the Land of Israel. Through our ShinShinim programming, congregants and community members of all ages learn about, discuss, and celebrate our love of Israel. In day-to-day conversations with our ShinShinim, individuals can feel their knowledge and connection with Israel grow. Through our ShinShinim's cultural, political, educational and social programming we recognize the reality of life in Israel and build a vision for how we see ourselves as part of it, even from afar. We connect to Israel through our young emissaries, and in so doing, connect these young people to the Jewish Diaspora, too. 

To view previous year's ShinShinim information, click here. 

Two bright, talented, enthusiastic ShinShinim join our community for one school year, making bonds and connections that last for life. This fulfills their "year of service" abroad before joining the Israeli army. Our ShinShinim contribute in innumerable ways to our vibrant shul life. Some of these ways include: facilitating meaningful programming for our community, producing moving, interesting community commemorative events, participating in our Bat/Bar Mitzvah class, building lasting friendships with our teens in the Chalutzim program, creating connections on an individual basis, and ultimately, engaging congregants of all ages with Israel. Our objectives for this program are:

1. To engage young people in synagogue life

2. To reduce the gap between Diaspora and Israeli culture, society, and Jewry by nurturing a real personal connection between young Israelis and Canadian Jews

3. To teach about Israel as an integrated and crucial piece of our Jewish identity

4. To provide Canadian Jews and in particular our youth a more complete understanding of the complexity which is Israel 

5. To personalize Israel so that Jewish Canadians and in particular our youth develop an authentic relationship with Israel, which will then allow them to be motivated to be involved as proud advocates and defenders of Israel

6. To share with the shinshinim what is unique about Toronto Judaism, and Toronto’s Jewish community, so that they are more informed leaders in Israel, specifically in the realm of Jewish expression and Jewish pluralism.